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- [00:02]
A
Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.
- [00:06]
B
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. Oh, man. Very, very nice to meet you.
- [00:15]
A
Incredible to meet you.
- [00:16]
B
Gigantic fan, man.
- [00:17]
A
Appreciate that.
- [00:18]
B
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 people still watch and talk about today for seven grand.
- [00:35]
A
It was an experience for sure. I. I had a really good plan and it backfired. So I tried to right away when it worked in a different way, I wanted to share that experience. I wrote a book called Rebel Without a Crew that really inspired filmmakers. Because you remember that just recently, I couldn't believe I hadn't read it since I wrote it. And I had forgotten a lot of the details. And now I can see why it inspired so many people. Because it, you know, when you're in your early 20s, six months feels like six years, right? So when you read it now and go, oh, my God. From Inception to making it penniless by myself to Toast of the Town, it's like that. It was unbelievable. 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 it never happened again. It was like lightning in a bottle. And you would see. Every time I thought something wasn't going my way, and I was really bummed about it within weeks. An Upshot Beyond. And it really taught you that you just gotta follow your instinct. If you have an idea, go. Even if you know no one else has ever done this before, and you'll end up someplace different. I wanna ask you about that. Cause I know you end up doing the same thing a lot.
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B
Yeah.
- [01:56]
A
Where it's not manifesting so much in that direction. You're just kind of following your nose. You're doing something that just sounds ridiculous. Even when I try to tell one of my teachers what I was going to go do that summer, I said, I'm going to go try and make a movie. And he goes, oh, yeah, who's going to be your director of photography? And I said, I didn't want to tell him. I'm the whole crew. And I said, I'm the dp. Oh, the actors are going to hate you. You're going to be there setting up your lights all the time. I'm like, okay, I'm not even going to tell 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 who'd written. If you want to write screenplays, write three full screenplays, throw them away. Your fourth screenplay will be. It's like I ever written a screenplay. It's very hard to write a screenplay. It's hard to write. It's like three huge meals that you're just 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 grand, 40 grand, shot on video, no action. But it had a title that looked kind of like a US title, like perros raviosos dos. Like written like lethal weapon 2. And you would rent it. It'd be like just crap. People in an apartment talk. It wasn't. So I looked at the back of those and I thought, we can make a better one probably for like $5,000. Because I had made a short film called Bedhead by myself with a wind up camera. It was eight minutes and it cost $800. So I thought multiply it times 10. I could do an 80 minute movie for $8,000, but with dialogue and everything. I bet I could get it for under eight, probably more like five or six. Let's go shoot a movie. Write it, shoot it. I'll be the whole crew so I learn all the jobs. And then we'll sell it to the Spanish home video market. No one will know it's me because it's Robert Rodriguez. A bunch of Robert Rodriguez's. I'll make three of those. Because I was so young, I was winning a lot of film festivals with short films. But I thought if someone sees one of my short films that's winning all these awards, they're not going to hire me to do a short film. Going to hire me to a feature. And I've never practiced that, so I need practice. So I'm going to practice three films, take the best scenes from them, have a demo reel. With the money I make from them, I don't know how much I can sell it for. So I got to make it really cheap. Let's just do the first one, then we'll know. Then I'll take that money and make my first American independent film. And that'll be more serious because I threw it away like that. I just thought, well, let me just make something fun. Action movie. I guess I could do action. I started as a cartoonist, so it was more comedic than anything else. I said, well, an action movie, let's make it fun. Let's make it about a guy with a guitar case full of weapons, kind of like Road Warrior, who goes from town to town with guitar case full of weapons. But I can't afford Road Warrior on the first one. So how about I just do a Genesis story? So I took out these cards and I go, okay, maybe he was a guitar player. In fact, that'll be a funny title. Because I have this comedic sense. I thought, I'm 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. Because 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. I went, okay, that's how a short film would start. But shit, this is a feature. So let me put. It's gonna need like three scenes before this is how fast you write. 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.
- [05:57]
B
You're getting paid to practice.
- [05:58]
A
If I can sell it, I'll be paid to practice. So I thought, okay, we got to figure out who this guy. Okay, how about he's a control operator who's coming into town. But wait, who's the guy that shoots the place? So 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. Now this is going to happen. Oh, and because it's a. It's a. It's a, you know, movie about a guitar player. He's got to have some kind of tragic past, because Road Warrior had a tragic past. Mad Max, he lost his wife and kid. Oh, my gosh, she has to die. Because that's going to be. Every movie is going to be like a sad song in a songbook. So it kind of just wrote that fast. I went and I. Did you do it like that with the index cards?
- [06:57]
B
I do this on a table.
- [06:59]
A
I do this for everything. 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 of this before.
- [07:11]
B
And that's a tiny little.
- [07:13]
A
This is a tiny one you carry anywhere. I gave this to my kids one Christmas.
- [07:16]
B
For people that are just listening, it's closed together with rubber bands.
- [07:19]
A
Rubber bands. I gave this within a cool little leather bag for my kids one Christmas. I thought they would say, what's the shit? They loved it. I said, you can change your life with this thing. Because a lot of times, you know, you go to a therapy. Not for answers. You go for questions. We have the answers inside us. Usually we ask ourselves terrible questions. The therapists ask you questions like, why do you. Why did they 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 so are 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 will not just change my life, but everyone around me? You don't come up with three, you come up with like 15 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 a rubber bands to the crowd and I say, who wants to change your life? Everybody's hands go up, I toss one out, they 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, D.J. cutroni, is an actor. He caught one and he said, wow, that talk you gave was so empowering how you wrote it. I went home and I picked up an old script that 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 gonna try that because I got a bunch of half baked ideas that I've never gone and done that with. You did it in three days? Yeah, if you shut the phone off, you can do it in three days. And now he has that movie's out, it's coming out. It's called Fight or Flight with Josh Hartnett. He wrote that. After hearing the talk, he went and picked up this old thing that he thought. And I get this a lot when I've talked to people. It's really inspiring to them to hear other people. That's why I'll ask you questions about it too.
- [09:30]
B
Where this episode is brought to you by Oracle. There's a growing expense eating into your company's profits. It's your cloud computing bill. You may have gotten a deal to start, but now the spend is sky high and increasing every year. What if you could cut your cloud bill in half and improve performance at the same time? Well, if you act by May 31, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure can help you do just that. OCI is the next generation cloud designed for every workload where you can run any application, including any AI projects, faster and more securely for less. In fact, Oracle has a special promotion where you can cut your cloud bill in half when you switch to OCI. The savings are real. On average, OCI costs 50% less for compute, 70% less for storage, and 80% less for networking. Join Modal, Skydance Animation and today's innovative AI tech companies who upgraded to OCI and saved offer only for new US customers with a minimum financial commitment. See if you qualify for half off@oracle.com rogan that's oracle.com rogan did you develop this approach? Like, is this something you completely invented yourself? Just in to map out life on index?
- [10:52]
A
Writers will often put index cards up to just kind of block out a scene. It's a very, it's, it's a, 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 could 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. 1, 2, 3, payoff of the joke here, and then come up with it like that. So I kind of use it for everything. It's kind of a more vis. 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 concepts and ideas.
- [11:46]
B
With cartoons and then worked into writing. But I haven't seen too many people apply it. The way you're, you're explaining it like, you could actually use that to fix your life.
- [11:56]
A
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 like made the most original franchises of a filmmaker. I don't usually direct other people's stuff because you realize you're creating this story. Like, I just made this guy's destiny happen and I can give him a good outcome or a Bad outcome. It's in my control. And you realize you can do that with your own life. So you're writing the story of your own life, of who you're going to become, who you're going to be, and as a parallel. And you realize you've got that power. And when you realize you got that power, you can. You can make literally anything happen. And it's I. You realize art and life should be the same. You know, so many people, I was telling this story to somebody and they said, wow, you're really positive. And that kind of makes a lot of sense. You know, I have a project that's pretty much all together, almost the pieces are there, but I guess I'm just not ready. It's going to be on your tombstone. Here lies so and so. He was never ready. You can't wait to go do it. Like life, you don't know what's going to happen. You wanted to work out today. What happened? Bunch of shit, right? Got in the way, your tires flat, fires went up. You just got fired. You're not ready for life. You're like this. But for some reason, people where artists think that they need to be ready to create arts. I know you 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.
- [13:30]
B
Yeah, the procrastination really cripples people.
- [13:33]
A
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.
- [13:42]
B
I think it's kind of a fear of incompetence and failure, especially if you're undertaking something like starting a film. Like some people just for whatever reason they did, they don't have the confidence to just potentially fail and just. Just try, 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.
- [14:03]
A
Yeah.
- [14:04]
B
And it's Hemingway.
- [14:04]
A
Yeah.
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B
God, what a great fucking. It's like such an important thing to know.
- [14:08]
A
Because he knows the process.
- [14:09]
B
Yes.
- [14:10]
A
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.
- [14:21]
B
Yes.
- [14:21]
A
Like I might screw up, but that's good. That means you're not wasting your time.
- [14:24]
B
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.
- [14:39]
A
It's not going to happen.
- [14:40]
B
And there's that thing like you have to. You know, I always give people copies of the War of Art Pressfield.
- [14:47]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [14:47]
B
Amazing.
- [14:48]
A
It's a great book, but it's all about that.
- [14:49]
B
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.
- [15:05]
A
Yeah.
- [15:06]
B
Because it's not like the thing you're doing is painful, which is really crazy. Like writing out cool plot lines. And this is. That's gotta be fun.
- [15:13]
A
It's really fun.
- [15:14]
B
Fun.
- [15:15]
A
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. There's just rip the band aid off and jump in.
- [15:30]
B
I mean, I'm sure there's a bunch of people out there that are in the middle of that right now and.
- [15:37]
A
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 tried 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. Was really everybody wanted to be the next Burke Bread. That he'd come out of there. He did Bloom County. He was a UT student and his college Art was like national stuff, so we all wanted to be him. So I would go like, this gotta 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 got to just go draw it, right? I'd be there two hours, three hours, my deadline's coming up. Shit, it's not working. So that I have to go, fuck, start drawing again and 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, I'm going to be like, whoa. And you got to keep your ego out of it because if you go, wow, how did I do that? I wonder if I could do it again. You just shut. 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, we. So we didn't have to do anything. We just have to start writing. It's going to come out and go, yeah. And they went, they wrote this amazing stuff. And I was like, they don't have to be reversed, you know, reversed. But that, that was a very powerful thing. And I saw when I did another seven thousand dollar movie recently, I had a TV series based on Rebel Without a Crew, where I got independent filmmakers who only made short films. And I gave him two weeks. So, yeah, I do like mariachi. You can bring one person to be their cameraman or, 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 like, oh, we don't know how we're going to do it by the week they started shooting. They're already talking about their next three films. Like they changed. Their idea of what was impossible is just dropped down. 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, I brought my son Racer because I knew he hadn't been working with me on the movies for a while. I'm going to make him my second guy. He's going to be my co writer, my co lighter, and he's going to be doing the sound. I didn't show him how to use the sound equipment till we're filming because we're documenting it. We made a documentary about it and people really loved about how we made this movie today for $5,000. And he was fumbling around and. And we're going. And I thought, they're gonna. He's gonna hate this. You know, he's got his own interest. He doesn't want to work on a movie, but I need him. And so he comes to me at the end of the day with his brother and goes, dad, 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 gonna finish the day and you said, well, I don't know, we'll see what happens. And we thought, oh my God, is this the movie that finally, you know, he can't figure out? But by the end of the day we figured it out. And their eyes were all wide and went, 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 gonna figure it out as you go. Art should be the same way. And by the end of the two week shoot, they're interviewing him. He's all waxing philosophical about the creative process, like he's been doing it for years. He goes, I never knew how my dad did Mariachi. And then now I know because I just did this project. He didn't know either. He just started and 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 gotta go. And identity is key. Identity is the main thing. All these people who are out there, you gotta tell them this. If you are listening and there's something you're not getting in your life that you really want. It's not 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 gotta 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 aspiring comic. You know, I'm an aspiring filmmaker. I go, stop. Aspiring. You're calling yourself an aspiring filmmaker. That's now your identity. You're always going to be aspiring. Just say you're a filmmaker. Take one of these cards and make a business card, even if you have to hand write it, who you are. I'm a director. I wrote. I did one. I had to print it up. Director, cinematographer, editor, composer. That's who I am now. You're going to have to conform to that and you're going to start making films. That's. I started making these films even for Spanish video. And so you have to think it for. And I've forgotten that lesson, so. And 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.
- [21:10]
B
I was an illustrator when I was a kid. I wanted to do comic book illustration. Yeah, that was my thing.
- [21:15]
A
Yeah.
- [21:15]
B
Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Visible Now. You know, I tend to go down a lot of rabbit holes. I want to know everything about everything. And if you're like that, you need wireless that can keep up. Visible is wireless that lets you live in the know. It's the ultimate wireless hack. You get unlimited data and hotspot so you're connected on the go. Plus, Visible is powered by Verizon's 5G network, meaning fast speeds and great coverage. And with the new Visible PL Pro plan, you get premium wireless without the premium cost. And the best part, it's all digital. No stores. You can switch to Visible right from your phone. It only takes about 15 minutes. And then you manage your plan in the app. Ready for wireless that lets you live in the know. Make the switch@visible.com Rogan. Plans start at 25amonth for the best features. Get the new Visible Plus Pro plan for 45amonth. Terms apply. See visible.com for plan features and Network management detail details.
- [22:18]
A
It's fun, right, Love? Because it's just. It's not you. You know, you start drawing and then suddenly.
- [22:24]
B
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 like that you just have to sit down and do the work and it comes to you.
- [22:38]
A
Yeah, well, started when I was 19 doing the comic, but then it kept getting repeated.
- [22:42]
B
But you realized it at 19.
- [22:43]
A
I realized at 19 that it wasn't.
- [22:45]
B
You, but it was.
- [22:46]
A
It felt like something else. But then it really hit me later on. And I'll get to that one. That's a it. 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, 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 mail. And I was taking on more jobs to make it more like a handmade film. More like a lot of Factory movies are 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. You know, 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, there's only 12 notes, even less than a scale. So you hit three notes, four notes, that's a bad note. Okay, that's pleasing of the year. And I was just writing it note by note because it was 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 it's a lot of great musicians who don't read or write music. They're fantastic. The technical part, you can fudge that. Like how. How to shoot the mov. You can fudge a lot of the technical stuff. 90% is created. And if you know how to be creative, you can literally jump from job to job and do it really well, because you're coming with your own experience, your own point of view. That's why I teach my actors to paint on the set, because they've never painted before and they're already being creative by acting. But in between takes, we'll go paint a portrait of their character, where I take a photo of them in character and have them paint a background. I said, just pick up the paint. You can use these three methods. Any color you want. The paintbrush is going to know where to go. Even though you've never painted before, it's going to know where to go. 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 did one. And it's just like magic, how it comes together. And it's to teach them that you don't have to know. You know, we always think, I need to know this. I need to know that. What about the other side? Half. Half of the battle is knowing. What about the other half? Not knowing, I think is the more beautiful and where the magic is. Because you don't need to know what's going to happen. You just need to show up. You just need to pick up the pen. You need to do the keyboard. Yeah. Because it just starts coming through you and they see it and it helps them go back to the set and solve any creative problem. Because it was much harder in the faint room, figuring out gels and mediums and all this stuff. They go back to the set and they can solve any problem instantly. And you think that they're already in a creative mode by acting, but it fires off a whole other part of your brain to Go do something else creative at the same time. Remember 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.
- [26:20]
B
That sounds like something he would say to you.
- [26:22]
A
That's so funny.
- [26:23]
B
That's like a Miyamoto Musashi quote from the Book of Five Rings.
- [26:26]
A
Right.
- [26:26]
B
Once you know the way broadly, you could see it in all things.
- [26:29]
A
Yeah. You start seeing. And so 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.
- [26:47]
B
Right.
- [26:47]
A
I didn't do that, and I didn't do that. What is it?
- [26:50]
B
And you shouldn't say that. And a lot of comedians say that, too.
- [26:53]
A
Well, if you ask any other disciplines, like, I go, I asked Jimmy Vaughn. How did you play that? That solo was amazing. Did you have that worked out? It's kind of like tuning a radio, you know, if you get it just right, you can't even believe what's coming through.
- [27:07]
B
Yeah.
- [27:07]
A
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. I don't think I can do this or that. And they don't. And they don't pick up the pen. They don't actually start how frustrated the.
- [27:26]
B
Spirit is just hovering over.
- [27:27]
A
Hovering over. Oh, my God. Will you just. It's not you. It's not you. You just let me through.
- [27:33]
B
And it's crazy that that concept has been around forever, this concept of the muse, but yet still.
- [27:38]
A
I never heard it like that, where it's like, takes. It still feels like you have to do a lot. 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.
- [27:50]
B
I mean, just.
- [27:51]
A
Just do the work. Just show up and start.
- [27:53]
B
Yeah. Pressfield literally thinks that it's like. Like an angel or like some sort of a divine presence that presents you. I. I think. I think there's something to it, man. And it's. It sounds so kooky. But if something is super successful for amazing people and they're all telling you the same thing, like, why do you have to. Nah, man, I'm not stupid. I'm not going to believe in the concept that whatever the it is. There's something that happens when you're creative where you feel like an antenna. You feel like you just take. These ideas are coming to you. They're entering into your mind. It's not physical effort. It's not like you're picking up bricks and stacking them on the wall like something is happening to you.
- [28:36]
A
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. You know, it's very creative house, really, because it's. That's where I do a lot of my creative work. And a lot of creatives like coming to this place. So you have to come check it out. You can see the Frazettas I have.
- [28:51]
B
Oh, you have original Frazettas.
- [28:53]
A
Oh, yeah, we'll get to that. We'll get to that. Oh, my God. But totally, totally. You have to tell what you feel 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. Because then you get in that headspace.
- [29:10]
B
Yeah.
- [29:10]
A
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. 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.
- [29:28]
B
Yeah, it's. 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.
- [29:37]
A
Yeah.
- [29:37]
B
But you have to do things. You can't just sit and wonder. And it's that procrastination, the anxiety about starting. It's like crippling for people. It keeps getting off the ground and.
- [29:47]
A
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 just chopped off your leg right at the beginning of the race.
- [29:56]
B
Right, right, right.
- [29:57]
A
You go, well, I tried it once before and you just cut the Other one off. I mean, you're literally doing your. You're your own worst enemy. I had this one gal and fear of failure. This is the base, the best thing. One, one gal, one of the talks. She said, okay, you're real positive. But what do I tell myself when I just spent a year and a half doing something and it didn't work out? I said, well, that's very negative way to ask that. Can you rephrase the question first, then I'll attempt? And she went, I learned a good lesson the hard way. 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 money making 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.
- [30:57]
B
That was the movie where there was four different stories playing simultaneously.
- [31:02]
A
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 asked 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? Would you say, are you more studious? Are you more instinctual?
- [31:32]
B
100%. Yeah, I'm primarily instinctual.
- [31:36]
A
I figured because that's why you're here right now, because we're not that smart. I'm not that smart. I couldn't have figured this out. It's because I was just at an instinct to go that way when everyone else was going that way. And you're going to stumble, you're going to fall, but you're going to stumble upon. You're going to stumble upon ideas. No one Thought of. Because you're going the way that's not picked clean already.
- [31:54]
B
Right, Right.
- [31:54]
A
So I would just like four rooms. I said, yeah. Now, if I had just studied a little bit, I would have seen that Anthologies like that never work. Like, even when it's Scorsese, you know, Woody Allen and Coppola, they did one nobody goes to see because they don't know how to wrap their head around what is three movies. Anthology 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. That's not the state of mind I was when I won Sundance. I was throwing stuff out.
- [32:30]
B
Can I offer a counter to that?
- [32:32]
A
Sure.
- [32:32]
B
It only bombed financially.
- [32:34]
A
Okay. No, no, I'm not done with this story.
- [32:36]
B
The lesson is a very good movie.
- [32:37]
A
There'S a lot of great stuff in it. But this goes even better than that. My whole thing is examine the ashes of your failure, and I don't find one. I find two keys in there to my biggest movies directly from that experience. So my instinct was right. But again, sometimes the only way across the river is slipping on the first two rocks. I was on the set, had to be New Year. 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 they would look like they were a family. So I'm seeing Antonio and Tamelyn Tamita all dressed up to deny. I went, wow, they look like a really cool international spy couple. What if they were spies and the two little kids that can barely tie their shoes don't know it. They get captured and the kids have to go see them. So Spy Kids, there's five of those. Now, the other key to success that I got on that set was I love doing short films. That's why I signed up for it. It didn't work, but I'm going to try it again. Not four stories, three stories, like a 3x structure. Not four directors, but the same director. I'm going to try. Why on earth would I try it again. Except that I had just done one and I figured out there might be a different approach. That's Sin City. So Sin City and Spy Kids directly came from that thing you would call a failure if you, if you focused on the failure. So go back and look. Tell everybody. Go back and look at something that you had a real instinct for that you did and it didn't work. And sift through the ashes of it, and you're gonna find either that you've already had the success from it and you didn't realize it, what you really need is a boost of confidence in your instinct. Or you will find something that will be the key to your success.
- [34:22]
B
Well, that's also the magical part of the creative process is that it's not always gonna work. And that's actually good. That means when it does work, it'll be even more rewarding.
- [34:32]
A
Yeah, I mean, Mariachi didn't work.
- [34:34]
B
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. So how do you get the help you need without blowing your monthly budget? Use BetterHelp. With BetterHelp, better you pay a flat fee for weekly sessions, saving you money and time. It could even help you save up to 50% per session and you still get quality care. Therapy is a good tool everyone can use whether you've experienced a major trauma or not. It can teach you valuable skills you can use in your everyday life, like how to better manage all that stress tax season brings. Or how to communicate better with your partner. Or even how to be more mindful. Use better help to work towards your goals at a reasonable cost. It's also more convenient since everything is online. It's easier to work in a therapy session no matter how hectic your schedule gets. And as one of the largest online therapy platforms, Better Help has access to thousands of therapists with all sorts of specialties so you can find the right fit for you. Your well being is worth it. Visit betterhelp.comjre to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H E L p.comjre I failed at that.
- [36:02]
A
I was gonna sell that to the Spanish on video. This what's blew me away about rereading the book. I went, oh, my God, I was so bummed. I finished making that movie. And you. You see in the book, clearly I'm a penniless, clueless filmmaker making this movie, I think by myself. I think it's gonna 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 Arri 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, 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 till I got back, so I shot blind, not knowing if that camera was even working.
- [36:43]
B
Is it true that you invented the walk away with the explosion behind you?
- [36:47]
A
Yeah, that was actually. Yeah. If you can look at all the compilations, it starts with Desperado. Wow. Because it was an accident. I didn't think, you know, this is what happened. So 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, that's supposed to be a nuclear explosion. Just some body parts, some shrapnel and some smoke. But it's two stories up. And we get there, we're shooting so fast. I went to my poor effects guy who was just, you know, so busy just having done a big shootout, and I went, man, do you. I know you don't have body parts we didn't ask for, but do you have anything we can just throw? It's so high up. Is there anything you can launch up there? And he goes, oh, no, we don't have anything. So I need something to come up because I wanted some to fly up behind him. He goes, I give you a fibro. I said fibro. Like. Like what? It'll go up 60ft. But it's a. 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, 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 high. I don't want you to sing your eyebrows. Just walk fast. Walk fast and determine But I'm going to shoot. It's going to feel funny, but when I shoot it in slow motion, it'll look like you're just walking normal speed, and it'll slow down the explosion. Well, it looks fantastic. I remember when I showed you. Yeah, it looks fit. See, they're just walking. They don't know. Look at. Tony was just like, look at her. She's just, like, so calm. But if you play that, if you sped that up and played it normal motion, it goes by like that.
- [38:11]
B
It's crazy because that. That scene has been copied so many.
- [38:15]
A
Times, became an action, like, staple. Look.
- [38:19]
B
So they even used it for Fear Factor. Yeah, now that I'm thinking about it, we used it for one of the ads for Fear Factor. This is me walking away, and they.
- [38:26]
A
Blew some shit up behind me because it's just like. It's this cool attitude and music.
- [38:30]
B
I thought it was dumbest ever because it was a TV show. Dicks.
- [38:35]
A
It wasn't a kind of silly there, but it was just an accident. Again, the accidents you stumble upon. There you go. All right. That's where I came from. So that came out in August of 2000 of 1995. Just six months later, dust Till dawn came out and I made that. I. I enjoyed it so much.
- [38:55]
B
I love that movie.
- [38:57]
A
Oh, thanks.
- [38:58]
B
I love that moment.
- [38:58]
A
I showed this explosion shot, you know, the movie to Jim Cameron. He was watching it. I was waiting for his. For. Cause, you know, he was doing, like, movies like Terminator 2, Blowing the Shadow, everything. So I was wondering if he liked my little Rinky Dink thing. And his hand went up in the air when he saw that moment. So I thought, okay, I'm doing that. I'm gonna do that. 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.
- [39:20]
B
Yeah.
- [39:21]
A
So within two moves, within six months, you saw two versions of that. So people just started doing. You see it in man and Fire. You see. I mean, you see, like, whole compilations of it. But it's.
- [39:30]
B
That's got to be weird for you. Like, you're like, that's mine.
- [39:33]
A
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. But it's got a pretty cool.
- [39:42]
B
That it's become, like, a part of, like, action films.
- [39:45]
A
Yeah.
- [39:45]
B
Dust Till dawn is so first of all, who knew Quentin Tarantino would play such a good psychopath. Who knew?
- [39:53]
A
What's so fun is he's in Desperado now. I met him on the film festival circuit. So in 1992, we're both had movies with guys in black in violent movies. In fact, I met him at the Toronto Film Festival for Reservoir Dogs, had Mariachi because they put us on a panel together to discuss violence in the movies in the 90s, even though it was only 92. And so we met there, became friends, and he said, oh, my next movies it's Pulp Fiction. And I just thought, this crazy guy, he's so funny. And I said, I'm going to write him in Desperado. It was before he did Pulp Fiction or any of that. So by the time Desperado came out, Pulp Fiction was a phenomenon. Then people cheer when he walks on set. But when we were doing that four rooms. Here's another thing that came from four rooms. If I hadn't done four rooms, there'd be no dust till dawn. When we're doing four rooms, he takes me into a room and he starts reading me. And I got. 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 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, he would read. We had an office next to each other when I was writing Desperado and he was writing Pulp Fiction. So he'd read out scenes. There he is. And I would read out, you know, show him scenes from Desperado and we just became friends there. He was originally going to make Pulp Fiction for a Tristar. And then they passed on it because they thought it's weird, it's long. And he went, did it for Mirmax.
- [41:44]
B
Did he want to be the serial killer?
- [41:46]
A
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 gonna cast you because you realize you can. There's something about them that captures you that's gonna just be magnified when you put a 50ft 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 gonna be it. But he was so, so great. I thought, this is a really fun character. I bet he could. He likes, act. I can get a performance out of him and he'll come in with a take on it. So I said, I'll do Dust Till Dawn. Would you be interested in playing Richie? Because I'd love to play Richie. Okay, well, 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.
- [42:30]
B
He was terrified.
- [42:31]
A
Kind of had this really cool haircut. I showed him a picture of Burt Reynolds and Deliverance, said, dude, you got the haircut of Deliverance. 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.
- [42:46]
B
He was very believable.
- [42:48]
A
He really enjoyed that performance. I said, dude, you're so good in this movie. Anyone talks, they're just talking through gritted teeth. Don't listen to anybody. You're really great in this movie. Yeah. No one's the test of time.
- [42:57]
B
You can't listen. Anybody's talking about Quentin in that movie. Shut up. Oh, he nailed it. He scared the out of me.
- [43:03]
A
Well, when you get a lot of success, people would tend to, you know, get into a target, you know, of course. So they would. They would say stuff about him and being. In a way, he shouldn't be acting in his movies, you know, of course, like, that's like, dude, this will shut. They'll shut him up. And if it doesn't, it's just because you're really great in the movie.
- [43:19]
B
Yeah. You just have to tune out the noise.
- [43:21]
A
Yeah. How do you. How do you. How do you get past the noise?
- [43:22]
B
I just tune it out. I'm busy. Stay busy.
- [43:25]
A
Yeah.
- [43:26]
B
I don't read anything about me. That's the big one.
- [43:28]
A
Don't read that.
- [43:30]
B
Don't engage. Like, sometimes people send me things. I'm like, don't send me that, man. I don't want to read it. I'm not going to read it anyway.
- [43:35]
A
Yeah.
- [43:36]
B
Friends.
- [43:36]
A
Oh, my God.
- [43:37]
B
I don't know any better. Yeah, it's just. I just.
- [43:41]
A
Don't.
- [43:41]
B
Just leave me out of it.
- [43:42]
A
I got some really good advice early on. I like to share this. People. I share this with my actors because they get a lot of. 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 Zoro with Antonio and me directing, right? So I go, cool, working with Spielberg. And it's like, oh, I'm working with Spielberg. You probably remember this time because we're about the same age. Remember the 80s and 90s? People would just throw on him all the time. All the time. No respect for this guy. They were so jealous. Yes. Public, everything. He was like. He couldn't catch a break, and he was making, like, the coolest move. That movie sucks. Ah, Jurassic park sucks. And it was unbelievable. So I thought, oh, that's because he's got his head way up. Maybe I should fly into the radar and I go make. If I can make a movie with him, what chance do I have? I went back and re watched, you know, like, Temple of Doom, which people say, that's not as good as Raiders. I watch it and go, if I can make a movie, that's an eighth of that, I'd be lucky. So I called him and said, he made Close Encounters. I know. Jesus, that's a.
- [44:42]
B
Incredible movies.
- [44:43]
A
But. But do you get that much success? And after. And then people kind of.
- [44:46]
B
Yeah, right. It comes with the territory.
- [44:48]
A
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 gonna make this movie for you. He goes, oh, don't worry about that. Just make a great movie. So then I go to him and I say, I'm afraid that if I make a movie at the bigger level, I'm just gonna be a target like him. I mean, he's the best filmmaker, and he's getting shit kicked out of him. I said, how do you do it? How do you do it? You just 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. I go, 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. Try to tell filmmakers sometimes if 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 over perform, some underperform. A movie like Mariachi that was not supposed to go anywhere, way over performs and you can't tell what's going to be the one. So just commit to a body work. And now no one gives them any shit.
- [45:59]
B
Now 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. So it's almost always the case of that. That's what the critic is. The criticism 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 may very well want to. They're very easy to attack and they.
- [46:31]
A
May very well want to, but they.
- [46:32]
B
Didn'T hurt the same instincts that make them want to attack. Successful people are the same things that hold them back from being creative.
- [46:42]
A
Talk about closing that pipe. Yeah.
- [46:44]
B
I mean, doing it to yourself.
- [46:45]
A
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.
- [46:52]
B
That's great advice. Commit to a body of work.
- [46:54]
A
Body of work. Like look at someone. I mentioned this and a friend of mine, businessman, called me and said, wow, that really spoke to me. You know, I tend to look at all the different businesses I've created that fail instead of looking at the whole body of work and I fixate on the ones that didn't work. And it's like you don't ever know what's going to work or not. That's not your concern. Just go make shit. Follow your instinct. Because again, maybe, maybe that one that didn't work is your four rooms and you've got. And you get two other great ideas out of it. I've forgotten that Dustel dawn came out of that as well. So that's the third one out of that four room. That thing gave and gave and gave.
- [47:30]
B
Dustel dawn was so fun because it was two different movies.
- [47:33]
A
It was like that's why he couldn't get made. 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 to go to vampire bar. Quentin starts writing. He starts writing Quentin style, where he gets way into the brothers. So much into the brothers that it turns into like a Desperate hours type movie. For half the movie, he waits half the movie to get to the bar. So now, first 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 there it's one thing, and then suddenly it turns into a vampire part of this. We can't make this. But then Pulp Fiction comes out and now everybody wants to make it. Oh, it's two movies in one. It's great. You know, whole different perspective change. Well, a little success will do for you. Four rooms. Four rooms. Oh, yes, Four rooms. Four times the fun. You know, you never know. So I told Quentin and let's make it right now because we made it to our next movie right after four rooms. So Desperado. Four rooms. And 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're working that fast back then. Wow. So I said, let's make this right now, because you're starting to steal from the script. That's Ezekiel's speech that Sam Jackson says in Pulp Fiction. That's from the original Dust Till dawn script.
- [48:56]
B
Really?
- [48:56]
A
He just took it. He was. He was pulling stuff out of it because it was just not going to get wrapped. Said before there's. Before it gets picked clean, let's go make this thing and we'll shoot it now. We'll go shoot it right now. And it was so fun. It was so.
- [49:09]
B
I love that movie. So fun.
- [49:11]
A
Cheech. Cheech is so great. You know, we did a table read, and we have a table read with your actors. You only have your main actors there, so sometimes you'll assign other parts to other people who are there. So it was like, cheech, why don't you go ahead and take. You play the main guy at the end, but go ahead and read for the. For the. Oh, no. He made the guy who gives a 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 gonna get like, you know, Eric Estrada or something. So he starts reading, and he does each one. You know, it's because. A median. 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 Quinn goes, hey, what if we get Cheech to play all three guys? I was thinking the same thing. So I go and tell Cheech. Cheech is just freaking hilarious, and go, hey, man, you're gonna play all three characters? Do I get paid three times? But 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 or 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. Cheech is like this. In a suit with a hat. He goes, hey, Robert, can I. This is gonna be a while. 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. Okay. High school, drinks, air conditioning, lines up the whole set. Okay? This guy's gonna be in every movie. He's been in 10 movies of mine. Because it's that attitude. You like that attitude of somebody who can find levity and torture sometimes.
- [50:43]
B
Movies.
- [50:44]
A
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.
- [50:51]
B
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, animated movies.
- [51:07]
A
Yeah, there's a similarity to them. I'm still that cartoonist. So what they all have is they're all comedic. Like, even the action movies are kind of just fun. I mean, think of Desperado. It's like a James Bond movie. He's got a guitar case that fires missiles. He's got this one that's got weapons design. Spy Kids is very much the same thing. It's just summer for big kids and summer for little kids.
- [51:26]
B
Even Sin City.
- [51:27]
A
Yeah, even Sin City is very playful. The Sin City one was so dark. I remember the. The first book, the one that Marv. That Mickey ROURKE PLAYS it was so dark. I was going like, oh, my God, it's gonna be a 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. It's just like, oh, my God, he's just killing everybody. But you're really with him because of the way he portrayed it. We didn't change very much. We just added, you know, some humor to it and that. Gallows humor. Really? You know. Really?
- [51:55]
B
Yeah. Like when the yellow guy gets shot in the dick.
- [51:57]
A
Oh, that's. Yeah, that's the. That was a good one. Yeah, that's a really good use of color.
- [52:02]
B
That, by the way, was one of the creepiest characters ever in a film.
- [52:06]
A
And it looks like that in the drawing. And I just wanted to. My whole idea was because, you know, I'm so respectful of. Of someone's artwork. You read Sin City and you realize that art is half of it. If anyone else in Hollywood were to make that into a movie, they would just make it like a gritty crime thriller and take out the whole visual element, which is that stark black and white where people's eyes glow in the dark. 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 want. This is, like, the coolest movie never made. And he actually wrote it because he had been in Hollywood writing a couple of screenplays, and he got. Got on and screwed around the whole Hollywood thing.
- [52:47]
B
Jamie, can you show me the scene with Mickey Rourke and the yellow guy?
- [52:50]
A
Oh, this. Bruce Willis in the other.
- [52:52]
B
Excuse me, Bruce Willis. Just. I just want to, like, While you're talking about this, I want to look at it.
- [52:57]
A
And, yeah, so he. He went and made this comic because he said, hollywood, I'm gonna go make a comic that can never be made into a movie because it's so dark, so sexy, and so every. And I call him up, man. Let's make a great movie.
- [53:12]
B
God, it's so interesting.
- [53:14]
A
Oh, Bruce loved this. I 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 you get. It's going to blow your mind. What is it now? It's April. Okay, so imagine this is. 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 months later, Once Upon a Time, Mexico, another number one movie. But also both of them ended a trilogy that I had started. So I was looking for my next thing and I opened up my Sin Cities again. I was like, oh, shit, I know how to do this now. I just did a whole movie on green screen, which was really new back then for 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. You know, George Lucas told me that it's a good thing you're in Austin. That's why I'm in Marin County. When you live outside of that box, you think outside of that box automatically. You're just gonna stumble upon innovations. So I thought, I'm gonna go take this process and utilize it to make Sin City. So I did a test, a little test of it, and went, oh, shit, this is 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, oh, no. But then we have to write a script and the studio's gonna have notes and that's not how it works. I got my own studio. I'll write the script. It's gonna be unremarkable. I'm gonna copy right out of your book and I'm gonna edit it down. I'm gonna edit three of the stories together. I'll write it this month. I'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. Marley Shelton. That opening scene in Sin City, that was our test 10 hour shoot day. And Marley Shelton comes up to me and says, 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. My so Frank answered her question and said, I want to do this movie. Let's wait. We had a whole process. I'm going to shoot the opening, I'm going to cut it together, I'm going to put in the effects, I'm going to put in the music, I'm going to put in fake titles. Then we're going to watch it. And if you like what you see, then we do the rights and we make the movie. If you don't like it and you're still on the fence about it, just keep it as a short film. Keep the gift. So we committed to the process. We make the opening sequence. He loves it. He wants to do it. I take it to Bruce Willis first, which was cool about doing it that way, which is unheard of. When I went to his. His agent, his agent was like, wait. He leans forward very dramatically. You brought actors down. Oh, because. Because I told him, this is Frank Miller. He's one of our greatest artists. He wrote in Hollywood and he got screwed around. And the guy goes, welcome to Hollywood. You know, like that. I'm like, yeah, whatever. I just respect the artist. So I just thought, hey, you'll be a partner. You're going to co direct this with me and we're gon 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, but then he can see how it gets translated. And that 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. Frank was dying. It was super annoying. He said, okay, you can. He saw it. He went, okay, you can go meet with Frank or you can go meet with Bruce. So I show 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 finish. We're shooting the actual movie by March.
- [57:09]
B
Wow.
- [57:10]
A
So by April, we're already done with. We're filming the. The Second Story by April. It was out the next year. I mean, that's as fast as the movie's ever gone in a production. All these actors jumped on right away. Once we had Bruce and he loved. He loved doing this film noir type thing. And we're doing something very experimental, which is green screen. Nobody knew what green screen back then was. And what I told them was, well, it's kind of like theater, but instead of being in front of a black curtain, you're in front of a green curtain. You'll still have some props. You might have a steering wheel. Like Clive 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. 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. 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 smaller than this room. By the time you bring your lights in, where the actors actually had the playground. It's unbelievable.
- [58:12]
B
Wow, that's incredible. And it was so inspiring, too. That movie was so. Because when I left the theater, I remember thinking, I've never seen anything like that before.
- [58:22]
A
It was like. Because the comic was that way.
- [58:24]
B
It was so different. And it just. Like when someone does something that really just steps up and enters into, like, kind of just a new area of art. Because that's what it felt like. It felt like a real legitimate comic book art movie. And this is before 300.
- [58:39]
A
Yeah, 300.
- [58:40]
B
300. Kind of took that as well.
- [58:42]
A
And then I called and said, how'd you do that movie? I said, I just put on a dvd. Go. I put all that. I put all the secrets on there. And they went and they shot the same way.
- [58:49]
B
It was such a good movie. And it was. It was so fun.
- [58:51]
A
It was also. Frank Miller.
- [58:52]
B
The thing about the. Yeah, right. Same thing. 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. You leave the theater, like, everything's different, you know, like, the world's different. Like, that got made like this. Like, I. Now I know. And the thing about people today, like young people today that don't know, like, how revolutionary Pulp Fiction was when it came out. Yeah, when it came when it came out, it was like such a different kind of feeling that you got after you saw the movie. It was. There's so many what the fuck? Scenes that you left that theater. Like, Jesus Christ. It's like the world was different. The world was different. Quentin Tarantino changed the world with Pulp Fiction. That's how profound it was.
- [59:37]
A
Yeah.
- [59:38]
B
And I'm not exaggerating. It changed what was possible in film after that.
- [59:42]
A
No, I was. 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. I said. And I was like, yeah, yeah. We got our post on the. On what people? Like, we done. We don't know. So I gotta tell you, really, two things. First of all, George Lucas told me that he's like. I showed him the Sin City thing because we'd both been early adopters of digital and DPs, directors of photography, didn't want to even look at digital. They were like 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 where I was shooting my own movies. I wasn't going to look, let some DP who didn't want to get in digital keep me from making, you know, Sin City. So I just shot it myself. I figured it out myself. So I showed it to Lucas. He was like, this movie will show people what digital is capable of. Finally, more than the Star wars movies I'm doing because it's just so avant garde and so crazy looking. But I only made it for me. I. I really wanted to see it made. I didn't. I literally didn't think it would be successful on its theatrical run. In fact, we didn't even test screen it. They're like, can we do a test screen? Like, no. Why? What for? Everybody's going to say it's black and white. Why is it black and white? Why are there three stories that's all wrong? It's voiceover. It's all voiceover. That's all wrong. We know it's that way. Why would we go hear people tell us that that's not what base movie is supposed to be. Let's just put it out, 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. That's good enough for me. But then it was a big hit. Now, let me tell you about Pulp Fiction, because groundbreaking doesn't look groundbreaking to you or anyone around you necessarily, when you're doing it. I've forgotten about this, but I journal, and 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 Interview Writer Directors. His was so big. We did two episodes. We talk about all his movies. And I said, do you remember this time I found in my diary right down to the hour we went out to dinner? I mean, he was so into Pulp Fiction ever since I met him. My next movie's gonna be Pulp Fiction. I visited the set. He was into it, is into it. He finished the movie, and I said, hey, how did. Because I live here in Austin, I get to hang out with him, except when I go to la. How did you. How did your movie come out? It's not. It's not the one. It's like. Still feels like a movie Quentin would make. I'd be like, what? What do you mean? It's like. It just doesn't feel like a real movie. Feels like another movie Quentin would make. And I was trying to be the supportive friend because I knew how much he put in. Well, it should be different. He's like, man, this one wouldn't have it. 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, said, how was the screening? He was a little bummed about. He goes, nah, this isn't the one for him. I was like, really? Yeah. It's. It's just too. That's just not it. And I asked him this, and he goes, you're right. You know, he'd forgotten about that moment. He goes, in fact, yeah, People didn't get it. And in fact. And he didn't get it either. He wasn't sure if it was it. In fact, one filmmaker even said, I want to sit you down and tell you all the things that are wrong with this movie. But I'll wait till you get back from Cannes. He goes to Cannes, he wins Cannes. And the friend left him a message. What the hell do I know? I've only made one movie. Everyone's mind was changed, so he was surprised by it too. So that's. I just want 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 over perform. 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. You know, and if you just do that. Because I saw a lot of people get hurt, you know, like John Carpenter made the Thing. He thought he made a great movie, thought he made an amazing movie. Bombs. Critics called it pornography at the time, if you remember like this. The makeup effects of its audiences didn't go. It came out the same weekend, unfortunately, as ET Right.
- [63:50]
B
Why do they call it Pornography?
- [63:52]
A
Just because it was just so self indulgent and gross and nasty. I mean, they really like reamed him to the point.
- [63:57]
B
So the special effects.
- [63:59]
A
Yeah. Really crazy. Yeah.
- [64:01]
B
Really?
- [64:01]
A
Yeah. If you don't remember the time it was really like that. It was repulsion towards this movie. Wow. I know you don't think that now because 10 years later, it took 10 years. No, it was not 10 years later. It was suddenly considered a classic. Now if he had committed to a body or he would have just let that roll off his shoulders and just don't blink. But it really fucks you up. If you think I made it, my instincts must be off. I thought I made a great movie. It's a great fucking movie. But if no one else is saying that. So I asked Quinn, who George Lucas had the same thing. He showed famously Star wars to all his director friends. And they're all like, poor George just wasted all his time on this movie. And Spielberg was the only one who's like, it's naive. It'll do good. And so I asked Quinn, was there anybody in that director's group? He goes, yes, there was one. Kathryn Bigelow. She was the one who was championed and said, this is something new and different. No one else was saying that. But that's pretty amazing, right?
- [65:01]
B
That's super amazing.
- [65:02]
A
It's really. And I would have forgotten it if I had not written it down.
- [65:05]
B
So there's a Lot of films that slip through the cracks.
- [65:08]
A
Yeah.
- [65:08]
B
For whatever reason.
- [65:09]
A
Or they don't.
- [65:11]
B
You know what I saw recently that I loved? The monkey.
- [65:15]
A
Did you see Monkey? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's.
- [65:18]
B
It's a Stephen King book. That. Or maybe it might be a short story.
- [65:22]
A
It was a short story. Skeleton Crew.
- [65:25]
B
It's fun, man. I watched with my youngest daughter, loves horror movies. We watch a lot of horror movies together, and we were, you know, looking for something the other night. We're like, all right, let's take a chance on this. Had no idea what it was. Watch the trailer. I'm like, are you in? She's like, okay, this is good. So it's chaos. It's such a chaotic, insane, hyper violent movie. And.
- [65:50]
A
And.
- [65:51]
B
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.
- [66:03]
A
Was like, that's a. Here's one that fell through the cracks, like. And I was there at Sony when we were doing Mariachi Desperado when this movie came out. I remember the marketing team said, we have a really great movie. Unfortunately, no one's going to see it because of the title. So what is it called? Shawshank Redemption.
- [66:17]
B
Oh, my God.
- [66:18]
A
And it bombed.
- [66:19]
B
What?
- [66:20]
A
Oh, Shawshank Redemption bomb. What? It was a bomb. How? Nobody went to see it. It's called Shawshank Redemption. And what the hell is. The guy's in prison. Nobody went to see it. And this is 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 is the best movie of all time. Wow. That is a movie nobody saw. So, again, look, don't blink. Commit to a body of work. You may make a classic. It might be the thing. And you're not gonna hear about that for 10 years. Just keep going. Don't let it. Don't let it make you question your instincts. Cause your instincts.
- [67:04]
B
I would have never guessed Shawshank was a failure.
- [67:07]
A
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, now it's different.
- [67:15]
B
With shooting opening night, to see the audience, to view Their film Darabont and Glotzer went to the Cinerama Dome and found no one there. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
- [67:28]
A
Imagine, just like I thought. I thought, you know, as an artist, you're going to be going, I, I must be wrong. I must have just don't have these.
- [67:37]
B
That's clearly a fault of the marketing.
- [67:39]
A
No, it's also just.
- [67:41]
B
I'm blaming them.
- [67:42]
A
Yeah, I think, I mean, because if anyone showed up, they would have gone and screamed it to everybody else. Sometimes it's just. It's just the way it goes. It's just, it's supposed to go that way. Now I'm going to tell you an alternate one, that there's a movie called Body Parts with a guy named Jeff Fahey. I loved that movie. Body Parts by Eric Red. He did the Hitcher. He did. You would 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 7pm I go for a dollar. It was at the second run and watch it just to hear how an audience responds to it. And he was just great in it. I just felt a connection to this guy. I go, I wish I was making movies because I would work with this guy. He's really a cool actor.
- [68:25]
B
What is this about?
- [68:26]
A
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.
- [68:34]
B
Oh, I remember.
- [68:36]
A
Okay.
- [68:36]
B
So anyway, that's the same dude that was Lawnmower Man.
- [68:38]
A
Yeah, he was in Lawnmower Man.
- [68:40]
B
So another.
- [68:41]
A
This should have been something that, you know, was it for him. But this week it came out. They had just caught Jeffrey Dahmer like the week before. So they pulled back on the marketing completely. 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 out tapes. Working, doing work out there. 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 Bean and I went, oh, Jeff sent me a thing. God, Jeff's great too. Do. 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. I 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 do it. And went, that's just how it's supposed to go. But I saw it, and that's why I hired you, and that's how you got that second career later on. Because I was there every night because it was in the dollar theater so quick, I wouldn't have been able to afford it any other way. So that's how weird shit happens. Right? It's so cool. It makes you see that you don't. It's just sometimes that's just how the balls roll, you know, it's just all interconnected. Yeah. Somehow it's interconnected.
- [70:14]
B
And you have to trust the process.
- [70:15]
A
You just have to trust the process. I had someone in the audience recently, I was talking about brass knuckle film and getting everybody all stirred up about it. And one gal goes, you're real positive, but do you have any doubts? I was like, well, I never 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?
- [70:41]
B
Everyone has doubts.
- [70:43]
A
Okay?
- [70:43]
B
So it's what you do with them. You'd let your doubts overwhelm you? Or do you take them into consideration? Like, are these doubts valid?
- [70:50]
A
Right? Like, and what do I have to.
- [70:52]
B
Do to make sure that these. That these fears don't manifest themselves as reality? I have to do extra work? Do I have to work harder? We have to be more objective.
- [71:01]
A
Right.
- [71:02]
B
You know, you have to. You have to take into consideration that anything you're going to do that's going to be exciting also carries the possibility of risk. And the risk of failure is a thing that keeps a lot of people from acting.
- [71:14]
A
So if you're going to commit to a body work and not blink, you got to be. Well, you don't have to worry about that.
- [71:20]
B
There's a jiu jitsu expression. Well, a lot of people use it in MMA as well. You don't lose, you learn.
- [71:25]
A
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.
- [71:32]
B
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.
- [71:41]
A
Right?
- [71:41]
B
Yeah.
- [71:42]
A
So I told her, 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. What's half the battle? Not knowing. That's the magic is I don't have to know. I'm going to figure it out when I'm almost done. You know, all those. All those things come together, risk averse.
- [72:06]
B
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.
- [72:21]
A
Yeah.
- [72:21]
B
Writing. It could be a thing that you enjoy.
- [72:23]
A
Love it. You'll probably will have success at it.
- [72:25]
B
Yes.
- [72:26]
A
Because I'm sure you were drawing too. You know, in school. I would be drawing all day in school. I'd make these flip cartoon books in the sides of the dictionaries, paper dictionaries, flip cartoon movies that I get the dictionary that was biggest and fattest and make these very elaborate stick figure animations. And everyone in class loved him. And I'd be like, I'm gonna be broke. I can't pay attention to class.
- [72:49]
B
I used to do cartoons of the teachers in high school.
- [72:51]
A
Yeah. And everybody loved them.
- [72:52]
B
Yeah. I 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 could 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.
- [73:21]
A
Power of the pen. You had back Then, yeah, it was.
- [73:22]
B
Like my first introduction to being a comedian.
- [73:26]
A
It's very satisfying. But did you think you were gonna make a career out of that? No, no, of course not. You think? I was thinking, oh my God, I'm gonna 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 gonna, like I'm some protege or something. So I'm. 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?
- [73:52]
B
Right.
- [73:52]
A
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, you'll actually find success doing it 100. You put stuff together, suddenly opportunities are going to fall in your lap.
- [74:07]
B
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 could apply that to other things. It might be every other thing.
- [74:17]
A
So this is what I applied it to because I'd forgotten this lesson, which was just say you're this person. Stop aspiring. Our words we use are so powerful. If you say, well, you know, I might not. I'm probably not going to be successful. That's your lot in life. You just, you just did that to yourself.
- [74:33]
B
Self defining.
- [74:34]
A
So I, I had a, a friend of mine, I mean like I, I always hated working out. I didn't follow any sports, didn't know sports. In high school they go, we need you. It's a small school, we need you on the team. 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 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, when I was a cartoonist, my back kept going out. 19, I'm like, have a, have a cane. And my back would be out for like a month because I would sit, oh wow, kitchen table dry. And I was so tall that it was just, it would throw my back, I would just disc would go out. And then when I started filmmaking, every year would 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 too, I think with a. Ricardo Montalban had a bad back that he got surgery and it him up and he was in a wheelchair. He was paralyzed. So he's in a wheelchair. And I'm with a walker because my back went out. And he goes, Robert, I'm 84 years old. What's your excuse? You gotta work out. Robert. He was always in shape. Ricardo, that chest in Spy in, In Star Trek 2, that's his chest. I know. And he was in his late 60s, 80s or his mid-60s.
- [75:52]
B
They fused his spine. Is that what they did?
- [75:53]
A
Yeah, they did something.
- [75:55]
B
God damn it.
- [75:56]
A
So every time I hear him, I.
- [75:58]
B
Wish I could talk to that guy before he did that.
- [76:00]
A
I know. And he went to a good place, but they just hit something wrong. They him up.
- [76:04]
B
It happens to so many people.
- [76:06]
A
Yeah. 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 slash Stallone. I gotta get in shape because my back keeps going out and I don't like to work. Get the a trainer. Anyone you ever seen in Hollywood who got in shape? They had a trainer. What about you? Oh, I need a trainer. You need a trainer? Well then if you need a trainer, Mr. Rocky, what chance do us mortal men have? So I hired a trainer and guess what happened? Hated it. Hated it. I hide from the guy, he'd come to my house, I'd pay him not to show up. I'd hate it. I'd hide, I'd hide. I'd call in sick. And then when he did, when he did get me, I'd be like half ass in the workouts, you know, I hated it. And then one year, it was just torture. I knew I had to do it. But. So this is my, 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. Desire. You. I have plenty of desire. I was paying this guy, I wanted to get in shape. I didn't want my back going out anymore. I had the desire. I was missing another key element that I figured out. And it's a lesson. I Already knew, which was stop aspiring, but I forgot it. So this woman friend of mine from Mexico shows up. She does a production manager. I have to stop smoking. My doctor said I have to stop smoking or I'm gonna die. I've been smoking since I was 8 years old. I said, well, you're gonna 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 gonna conform to your 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? Hate. 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 still. She truly talks like that. So then I go, wait a minute. Shit. I used to. I used to apply it to filmmaker, but that's all I was back there. Where. Where else in my life can I do a 180 and it's gotta be a 180. Cause 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 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. Wow. I'm an athlete by the next day. What does an athlete do? Loves to work out. Makes time to work out. Eats right. And it's got to be opposite dates. Much easier when it goes, lay on the couch today. Just kind of, no, I'm gonna go work out. Or there's a donut. Not gonna cut it in half and eat half. That's. There's degrees. You up Opposite day. There's a donut. No, I'm gonna reach for an apple. Not only was I able to work out, this is 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, I want to go do this thing on the weekend, and you might have the desire, but you got to get the identity too. You've got to say, you are that.
- [78:58]
B
Yeah.
- [78:58]
A
And it sounds a little awkward. Like I asked. Asked somebody. Alex Friedman. I. I Said, do you consider yourself a creative person anyway? Well, you know, that's a good impression. I said, you're stuttering there, man. You're stuttering. You're stuttering. He goes, I know, I know. I said, no, no, no. You gotta 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, 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, 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. 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 at 16? You're go, great. I know sometimes. And 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 don'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. But if you go ask somebody to do it for you, your I need list, if you make a list of all the things you need before you can make your dream happen, the longer that list is, the less that's going to happen. You got to reduce it down to nothing. Me, my hands, my bootstraps, this camera. I'm going to figure it out on the day, be technical and creative. So I told Lex, now you got to own it. When I say, are you creative? You go, yeah, I'm creative. Creative and I'm technical, and I don't blink. I'm gonna create a body of work. He's like, walks out of there supercharged.
- [81:23]
B
You know, 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.
- [81:30]
A
Nice to be self deprecating. It's kind of a joke, but a little bit. But the words you use in yourself are very. He beats himself up, the words you use. And you're doing that to yourself.
- [81:37]
B
Yeah.
- [81:37]
A
The guy throwing cabbage at you on stage, look close. That's. It's you. You're doing that to yourself.
- [81:45]
B
You're the one who's like, you do.
- [81:47]
A
That to yourself with your words.
- [81:48]
B
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.
- [81:53]
A
Yeah, dude, you're gonna. You're down. You stay down. I have this theory called baseline. I taught this to my kids, and we just laugh about it and go, okay, when shit fucks up, but shit's not going right, don't be down about it. Don't feel like you're in a slump, because now you just stuck yourself in a grave, and it's gonna be hard to climb out.
- [82:08]
B
Right.
- [82:08]
A
When shit isn't going right. Oh, the tires flat. Oh, I got fired. I call that baseline. You're a baseline. Anything above baseline, like this right now, we're here having this weird talk. This is way above baseline.
- [82:20]
B
Yeah.
- [82:21]
A
I'm on the Joe Rogan show, you know, so way above baseline. Celebrate that shit.
- [82:25]
B
Yeah.
- [82:25]
A
Because it's not always there. Don't say that. You're gonna go down. You're just gonna 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 gonna sing. I'm gonna play with my band. I told her, way above baseline. We're gonna get a nice hotel. We're gonna really celebrate this, because this shit doesn't always happen. And when everything's 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 at baseline, that's just life. Oh, yeah. I tried to go make that movie and it didn't work.
- [83:05]
B
That's such advice.
- [83:06]
A
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. I bet you don't know if it's gonna stick with them. I was shocked how much stuff not only sticks, but they come back and they feed it back to me. Oh, yeah, dad, it's just like you taught me.
- [83:32]
B
They also learn by watching you do it.
- [83:34]
A
Oh, yeah. They've seen you move through the world.
- [83:36]
B
Yeah, but you're the dad and you're making all these films. You're doing all this, you're involved, you're, you're, you have action. There's a lot of action. You're constantly in motion. You're doing things, creating things. That's inspiring to them. They like absorb that. If you're down on yourself all the time.
- [83:51]
A
Oh yeah, you know, that's, they go, okay, that's life. And I, I gotta look for. I'm gonna, that's gonna happen to me.
- [83:55]
B
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, in his life. And he's like super disciplined because of that.
- [84:09]
A
I'll tell you my secret. I've never done drugs.
- [84:11]
B
None.
- [84:12]
A
None.
- [84:12]
B
Nothing.
- [84:13]
A
Never been.
- [84:13]
B
Yeah. You don't even drink coffee.
- [84:14]
A
You were saying I don't even drink coffee. You were.
- [84:16]
B
Tell that story. Cuz it's so hilarious.
- [84:17]
A
Oh, a friend of mine, what was his name? He was working at the Sony when I first got there for Mariachi. And I was like this kid and there was people my age were assistants and he was like falling asleep at his desk. And I'm like, why? Why are you falling asleep? And he goes, I'm trying to get off coffee. I was like, oh my God, I'm never going to get on coffee. I want those guys getting their hooks in me. And then over the years, see, like Starbucks showing up when everybody like, Zombies going in there, having to get their coffee. I went, as I drink some right now, marketing all it's made to be addictive, like nicotine and all that. Oh, and then your buddy can't create that. And I already. I already stay up for days as it is. You know, I don't want to Anything like that.
- [84:54]
B
Do you really?
- [84:56]
A
I just. I just did this. What's your favorite workout music?
- [85:00]
B
Mine? Yeah. Wu Tang Clan.
- [85:01]
A
I just did. I just did a. The classic stuff, like Van Halen is a better. Oh, that's a music video for Wolfgang Van Halen. And we shot in two days. And I was up two days cutting it because I just wanted to see what was going to happen next. Two days. Two days. I was just like, I want to see what happens next. You don't even notice is my shoulder is 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. It's really cool. It's great.
- [85:32]
B
Don't you hit a point of diminishing returns where it's like you're so tired that you really would be better off.
- [85:37]
A
It's different with editing. Editing is a weird. I was thinking that as I was doing, I go, I wish I could do this with writing, where I could just write for two days straight. Great, but your words will knock me out, put me to sleep after a while. Editing is this visual stimulus, and you're so excited. I kept going, okay, one more hour. One more hour. And you just can't stop. You just can't stop. Because now you're. You're seeing it. It came out so cool. It's gonna drop 38 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 a kid's talent. He does all the instruments himself. Really? Yeah, he plays every instrument. He plays the drums, the bass, the guitar, sings, writes the songs. When he goes on tour, he takes this really great band with him because he can't play all the parts. But the albums. His third album he's working on is all. Plays all the instruments.
- [86:22]
B
Wow.
- [86:23]
A
Super talented. Really, really fun. But I like working with people who just do more than. Than other people. They just. They're at that level and it's so inspiring. It inspires you.
- [86:32]
B
It's fuel stuff.
- [86:33]
A
Yeah, definitely.
- [86:35]
B
That's why I always tell people, if you can surround yourself with other people that are really getting at after it in life, it will 100 motivate you completely. A different way. Instead of having that procrastination feeling, you get up excited, you have to.
- [86:46]
A
And it's like, you know, your parents tell you be careful your peers are when you're younger because it means one thing.
- [86:51]
B
Oh yeah.
- [86:52]
A
But later even more. Like when I started going to the film festival and there's Quentin and then I meet Jim Cameron and 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. When I'm pioneering digital filmmaking and green screen technology, I want to make the first digital 3D movie. And they go, oh, okay, cool. Okay, I can hang out here for a while. God, I got to be doing something.
- [87:16]
B
That's a great one.
- [87:17]
A
I was like, but still compared to what they're doing. You know when I first made Jim Cameron 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.
- [87:29]
B
Yes, yes, yes.
- [87:30]
A
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, 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. Anyway, 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 that's very consistent with who he is. That's the person you want to hang out with, not someone. If the guy had said, oh, me too, I'm doing the same thing.
- [88:13]
B
Didn't he go to the bottom of the Mariana Trench or some shit?
- [88:17]
A
So he's got 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 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? Oh, I designed the escape vehicle. So if any other bozo had done it, I'd be afraid. But because he did it, he had all the confidence in the world. Talk about Seminole. No doubt.
- [88:50]
B
No doubt.
- [88:51]
A
Is that hilarious. That's not great, though. That's him, though. It's like, yeah, if someone else had designed the escape vehicle, I'd be afraid. But no, I did it. So he had no pause at all. That's design crazy. So that's kind of confidence that does the people you want to hang out with.
- [89:04]
B
Yeah, that's a legitimate genius.
- [89:05]
A
It changes your perception in life. And by osmosis, you pick up. I call it this proximity phenomenon when you're just near. I took a painting class with Sebastian Krueger, painter in Germany. I saw this class that he gives for a week. I went, I'm gonna 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 that 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.
- [89:36]
B
Yes.
- [89:37]
A
So I went out there. He doesn't teach you anything. He just paints. I'll show you the examples before and after. Just by I thought for sure. I did a pre painting before going out there. It looks like crap. I went, I don't know what brushes he's using and the kinds of paints. It's a different method. He must have some trick. I go, and he's painting this amazing Mick Jagger photoreal 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 gonna try one more. It's more photo real. When I show it to you, it's gonna blow you away. It looks like I dropped the brush. I was like, holy shit, it's Because I'd finally given myself permission to do it. It. Because you, you have the ability, but you're blocking it because you go, I don't know. I don't know. There's something. I don't know. So again, you're just chopping off your own 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 them accomplish and that they're regular people that are just accomplishing at a high level, it just blows your mind.
- [90:56]
B
And that's really important in stand up comedy.
- [90:59]
A
Yeah, right.
- [91:00]
B
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. 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, up below, they see that. They see these, these young guys that are coming up, they see these people working really hard and constantly creating and hustling, doing all these different sets and constantly working on new material. And they get inspired by. And then you see these guys get Netflix specials and do it. And it's all happening at the club. So this club that we're doing in Austin is all about that process. Like, 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, 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 of.
- [92:05]
A
I love what you've built. You come here, you've only been here like four years and you've already like, built this whole community.
- [92:11]
B
Well, it kind of built itself, man. It's. It's the same thing we were talking about before with instincts I have. First of all, I had the instinct to escape la. I was like, this. I. This is not gonna change. It's gonna get worse. I gotta get the 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, I'm, I'm one of those guys, like I just can just, just pick up stakes and go. I'm like, okay, life is different now. Let's live in Texas. Like, I want that. I like, change. I like, I like not having any idea what's gonna happen. I'm excited by that. And so then once we got out here, and then Ron's like, we gotta open up a club. Okay, we gotta open up a club. And so then I started looking for locations and luckily the Ritz was available.
- [92:58]
A
Wow. That's right.
- [92:59]
B
We had, we did. We. I'd been under contract for this one World theater that was owned by. Yeah, that fell apart.
- [93:06]
A
There's a lot of right down there.
- [93:08]
B
With all 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 CK came and he was like, I think you should make the stage smaller. Make the stage smaller. I think it should make the ceiling lower. Make the ceiling lower. Like, 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. So great.
- [93:47]
A
You build it, they will come.
- [93:49]
B
It really was like that. But it was, it was like the universe wanted it to happen. And I say that it sounds so self important.
- [93:56]
A
No, no, it's like I believe that it's just you, you're stumbling upon so.
- [94:01]
B
Many things had to happen in this order for it to happen this way. And then you had to have someone who's like me, who's accustomed to just going by instinct.
- [94:11]
A
Yeah.
- [94:11]
B
And I've always done that. I always. My whole life, I'm like, it, let's do this. I'm like, that's what I do. And so when this came up, I'm like, okay, well you're not gonna stop doing what you do now. Don't be a pussy. This is what you do. You're gonna throw a bunch of money at this thing. Let's make this happen and tell everybody you're doing it and. And call all your friends in la, call your friends in New York and come on down, man. We're making this happen.
- [94:33]
A
Wow. Wow. I tell people that after Mariachi, it's like, I. I never thought I could get into the industry because I didn't live in LA and you need contacts and all that. So I just, you know, again, I made a practice film, but then when it got bought and it was getting released, and in one Sundance, my practice film, I thought, I don't have to move to la. That. But they won't even know I'm not there. Between an airplane flight and FedEx, I'll just stay here in Austin. So for the past, you know, 35 years, people are like, why are you living 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 la, stay where you are, build up your community around you. We built this amazing community of filmmakers here. All they made here were westerns. Before that.
- [95:16]
B
Wow.
- [95:17]
A
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.
- [95:25]
B
Yes.
- [95:26]
A
And so you just. By doing that thing. And it isn't like an instinct, it's like it's pre planned. It's like it's pre laid out.
- [95:33]
B
Yeah.
- [95:33]
A
I tell my artists, when you come to my house, you're gonna feel it. You'll feel like these connections. And I go, I think we realize we're not that smart. You know, we're not smart enough to predict all that stuff. I think we've lived this life many times before and we forget a lot of it. So we have a barely impersonated impression of where we're supposed to do, but it's because we did it a thousand times. We forgot it each time. Like a dream when you wake up from a dream because, you know, you wake up from a dream and you go, I was a filmmaker in that dream and I had five kids. You know, that's what it's going to be like when our life is over. You'll wake up and it'll be like your past lifetime just goes away. And then you go, start again. And only now you're a Fish or something. But I thought this. Had this thought, wow, what if I wake up, up and I can barely remember the dream? And that's. 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, this is right. But how did I know to go this way? I didn't on purpose. Like you said. I didn't set. All the, all the things that needed to fall into place are too coincidental. What is that about? So that's why even more. Just, just follow your instinct. Follow your instinct. Even if it sounds bonkers, follow it. And if it fails, keep going because there might be your four rooms or something. Just keep going.
- [96:47]
B
That really is an important piece of advice too. If you're outside of a hive of like minded thinking, you could. When you're outside of that, you can think on your own.
- [96:57]
A
Go another way. Yeah, I mean it's like high school. You go back to that. You know, someone famously leaves high school and goes off to college and goes off, sees the world and they come back to their old hometown and they find their old friends still driving the same streets. That's la.
- [97:10]
B
Yeah.
- [97:11]
A
They're still doing the same. The same way. And you just went off the reservation.
- [97:16]
B
It's also their opinions are only based on what's popular. It's like you were talking about Pulp Fiction.
- [97:23]
A
Yeah.
- [97:23]
B
Like before. They're like, what the is this? Then they're like, oh my God, now.
- [97:26]
A
We got to make something like this.
- [97:27]
B
Let's make Dust till Dawn. Like that's what it is. Like they don't. Their opinions are bullshit. It's like it's all just based on. They lick their finger and they find out which way the wind's blowing. And that's how they think. Think. And that's how they are politically. That's how they are socially. That's how it's like they're nonsense people.
- [97:43]
A
Yeah.
- [97:43]
B
And you got to get away from that.
- [97:44]
A
Get away and just create your own thing.
- [97:45]
B
And the problem with comics is that we got all. We all got trapped in the velvet prison of television.
- [97:51]
A
Right. Right.
- [97:51]
B
So television's the velvet prison. The real art form is what we do on stage. That's what everybody really loves.
- [97:57]
A
What do you mean by being on television? I mean like sitcoms.
- [97:59]
B
Yes. Okay.
- [98:00]
A
Now it seems like shows come back the other way. So many kinds of have such great. Like Netflix specials are massive.
- [98:07]
B
Oh yeah.
- [98:07]
A
Where it's basically them doing stand up. But They've got a huge audience.
- [98:11]
B
Exactly. Well, what happened was the Internet came along and a bunch of unconventional people became very famous on the Internet without the help of Hollywood people that. The Tim Dillons of the world that don't fit in to this television box. But when you get them on the Internet and they can get buck wild, like, oh my God, then they have this massive following, the Theo Vaughn's, all these different people that have this very unconventional approach that for whatever reason wouldn't fit in. And so they couldn't host the Tonight show. But you know, once they get on their own and now they develop these like. There's more arena acts now for stand up comedy than ever before in the history of comedy.
- [98:50]
A
Wow.
- [98:51]
B
Yeah.
- [98:51]
A
That's amazing.
- [98:52]
B
Yeah, I mean, not even close. I mean, the. The only arena act in the, like the 1980s was Andrew Dice Clark. So first it was Steve Martin, then it was Andrew Dice, and Steve Martin kind of decided that the popularity of it all was so confusing to him that everything that he said was funny and it didn't make any sense, it didn't feel. And he stopped doing comedy, stopped doing stand up, which he had a very different kind of stand up. Anyway, he did play the banjo and he sang songs. And so Dice comes along and Dice Clay is selling out arenas, 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 la, right? We're not gonna be on tv. The only reason why we're in LA 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're out here, I was like, oh, this is so much better. Because now instead of being around these Hollywood people that don't really have opinions, they just go, which whatever 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.
- [100:12]
A
Yeah.
- [100:13]
B
So all the people I interact with are just normal humans.
- [100:16]
A
What I always loved about living, it's like there weren't any filmmakers here.
- [100:19]
B
So much better. Yeah, it's infinitely better. Better. Nicer.
- [100:22]
A
Everyone's waiting, you get a lot more done. I was cranking sometimes I'd have two movies out a year I would be making.
- [100:27]
B
That's incredible.
- [100:28]
A
So fast. Because I just had a studio and we're just like, let's just make more stuff.
- [100:31]
B
There also has to be something cool feeling about, like doing it on your own, away from.
- [100:35]
A
Oh, way better. Way better.
- [100:37]
B
Yeah.
- [100:37]
A
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.
- [100:44]
B
Yeah.
- [100:44]
A
Like a spike, it feels so much better. That's successful and someone says, wow, I really love that movie. Go. Oh, I did that voice. Voice. Floop is a man. Help us. Save us. That's you. Oh, my God. I grew up with it, you know, it's like, oh, yeah. It's a homemade movie, you know, so it's much more gratifying. And yeah, you did the right thing by. By moving out.
- [101:01]
B
One movie that seemed like it could be a franchise is Alita.
- [101:04]
A
Oh, yeah. We want to do another one. For sure. For sure. Part of a graphic novel series.
- [101:08]
B
Yes.
- [101:08]
A
You got to come to my studio. That house.
- [101:10]
B
I want to go.
- [101:11]
A
That city is still in my parking lot. Really? 20 foot ceilings, seven streets. It's like the largest standing set in the country, if not the world.
- [101:21]
B
Can I come on Friday? Can I go Friday?
- [101:23]
A
Come Friday, you're not gonna believe what's. Okay, we're in and you're gonna go like, okay. Cause I'm putting you in a movie.
- [101:27]
B
Okay.
- [101:28]
A
Cause 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, that's a business thing too. It gives. What 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.
- [101:54]
B
What are we doing?
- [101:54]
A
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.
- [101:59]
B
Okay.
- [101:59]
A
But Brass Knuckle Films is cool because it's the first time that it's an investable film slate. So fans can invest in a movie. They get perks and stuff. But it's not crowdsourcing or crowdfunding. Like you can get killed in the movie if you put in a certain amount of investment. But that'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 behind it. 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 there at troublemaker to keep the cost down so they go to profit sooner. Any one of these movies, success, you. You share in that success all the way through sequels. And for even the 250 bucks, anyone who puts money in you get to have that proximity effect. Because we have a whole group together.
- [103:02]
B
That'S such a great idea.
- [103:03]
A
And everybody gets to pitch their action movie idea. Idea. And I'm committed to making at least one of the movies on the slate from the fan investors idea. So not only will you be an investor, but you be a creator. So we're almost already topped out. We're. We're gonna hit our. We still have 20 days left, and it's going to surge again. We're gonna raise like 1.5 million development funds. And we're. 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.
- [103:38]
B
And the lowest level is 5 bucks.
- [103:40]
A
250 bucks.
- [103:41]
B
250.
- [103:41]
A
250 bucks. But, you know, you make that back on success of any of the movies, that's awesome. And it just hedges your bets. And it's just action. Because there's always an appetite for action. Like, if you ask Netflix right now, what kind of movies do they need, they'll say action, action, action. We don't have enough action of. Sure. And internationally, that's. 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.
- [104:04]
B
I want to bring you back to Frazetta.
- [104:06]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [104:06]
B
Because this is the thing that I wanted to pitch this to Quentin and maybe I could pitch this to you.
- [104:11]
A
Sure.
- [104:12]
B
Somebody needs to make a real Conan the Barbarian.
- [104:16]
A
Yeah.
- [104:17]
B
A real Conan the Barbarian. That's like the Robert E. Howard books.
- [104:20]
A
Yeah.
- [104:20]
B
The real Conan the Barbarian, 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?
- [104:33]
A
I don't remember.
- [104:34]
B
But yeah, Khalil Drago. Yeah. In. He. He's the most realistic of all Conan's. That's what Conan's supposed to look like.
- [104:43]
A
Yeah.
- [104:43]
B
It didn't look like a bodybuilder. He looked like a super fit assassin.
- [104:47]
A
Yeah.
- [104:48]
B
Just a sword in the mountains of Samaria. Yeah.
- [104:50]
A
Yeah.
- [104:51]
B
But the books.
- [104:52]
A
Books are awesome.
- [104:53]
B
They're fucking awesome.
- [104:54]
A
And it's right up your alley. It's about the Barbarian is actually the one who's got code and who has morality.
- [105:01]
B
Yes.
- [105:02]
A
And all the bigwigs are the ones that are like fucking crooked and shit. It's just so classic.
- [105:06]
B
And the barbarians.
- [105:07]
A
God, that guy was from Texas. The guy, Robert E. Howard from Texas, outside of Dallas, back where I have a house where I made all these movies. It's in the land that he looked over and saw and said, that's Samaria. That's where Conan is from. So I always felt this connection. I wanted to do Conan, so I almost did a Conan movie. I even roped Jim Cameron into wanting to do it. Really? We were gonna 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 gonna be three movies. So he does different occupations. This is 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 could grow with the role. You know, the way, you know, like you took Daniel Craig and started Casino Royale. 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.
- [106:09]
B
Let's go.
- [106:10]
A
I know.
- [106:10]
B
Let's go.
- [106:11]
A
Netflix had it. It. I went and pitched it to them and they let the light rights lapse. Like they had too much sometimes it's too much baggage for a character.
- [106:20]
B
Dude, let me call them. Right? Let me get on the phone with Ted Sarandos.
- [106:24]
A
Let's go make it already. Yeah.
- [106:25]
B
Hey, Jamie, can You pull up Frazetta Conan the Usurper.
- [106:30]
A
It's probably a painting called Chain. Is that the one with the chains, or is it the one where he's.
- [106:36]
B
A bunch of the.
- [106:37]
A
He named them different than the book books because of the copyright issue, so. Oh. So whatever's on the butt, you'll find the COVID of it. But the painting itself might be. Have a different name.
- [106:45]
B
Just if you just pull up Frazetta Conan, because he did a bunch of them.
- [106:48]
A
So you'll love this. When I first.
- [106:51]
B
Here we go.
- [106:51]
A
Chained the Barbarian with the one when.
- [106:56]
B
He'S standing over the bodies with the sword.
- [106:58]
A
That's called the Barbarian.
- [106:59]
B
Yes, that's the one. I remember seeing that when I was a kid. Kid. Because I was always into graphic novels and I was always into comic books. And I saw that when I was a kid at a comic book store. I was probably like 11 years old. I was like, holy, that is the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life.
- [107:18]
A
And it's still a comic even today. It's a day. He has this very triangular way of composing that tells a story. The posters still look like this.
- [107:25]
B
That.
- [107:25]
A
Look at the one with a snake again, if you see the triangular designs, your head, your eyes go immediately to the snake and then down to him. And yes, it tells a whole story. I have a theory. Theory of why his art is the way it is now. You know, I knew him. Did I tell you? Really? Okay, so when I 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 look up the Gauntlet, Clint Eastwood for Zeta. 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. So I wanted to get that for Dust Till dawn, right? So he said, where'd you find this Galvan? I wish I had a gal like that to paint. God, she's based on all your paintings. The girl that's always in your paintings. I made Salma dressed like that because it's a Frazetta come to life. He goes, oh, that's all you need on the poster. Well, you gotta 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 he got the painting, we'd already made posters. We thought, okay, it's not gonna come. And then it showed up at the last minute, but we gave it away at comic book stores, you know, 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 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. I see that little monkey dudes on the bottom.
- [109:01]
B
Wow.
- [109:01]
A
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, because his kids. Oh, my God, his kids are so impassioned about the art. Even his granddaughter, Sarah Frazetta, she has Frazetta girls. This is. They're so always, you know, bringing up his legacy. And, yeah, they've sent 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. 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.
- [109:56]
B
Yeah.
- [109:57]
A
Frazetta's paintings to move because he's. He was transporting us to another world that we all recognized.
- [110:02]
B
If you could make that Conan with the.
- [110:06]
A
Like that.
- [110:06]
B
Yeah, go. Go back to that photo again. Jamie Me that with the sword.
- [110:10]
A
It's called the Barbarian. You.
- [110:15]
B
It's. You could say that Conan's been done too many. No, the one with the sword. Yeah, that one.
- [110:21]
A
Yeah. They've never seen it like that.
- [110:22]
B
Yeah. But the thing is, it's like.
- [110:25]
A
And look, that's not a guy that's just, like, been in a Gym, Right. He's. He looks like a.
- [110:28]
B
He's been swinging a sword and cutting off technology.
- [110:31]
A
You can do that. So that's why I'd gotten Jim interested. Look like that. Yeah, it's like a made up. Even anatomy in a way.
- [110:39]
B
You know, the books were so good, man. Even though Conan's been done a bunch of times, it hasn't been done the right way. Yeah, no, it hasn't been done like the books. And it's so ripe like you.
- [110:50]
A
Because it was done that way first, like with, with. With Arnold in it. People just figured, oh, we'll just hire a bodybuilder to be, you know, a barbarian type creature character from then on. But to do it really like that, he's more like a James Bond character character. You know, it goes from movie to movie.
- [111:02]
B
Yes.
- [111:04]
A
And he's really smart.
- [111:06]
B
Yes.
- [111:06]
A
And he's just. No, but I got to meet Frazetta, so you keep that up for a second. So I went to his. We talked about his paintings and how he did it, and I got a theory on how he did this. But when I went and saw the originals, like, holy, you got all the originals. How did you make the. And he really loved to live life. Like, he'd go play golf, he was playing 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 till the last minute? You have to just open up the pipe and let it through, Right?
- [111:36]
B
Yeah.
- [111:37]
A
I think 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 relayed them. People would just buy these paperbacks for the art. Yes. Conan was created in the 30s. Books came out in the 60s. They didn't become a big hit till these books came out. Because of the art.
- [112:06]
B
Exactly.
- [112:06]
A
And then when you read the stories, the stories were really great, but they got them for the art 100%. And he was showing me his layout of paintings and he went, two days. One day, Three days.
- [112:18]
B
Wow.
- [112:18]
A
Four days. Two days.
- [112:21]
B
I was like, just locked in.
- [112:23]
A
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 till the last minute, but these masterpieces would come out. And I just was really inspired by him. So when he passed away, you know, his kids say, what should we do with the art? So, well, let's make a movie based on the art.
- [112:39]
B
Because who's got this now?
- [112:41]
A
So different. They've sold some of them, but the kids. Like, if you go to Frank Jr. Frank Jr. 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 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 belong. We were all inspired by him. Oh. So what was so cool was, how.
- [113:03]
B
Did he find out about those books?
- [113:06]
A
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.
- [113:11]
B
So they. They start putting the books out. More mass publishing in the 1960s. So he does these illustrations, he does the paintings.
- [113:18]
A
They flying off the shelves.
- [113:19]
B
Flying off the shelves because of the paintings.
- [113:21]
A
Because of the paintings.
- [113:23]
B
Wow.
- [113:23]
A
Those paintings and those books. No matter. Even the best art book today, when you see the original, they cannot capture what the original has. You'll be blown away. You gotta say, I've got like 14 different Frazettas. You gotta come see. You're gonna. That's so you're gonna. Especially as an illustrator, you're gonna freak out. We have one of all the mast.
- [113:41]
B
We have one of the prints of. Go back to those images. 1. The one that we have Jamie with the. 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.
- [113:52]
A
I'm going to. Yeah, that's called Manape.
- [113:54]
B
Manape.
- [113:55]
A
That's.
- [113:55]
B
Just.
- [113:56]
A
Pan over to the left and it's on the left side. I saw it. There it is.
- [113:58]
B
That's it. We have printed.
- [114:00]
A
That was in my house. Oh, okay.
- [114:02]
B
So the real one.
- [114:03]
A
The real one. Okay. So.
- [114:04]
B
My God, we have that out by the pool table.
- [114:06]
A
The kids. Kids said, hey, how 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 have. They're insured, but they could be gone.
- [114:19]
B
Oh, my God.
- [114:19]
A
Can you take us like. Yeah, I'll take them to my house. So for a year and a half, I had these. Not the. The Barbarian One. You were just the one with a sword stand. I had that one in my house.
- [114:29]
B
Oh, my God.
- [114:30]
A
So I would have everyone who came to south by Southwest or was just in town, they'd come to my house, I'd make a pizza, and we would just stare and drool over the Frazettas.
- [114:38]
B
Those inspired. Inspired me so much as a kid to be an illustrator. Yeah, those, the. The Frazetta paintings and some of the drawings from the. The graphic novels that people had made of these inspired me so much as a kid.
- [114:53]
A
It just was dream imageries, like.
- [114:55]
B
Yeah, dreams were fantasy.
- [114:56]
A
You know, it would feel like we dreamt this too and recognized it.
- [115:00]
B
Yes. And every young kid wanted, oh, I wish I was Conan.
- [115:03]
A
Yeah. You know, skinny little kid, and you're going like, is that what I'm gonna be when I go, no, I hate.
- [115:07]
B
When you're 11, you're like, God, I wish I was.
- [115:10]
A
I wish I had that kind of power and strength.
- [115:12]
B
Yeah.
- [115:12]
A
Yeah. So I don't know if you read these books, but they were based on Ms. 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 Conan 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 Roy Thomas would just, like, take the book and put the book in several chapters.
- [115:36]
B
Yeah, they were brutal.
- [115:37]
A
They're really great.
- [115:38]
B
Yeah.
- [115:38]
A
That's what science grew up with. That drawing out of that learning how to draw anatomy from the Conan books.
- [115:43]
B
The Marvel comics were fun, but they were.
- [115:45]
A
This was still under Marvel, but it wasn't under the code because it was considered a magazine.
- [115:49]
B
That's what I'm saying. Like, the Marvel comics were fun, but they weren't brutal enough.
- [115:53]
A
They weren't brutal because they had a comic code.
- [115:55]
B
Yeah.
- [115:55]
A
Because they're comic size. By doing a magazine.
- [115:57]
B
Yes.
- [115:58]
A
They got around it.
- [115:58]
B
See if you can find the Savage.
- [116:00]
A
Savage sort of Conan number one. There it is.
- [116:03]
B
Yeah.
- [116:03]
A
Look at the one where he's. Where he's nailed to the cross. That's Boris Vallejo.
- [116:07]
B
Oh. Oh, this is a great Frazetta Vallejo.
- [116:10]
A
He came out. Came out later in the 70s. So this is a great Frazetta story. Several of his paintings, when you see them, they're not very big a lot of times, because they were for paperbacks, so they didn't have to be that big. Big but then there were some, like in the early 70s that were big silver warrior at the earth's core. And I, and I asked Frazetta, I said, what, what, what was this era here? Because a lot of these were in the 60s. What's this? Seven? This, these four bigger ones. You didn't. 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 1, 2, 3, 4 beauties. Shut them all up. That was so cool. That was so cool.
- [116:49]
B
Shut them all up.
- [116:49]
A
Shut them all up.
- [116:50]
B
Pull up Boris Vallejo, Conan. Because Boris had a different style. It was like a little more.
- [116:55]
A
It also.
- [116:56]
B
You could feel sexual or something, but.
- [116:58]
A
You could, you know, I, I love his art, but you could almost feel the model in it. You'd almost. You could almost see that there was a model he was painting from.
- [117:05]
B
Well, it was very cool, but it was a different feeling. Frazetta was more raw.
- [117:09]
A
Very raw.
- [117:10]
B
Morris Vallejo, it was, it was great.
- [117:12]
A
He's doing, I mean, he's doing the Frazetta style. I mean.
- [117:14]
B
Yeah.
- [117:15]
A
I mean, you know, Frazetta was the Jimmy Page of ours. Everybody wanted, right? So everyone couldn't. You couldn't unsee Frazetta's work when you were doing your.
- [117:22]
B
I mean, this is Manape.
- [117:24]
A
Yeah, he's just doing Man Ap.
- [117:25]
B
He's doing Man Ape in a different version of it. And, you know, 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, I loved it. It was great. I was happy that it was still.
- [117:39]
A
Like the one where he's crucified to the cross.
- [117:41]
B
That's pretty dope, that, that.
- [117:43]
A
And the one in the far bottom left is the first issue of Savage Sword. That one was really cool. Cuz it had. Yeah, I thought that was cool.
- [117:51]
B
Yeah.
- [117:52]
A
But not. It doesn't come close to, you know.
- [117:54]
B
No, it's just. Frazetta just had a. It was more.
- [117:58]
A
I think it's because of that process. It was just the way he did them. Yes, they were just. They were just. There's some magic to them. And I'll show you a couple things that'll 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 saw your gym. Your gym is awesome. I thought I had the best gym. You've got a great gym. But I got one thing you don't got. You gotta come see. What I don't have mirrors up.
- [118:25]
B
You don't have mirrors on purpose.
- [118:27]
A
It's because I just have the original Drew Struzan painting for First Blood. Stallone.
- [118:36]
B
Oh, wow.
- [118:37]
A
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.
- [118:45]
B
Mirrors are good for form.
- [118:46]
A
Just say for form. I can kind of see the form, but that's my mirror. When you come. It's the Stallone painting. And that's one. See, like, that one. But it doesn't capture the painting at all. Even this digital copy of it. Like, look at the original poster of it. That has the writing on it. The way they printed it was like, ass. Look at that thing. So when you see the original one, you're like, oh, my God. This is like fine art. That. And that still doesn't capture it. But it's closer than the. Than the poster.
- [119:16]
B
But there's something about seeing the actual.
- [119:18]
A
Physical things, see the real thing. 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 got to come check that out.
- [119:25]
B
I've got a photo out there. That's my photo to remind me every day what a pussy I am. This is Alexander Karelan, who's, like, the greatest Olympic wrestler to ever come out of Russia. There's a photo that. 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, five foot five and he was like six to three hundred pounds and just. It was built like a panther. Look at that. That's him.
- [119:49]
A
Oh, geez.
- [119:50]
B
Yeah, that's the picture. Set that picture up in the gym. That's my inspiration. Everyday workout. Because he was just such a physical freak. And it's just that particular image that. That intensity. If I'm ever tired, I look at that image.
- [120:05]
A
What's your. What's your workout routine? How often do you get to work out?
- [120:08]
B
I work out every day.
- [120:09]
A
Yeah, basically every first thing.
- [120:12]
B
Occasionally I feel like I need a day off. I'll take a day off. But, yeah, first thing in the morning. Yeah, that's the thing. Get up, get up. Going.
- [120:19]
A
Get going. Cobwebs out of your head.
- [120:20]
B
Well, it's like you said, like, you decide I'm an athlete. I sort of decide. I'm this person who gets up and gets in the cold plunge first thing in the morning. I'm this person that does these two and a half hour workouts, then gets in the sauna. That's what I do. I do it every day.
- [120:36]
A
I do a thing. This might inspire some people. Like, so I don't have a trainer, but I'll look at, like, 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, text him, what is your workout? Could you tell me? Oh, send it to you. He sends me a PDF of his whole workout routine that the, you know, the trainers have given him. It's intense. It was like, okay, if I do one fourth of this, I'll have a quarter of his results. I'm fine with that because I'm kind of out of this to do anyway. So I would be in and out of there half hour, you know, 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.
- [121:20]
B
Oh, you can get a lot done.
- [121:21]
A
You get a lot done in a short amount of time.
- [121:23]
B
Yeah.
- [121:23]
A
Reverse pyramid train or something. You got three minutes in between each one. You get work done.
- [121:27]
B
You certainly can. In fact, there was a study that just came out recently that showed that you get more results from one set to failure than you do with three sets.
- [121:39]
A
Yeah, sometimes I would then just keep holding the bar after I was done, just like for ten more seconds.
- [121:45]
B
Yeah, there was some study. See if you could find this. It was a very recent study that was very counterintuitive because a lot of people think more work, better results. But this, in this study, they were showing that they got more strength gains and more muscle recruitment in one hard set to failure.
- [122:03]
A
There's a lot of counterintuitive stuff. Yeah, I like when I hear st like that. I try it, you know, I just roll it into the routine. Give it a try.
- [122:09]
B
Yeah, because you don't know.
- [122:10]
A
You don't know what's going to work for you. There's no, there's no one right way to do anything. So I try to just get advice and, and adopt it. And I had this funny Stallone once. You ever had Stallone on the show?
- [122:20]
B
No.
- [122:21]
A
Great interview. My best interview on the director's chair is him because it's the most one that any layman could identify with. The guy really is Rocky. His story is unbelievable and he's really funny.
- [122:31]
B
And I met him before for the ufc.
- [122:33]
A
He called me me and said if he asked if an actor friend of mine could be in one of the Expendables, he's like, my actor fell through. Can we, can you ask what's his name? You know, friend of mine. Yeah, I'll ask. So I asked my friend. My friend goes, oh, no, it's too short notice, you know, because it was last minute replacement. I need to get in shape. Okay, that makes sense. But. But it's not a physical role. You just want, you know, 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. I'm, you know, just gonna shoot in a week. So I go to Sly and I say, sly? Yeah, he said, you know, figured Sly would understand. Yeah, he has to get in shape. Get in shape. Get in shape. You don't get in shape, you stay in shape. I was like, yeah, that makes sense. You gotta stay in shape.
- [123:18]
B
You know, of Stallone walking around Malibu looking like he's nine months pregnant. Have you seen that photo? I don't know if he did that for a movie.
- [123:25]
A
It's probably for. Probably for Copland.
- [123:27]
B
It wasn't for Copland. It was recently 10. It was like within.
- [123:30]
A
What is he now? He's like 70.
- [123:33]
B
No excuses.
- [123:34]
A
No excuses. Stay in shape.
- [123:38]
B
Yeah.
- [123:38]
A
That dude. Such a great interview because I've watched the Rocky movies, you know. When was the last time you saw the Rocky movies?
- [123:43]
B
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.
- [124:03]
A
Yeah. So I mean, I don't know when the last time you saw the Rocky.
- [124:06]
B
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.
- [124:19]
A
Yes. At least try that, you know?
- [124:20]
B
Yeah.
- [124:21]
A
Get out. Get in and out.
- [124:22]
B
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. It. So. But that is also very counterintuitive.
- [124:33]
A
Yeah.
- [124:33]
B
Because most people think, oh, it's all about the amount of time you spend time under pressure. Yeah. What I. But I do a lot of different exercises in one, I do full body workouts almost entirely. A very rare. Unless one day a week, I do heavy leg stuff. Worth just legs. You know, because there's so many muscles of the legs. I don't. You know, when I want to make sure that I'm doing that, I just. It takes too much time.
- [124:57]
A
Yeah.
- [124:58]
B
Because I'm doing leg curls and leg presses and lunges and it's like, I can't do other stuff too, but I like working out by myself.
- [125:07]
A
Yeah. Yeah.
- [125:08]
B
Because it's time to think.
- [125:11]
A
Yeah. Time to really know what the voices. Very meditative.
- [125:14]
B
Yeah.
- [125:14]
A
And you work in the body and the button. You're getting ideas. And I keep my computer there and I write down ideas.
- [125:19]
B
Oh, nice.
- [125:20]
A
Did you, you know, 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 gotta watch the second one. Watch the second one. The next night we watched the third one. I finally. We got to the fourth one. I was okay. Oh, I'm right. Stallone said, dude, you are consistently moving that character through the different eras, and you need to go back to directing. Because he. 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. He said, very perceptive. You probably were way over training, because then people didn't know. There were no science to it back then.
- [126:12]
B
Right.
- [126:13]
A
And getting all that work done. So how can you work with another director now? 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. Spike hits 3D. Two years later or a year later, he goes, I'm writing another Rocky. And that was that new Rocky. He. He hadn't directed in 22 years.
- [126:39]
B
Whoa.
- [126:39]
A
He went back to directing and writing. Did another Rocky, another Rambo, and then a whole new franchise, Expendables. Crazy. Like, for your career to come back like that.
- [126:50]
B
Did stunts and Expendables.
- [126:53]
A
But because he went back and that's sometimes, you know, that's the key to success.
- [126:57]
B
Late 60s.
- [126:58]
A
And I said, yeah, and he was.
- [126:59]
B
Doing his own stunts.
- [127:00]
A
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, reverse of that creativity. You know, you're the one who goes. Whispers in their ear. Another one with him, because he's 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 my. It's been good to me. But it's like, I bet there might be another job I can take. 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. I got Jobs for Dummies. And I started looking through what all the other jobs were. Oh, I want that job. I want that job. And then I get to filmmaker. It has a little icon of a guy, 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 absolutely got the best job, so I would stick with it. But it 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 gonna work with my kids. I'm gonna make them all work on movies. Because it's not about making movies about life lessons. It teaches you a huge project that you have to. You don't know how you're gonna get through even the day, much less the project. But that's life. It's like, I felt so good afterwards, saying, you know the process now. If I get hit by a bus, you guys are going to be fine. Because it's just like the movies. The story of life is just like the stories we make up. You go get your plan together, which is kind of like your script. You attack it, try to make it as bulletproof as possible. Go for your goal, whether it's building a comedy club or whatever. Watch it all fall apart. And then that's when you roll up your sleeves, turn chicken 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. So I made them work on the movies, and I did this manifesting thing. My son said, well, I'd like to do a VR movie. So let's make a company together. We'll call it Double R. You all have Double R names, Double R company Watch. I'm gonna show you this, how this works, because I did this with Brass Knuckle Films, which is creating a label 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 that had the. They made us a big Double R logo in the front that was like, in March. Later that year, we made that $7,000 movie that also had the Double R logo. Then I went to Netflix, and they said, could you make us a Spy Kids type thing? That always does well. So I thought, okay. I kind of came up with in the Room. I thought, little kids, superheroes who have to save their superhero parents. That's. We Can Be Heroes. Another Double R movie. My kids wrote it with me. It's the most watched and rewatched movie in Netflix history. Nothing can touch it. Kids cannot stop watching it, because as little kids, superheroes no one's ever done that before. And my kids are like, dad really works this thing. And I was like, shit, better than I thought. I was just making an example. But. 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 gonna take, and it's family time. So you're, like, checking all the boxes. And I was telling this to Sly. I was so excited back in, you know, 2019, and his wife Jennifer was like, you don't work with your daughters. She hits him. You don't work with your daughters. And he's like. 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 inhear it. And the next year, the daughter went on, started a podcast. He would show up every once in a while to, like, get brains up. Now they have a TV show, second season, Family, Stallone. They're all working together. They're all living the best life. So I tell anybody who listens, because it's something I stumbled upon, because it's very counterintuitive, because you would think, oh, if I work my kids, doesn't that look like privilege or whatever? So I'll tell you this. What happens when we die? Don't you just give everything that you created over your life to your kids? Because they have your lesson name, they weren't a part of it. If you have a chance to work with them and build it with you, you have that next level mentorship relationship. Don't just parent, because after a while, once they're in the teens, they don't really need you Geppettoing over them. Partner with them, become their mentor, their OB1, 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.
- [132:20]
B
That's great advice.
- [132:21]
A
So I tell People, especially when you.
- [132:22]
B
Do something like you do. That's.
- [132:24]
A
Well, you know, depends on what you have. Well, find your version of, you know, like, not everybody can necessarily work with the kids, but you have an opportunity to do it, do it right.
- [132:30]
B
But like this thing that you were saying about jobs for dummies, 99% of people are not going to be able to do this. Well, that's the thing. It's like. But, yeah, but it's possible.
- [132:37]
A
It is possible.
- [132:37]
B
And part of the 99% not going to do it because they don't know anybody who's done it.
- [132:43]
A
Right.
- [132:43]
B
That's part of the problem. Once you see, like, oh, look how we did this. This. He just. I think I could. He told me how he made El Mariachi. I think it can be done.
- [132:52]
A
That wasn't taught in film schools. That was completely. Again, they don't teach you. They teach you how to do one job so that you can go pull cables on someone else's movie. My thing was like, be the owner, be the creator, be everything. And you cut the line and suddenly you're at the film festival.
- [133:05]
B
But no one had really done that.
- [133:08]
A
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 wanted to do a deal with me, I went, I've never heard of anyone get in the 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. Crazy. And I didn't even want them to release it. I didn't want them to release it because it was my. My. 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 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. If you think you can't do anything, well, look around. You 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 bar one of the buses. When you see what we do with a bus, he crashes into it. Have some bar. Let's write everything around that. So we just have that. And if I shoot two takes, we double their budget. How about let's shoot one take of everything? I know not everything's going to come out because I'm doing everything myself. I'm pulling focus. I might meter it wrong, who knows? But I don't want to shoot a safety take or it's going to double the budget. We'll go home after I finish shooting the whole movie. I'll see what stuff didn't come out and I'll go just reshoot that. Of course, you get home and you're. I'm not going to fucking go back to Mexico and reshoot anything. I'll just figure out a way to edit around all the stuff that didn't come out. Not everything came out. But yeah, it was merely just following your nose and not knowing if it was going to work. Somebody must have thought to do this already. But no one had ever done that before because it's so counterintuitive. You're told. But that's how movies started, you know, you think back in the old days, Charlie Chaplin and a guy behind the camera doing this. They didn't have 200 people. It turned into a business, just like with comedy. And it turns into a business 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 we have all these digital cameras. I had one camera and I had the sound. And I can't do them at the same time because the camera sounds like this really noisy and it sounds like all your money is going away. So I'd have no slates. I would 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.
- [135:59]
B
Wow.
- [136:00]
A
Cut it in by hand. So.
- [136:02]
B
So you cut in the audio by hand and try to sink it to the mouth.
- [136:05]
A
So when they're not. Because they're not non actors, a lot of times, like, repeat what you just said. Wait, so you cut it by hand and it would match?
- [136:13]
B
Right?
- [136:14]
A
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 him 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 comes back. But this is about being resourceful. But it saved me a ton of money doing it that way.
- [136:38]
B
And it made it actually interesting to watch.
- [136:40]
A
Makes it more interesting to watch. Yeah. Oh. So anyway, so originally I didn't have any ideas. I was gonna 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. So 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. 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 sometimes are so impressed that you even did anything. Most people never start. And they went, wow. And I thought, 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. And they say, what movie do you want to do? I go, this all happened so fast, I didn't really have a chance to think about it. I was going to do three of these practice films and then make a real one. So. But you like mariachi. Why don't we remake that? And they said, with like, Antonio Banderas, 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 do completely differently. And they go, you got something. They're smart enough. Mark Canton there said, you got something really special here. We're going to take it to the festivals. And we won Sundance because I made it for myself. It was a real lesson in that, like, if I was trying to think about what all the audience was going to want to see, I would have changed so many things. Things. But because I knew no one was going to see it. It's probably the only movie in history ever made where people were guaranteed not to see it just by the title. I titled it that way so nobody would see it. I didn't want anybody to see it. I wanted to just throw it away and practice. I figured maybe the third one. One might. Might be the better one. You know, like that advice. Throw three scripts away and then do a four. Well, I'm gonna throw three movies away so that by the fourth, I'm. I'm so savvy, know how to film and do all these things. This first practice film's not gonna be it. That's the one. The. It's going to be it. 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 work. That's it. That's. That's the secret. And that's the secret to life, too. Just keep. Just keep trying to make it the best.
- [139:21]
B
That is phenomenal advice. And coming from a person like you, that has accomplished so much. It's so resonant.
- [139:26]
A
That's why I accomplish it by doing those things, which everybody can do. It's not because I'm. I'm not that smart. I'm telling you, not that smart. Just follow your instincts like you've done. When you follow your instinct, you're letting the universe do all the talking and something. That sounds wonky, but I just call it that because it is from some other place. And you're just an instrument. You're just a pipe.
- [139:43]
B
Yes.
- [139:43]
A
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 and maybe 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 from different planets.
- [140:08]
B
Right.
- [140:09]
A
And so you realize that the soul is on a communication level with some other thing. That our human bodies are just very primitive to do. So when we get a voice, we can't tell if it's coming from the universe, if it's for our own. Own mind or if it's just because it all sounds like Morse code. Because the brain is so prim. It's a three pound meat computer. So we can't remember. It's like we're limited by the body our soul got put into. Just like we'd be limited if we're putting a fish because they got an even smaller brain, you know, and he's the only go forward and backwards.
- [140:41]
B
That's why a lot of people say you have to learn how to get out of your own way.
- [140:45]
A
Because you're. You're. You think I'm so limited.
- [140:48]
B
Yeah.
- [140:49]
A
But you actually also.
- [140:51]
B
Maybe you don't. And maybe you're cocky, which is equally bad.
- [140:55]
A
Yeah. Because that's beginning your own way in a different way. Yeah. It's a false. Where you think I can do anything because I'm just so cool. Where it's like, no, you can do anything because you're just a pipe. Be that. And then you'll see much more flow happening.
- [141:07]
B
Yeah.
- [141:08]
A
You'll see things just falling in your lap.
- [141:10]
B
Yeah. Don't think about you at all.
- [141:11]
A
Yeah. Get you out of it. It's not. You have to be very humble. It's a very humbling thing. The more humble you are, the more happens not just for you, but everyone around you being creative. And I figured this out. Like one year 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. And I was doing this talk where they introduced me and said, Robert, he's a writer, director, editor, composer, long list of all the jobs I do. And I went up there, like, wow, that I get tired just hearing that list. And I keep seeing that book, the one thing. And I thought, at first I thought, that's not me. But I realized, you know what? I don't just do all those things. There's one thing I really do that ties all those together. When you think about it, I do one thing, and it's, I live a creative life. And if you commit to living a creative life, like literally applying creativity to everything you do, your workout in the morning, how you interact with your kids, the meal you cook, what you're going to do that night, a business call you take. Be creative. I love my business meetings now the most. I make people pizza. I'm making my chocolate. We talk about creativity and they want to be in business with you. It's like so good because you're adding creativity. It enriches your life and everyone around you. And that way, anything that touches creativity, whether it's painting, drawing, sculpture, music, is available to you because what, 90% of that job is just being creative. And if you're doing it all day, you're always going to be in a flow. If you don't embrace that and you go about your daily life and you don't apply creativity, well, when you go home, come 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 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 7? 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 lexing. Yeah. You know, like stumbling through. It's like, because people think being an artist means you have to have the mustache and the hat. And it's like, no, artists are regular people, and regular people are flawed. And that's why you relate to something that they do because it's flawed. If you made it perfect, they couldn't relate to it because humans are flawed. And if you think of it that way, you go, why 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. Right. And so if you've set up, I purposely make my budgets smaller and my shooting schedule 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, 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. Controversy not even distant second. 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 Dustel Don. He's a 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 Dustel dawn, but I hear him. He's my difficult to work with. You work with him first and if he's great to work with, I'll work with him. So I said, all right, sure. So I work with him. It was a dream. It was amazing. He was really great. No, 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 won't even look at the scripts. We're like, oh, man, we could hire Mickey Rourke. And there's no Mickey Rourke now. We're so buzz. But then years later, I went back to him, and no one was hiring him. 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 a time, Mexico. And I kept writing him more scenes. He was broke. I mean, I gave him money to go buy his own suits because he always dressed to the nines in his movies. It's like, look, I'm all out of time costume designing this thing. I'll give you some money. Go buy your own clothes. You're always going to dress. He came with these Billy Martin suits and stuff. I said, I'm going to put a bullet hole in the back of one digitally, just so you can keep. Because he wanted to keep the clothes so you can keep the clothes. Thanks, brother. And then I put him in Sin City and relaunched his career. But he was always a dream to work with. And I would hear from people later, oh, he's been difficult again. I was like, really? So I come back again. No, again. 100% of the time. I've never had any difficulty with even the difficult ostracized one. So it makes you think. And you know that because you'll have anybody you want on your show. But it makes me wonder, what environment are you putting them in? Right. That makes them like that. Because, like, somebody would say that about Rutger. Hauer was amazing. Hard to work with, really? No, I wasn't at all. But for some people, I didn't know.
- [146:56]
B
He had the reputation.
- [146:57]
A
I don't know, but somebody told me.
- [146:58]
B
Loved him and stuff.
- [146:59]
A
Loved him and stuff. Blade Runner, Hitcher, Bruce Willis, people would tell me was difficult to work with. Like Bruce. I worked with him four times. Let me tell you, this is what Bruce is like when he walks in the set. Hey, Jefe. What's going on, man? Jefe means boss. Does that sound like somebody who's difficult? That's gonna be somebody who's just so happy. One time I was doing this Kobe Bryant Nike commercial I was gonna 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 because I was going to be on camera. And so then I go to Bruce and I go, hey, what, what are you up to? He goes, ah, just looking for a job. And I said, well, are you basketball fan? So I'm shooting a Kobe Bryant commercial Saturday. What? Once you come by the set, it's downtown, you play this role, Bring, bring a couple of suits because it's very last minute, but last minute replacement. Yeah, yeah, sure, I'd love to meet him. Okay, good. Saying. Went back to the Nike people and said, Bruce said he's going to be in it, we'll call his agent. No, don't call his agents because he probably didn't tell him. And he said he'll come down. I think he will because he's cool like that. Oh, we think we should call him anyway. So they call the 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 that I told him in the gym and said, come down with a couple of your suits from your own closet. Like there's no wardrobe, there's no time to get a wardrobe fitting and just show up. 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.
- [148:51]
B
That's amazing.
- [148:52]
A
It does not sound like somebody who's difficult. Difficult?
- [148:54]
B
No, it's the environment that you put these people.
- [148:56]
A
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, yeah, no, you can't wear that. You can't talk like that. Of course you're gonna 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. He doesn't want to fucking take over the show. And so everyone's really. That's my theory on it, anyway. I think it's just the environment because they always say, oh, if you have a dog that's misbehaving, it's the owner. It's the owner in the environment. It's not the dog. Yes, there's nothing wrong with the animal. The animal is fine. The animal could be very calm and est. Assertive and even submissive.
- [149:50]
B
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 terrible result because it's part of what they are, is like a little bit of chaos.
- [150:02]
A
Well, also just going to have to protect themselves. Yes, they have to protect themselves of this if this environment is up.
- [150:08]
B
Think about the type of guy that told you that, like, wait, you filmed this and you didn't get the rights?
- [150:12]
A
Yeah, yeah. Those are the guys that are going to drive you up a wall.
- [150:16]
B
Exactly. Those executives. Yeah, yeah.
- [150:21]
A
I remember I talked to Mick's. I'd heard, you know, he'd been in trouble and some said, okay, maybe. Maybe his head got big trouble. So I said, what was wrong? Everything had to be what Mickey wanted to say, what Mickey wanted to wear, what Mickey wanted to do. Okay, well, maybe. Maybe he's gone back to some. I'm about to work with him again. So he comes. No, he's a dream again. So at the end I go, man, you always bring it, brother. You always bringing it. And it's just. It's just so great to see you. Yeah, with some people you deserve it. Most people don't deserve it because he remembers I gave him his shot back. So I was like, okay, he didn't give me any. Maybe he gives other people.
- [150:52]
B
But that's awesome. Listen, brother, I've really enjoyed this.
- [150:56]
A
I'll have to bring you to the studio.
- [150:58]
B
A lot of things. I want to see the studio, but I think a lot of things you said are really going to help a lot of people.
- [151:02]
A
Yeah, hopefully. Hopefully. Because it's. 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.
- [151:15]
B
Yeah.
- [151:16]
A
And I go, that's not what I told you. You know, oh, we've added to it. No shit now. Now I'm taking your advice to pay for my advice. My kids do that all the time. They go, it all comes back to what you taught us, dad, what was that? What did I tell you that one time? You said, you know, basically like, the glass is half full, half empty. Okay. But I didn't tell you all this other stuff. Where'd that come from? From. Oh, we added to it since I was like, well, 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. Like, this is a guy from another lifetime, you know, different. He obviously knew this was his path. That's when you know it's a soul born in there. Didn't get that for 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 won. And I was like, how did you. You didn't even know how to use most of the equipment they gave you. You got $10,000. How did you. What was your mindset? He said, I imagined I had won already. Somehow I had won. And so when I'd come up against a challenge that I wasn't sure how I would get by, I just had to remember what I did to get by it rather than trying to be freaked out about it. I was like, whoa, that's some freaking samurai shit. I read that this. You've obviously been in another life life before. To come in armed with that. He didn't learn that from me. 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.
- [152:50]
B
Yeah.
- [152:51]
A
We all interested in everybody else's perspective because we all have our own relationship to creativity in the universe and all that.
- [152:57]
B
Yeah. And the more you interact with things, the more you contribute.
- [153:01]
A
But come being a brass knuckle film, that sounds like right up your Alley and let's do Conan or Frazetta. Something. You gotta come see it.
- [153:09]
B
I can't wait to see your show.
- [153:09]
A
Because you'd be great. I can already tell you I got a great part for you where you will knock it out.
- [153:14]
B
I will talk. Yeah. Thank you very much.
- [153:16]
A
Thank you, sir.
- [153:17]
B
It was awesome.
- [153:18]
A
I really appreciate it. All right, bye, everybody. Sa.