← The Tim Ferriss Show
The Tim Ferriss Show
#804: Robert Rodriguez, The Wizard of Cinema Returns — The "Fear-Forward" Way of Life, How to Overcome Self-Doubt, Learning to Love Limitations, and Counter-Intuitive Parenting That Works
01:44:15
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- [00:00]
Tim Ferriss
Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show where it is my job to interview world class performers to break down how they do what they do, what are the frameworks, tools, influences, so on and so forth that have helped make them who they are. My guest today is back at long last. He is one of my most requested guests for a follow up. Robert Rodriguez. He is a film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, editor and composer. He does everything, absolutely everything. And to give you an idea of the genesis, while a student at the University of Texas at Austin, Utah. Austin, that's right here in my backyard. In 1991, Rodriguez wrote the script to his first feature film while sequestered at a drug research facility as a paid subject in a clinical experiment. I'm not making that up. That paycheck covered the cost of shooting his $7,000 film, El Mariachi, which won the coveted audience award at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival and became the lowest budget movie ever released by a major studio. If you want the full story on that, listen to our first conversation, which you can find in the show notes. Rodriguez wrote about these experiences in Rebel Without a a perennial guide for the independent filmmaker. Really, it is a guide to bare bones, bootstrapped entrepreneurship of any type. It's worth reading. Then he went on to write, produce, direct and edit a series of successful films, including Desperado, From Dusk Till dawn, the F Faculty, and the Spy Kids franchise, which is huge. Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Frank Miller's Sin City, We Can Be Heroes. And he's also collaborated with director James Cameron on the film adaptation of Battle Angel. His films have grossed more than $1.5 billion at the box office. Then in 2000, I suppose somewhere in the middle there, Rodriguez founded Troublemaker Studios in Austin, Texas, which I've visited a number of times and it's worth checking out if you ever have the chance. He recently directed the Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande video Rain on Me and Episodes of the Mandalorian and the Book of Boba Fett and launched Brass Knuckle Films, an investable action film slate. What does that mean? If you've ever wanted to pitch Robert Rodriguez a film idea or get profit participation in action films and sequels, he tells you all about it in this conversation. But there are lots of tactical takeaways, lots of actionable bits of advice that you can use, and that is his style. He had an entire document dossier of things he'd been collecting over the last nine, ten years since our last conversation that he wanted to share on this podcast specifically so you can find him on x@x.com Rodriguez R-O-R-I G U E Z and on Instagram Rodriguez Rodriguez.
- [02:47]
Robert Rodriguez
He's Rodriguez everywhere.
- [02:48]
Tim Ferriss
So now just a few words from our sponsors. We'll get right to this very, very practical, tactical conversation with Robert Rodriguez. Listeners have heard me talk about making before you manage for years. All that means to me is that when I wake up, I block out three to four hours to do the most important things that are generative, creative, podcasting, writing, et cetera before I get to the email and the admin stuff and the reactive stuff and everyone else's agenda for my time. For me, let's just say I'm a writer and entrepreneur. I need to focus on the making to be happy. If I get sucked into all the little bits and pieces that are constantly churning, I end up feeling stressed out. And that is why today's sponsor is so interesting. It's been one of the greatest energetic unlocks in the last few years. So here we go. I need to find people who are great at managing and that is where Crescent Family Office comes in. You spell it C R E S S E T Crescent Family Office I was introduced to them by one of the top CPG investors in the world. Crescent is a prestigious family office for CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs. They handle the complex financial planning, uncertain tax strategies, timely exit planning, bill pay wires, all the dozens of other parts of wealth management and just financial management that would otherwise pull me away from doing what I love most. Making things, mastering skills, spending time with the people I care about. And over many years I was getting pulled away from that stuff at least a few days a week and I've completely eliminated that. So experience the freedom of focusing on what matters to you. With the support of a top wealth management team. You can schedule a call today@CrescentCapital.com Tim that's spelled C-R E S S E T CrescentCapital.com Tim to see how Crescent can help streamline your financial plans and grow your wealth. That's crescentcapital.com Tim and disclosure, I am.
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Robert Rodriguez
A client of Crescent.
- [04:48]
Tim Ferriss
There are no material conflicts other than this paid testimonial. And of course all investing involves risk including loss principle. So do your due diligence. Way back in the day in 2010 I published a book called the Four Hour Body which I probably started writing in 2008 and in that book I recommended many, many, many things. First Generation Continuous glucose monitor and cold exposure and all sorts of things that had been tested by people from NASA and all over the place. And one thing in that book was athletic greens. I did not get paid to include it. I was. That's how long I've been using what is now known as AG1. AG1 is my all in one nutritional insurance. And I just packed up, for instance, to go off the grid for a while. And the last thing I left out on my countertop to remember to take.
- [05:41]
Robert Rodriguez
I'm not making this up, I'm looking.
- [05:43]
Tim Ferriss
Right in front of me is Travel packets of AG1. So rather than taking multiple pills or products to cover your mental clarity, gut health, immune health, energy, and so on, you can support these areas through one daily scoop of AG1, which tastes great even with water. I always just have it with water. I usually take it first thing in the morning and it takes me less than two minutes in total. Honestly, it takes me less than a minute. I just put it in a shaker bottle, shake it up and I'm done. AG1 bolsters my digestion and nutrient absorption by including ingredients optimized to support a healthy gut in every scoop. AG1 in single serve travel packs, which I mentioned earlier, also makes for the perfect travel companion. I'll actually be going totally off the grid, but these things are incredibly, incredibly space efficient. You could even put them in a book, frankly. I mean, they're kind of like bookmarks. After consuming this product for more than a decade, I chose to invest in AG1 in 2021 as I trust their no compromise approach to ingredient sourcing and appreciate their focus on continuously improving one formula. They go above and beyond by testing for 950 or so contaminants and impurities compared to the industry standard of 10. AG1 is also tested for heavy metals and 500 various pesticides and herbicides. I've started paying a lot of attention to pesticides. That's a story for another time to make sure you're consuming only the good stuff. AG1 is also NSF certified for sport. That means if you're an athlete, you can take it. The certification process is exhaustive and involves the testing and verification of each ingredient and every finished batch of AG1. So they take testing very seriously. There's no better time than today to start a new healthy habit. And this is an easy one. Wake up. Water in the shaker bottle. AG1 boom. So take advantage of this exclusive offer for you, my dear podcast listeners. A free one year supply of liquid vitamin D plus five travel packs with your subscription, simply go to drinkag1.com Tim that's the number one drink. Ag1.com Tim For a free one year supply of liquid vitamin d plus five travel packs with your first subscription purchase. Learn more at drinkag1.com Tim at this altitude I can run flat out for.
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Racer Rodriguez
A half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I answer your personal question now? It is an appropriate time.
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Tim Ferriss
What if I did the opposite?
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Racer Rodriguez
I'm a cybernetic organism. Living tissue over a metal endoskeleton.
- [08:20]
Robert Rodriguez
All right, Dr. Rodriguez, here we are again. Yes, it has been almost 10 years.
- [08:27]
Racer Rodriguez
Can you believe it? 10 years.
- [08:29]
Robert Rodriguez
And I can't believe it's been almost 10 years. Number one, my decision to go bald early was helpful in making me look somewhat similar to the way I look. I always wear black shirts and some people may not know. Also when I first moved to Austin, which is coming up on eight years, also nuts, I did not have any plates or silverware at my house. And I invited you over for dinner. Not even thinking of this. And you're, you're kind enough to bring over. I still have it. This red plate, couple of your like dungeon forks and knives.
- [09:03]
Racer Rodriguez
Yeah.
- [09:03]
Robert Rodriguez
So thank you for that.
- [09:04]
Racer Rodriguez
Sure. Absolutely. And a lot of warming gift. Yeah.
- [09:07]
Robert Rodriguez
A lot has happened in the last 10 years and we've continued to hang out and talk and you have a whole new bag of tricks. Our first conversation was a barn burner of an episode. People were super excited by it. There's a lot of tactical advice and you have explored a lot, you have found a lot, you've fine tuned a.
- [09:28]
Tim Ferriss
Lot in the last few years.
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Racer Rodriguez
You stumble upon new things. You stumble upon them, literally. So, yeah, we adopt them and I store them away so I can tell you about them. Look at this. And I've stored 10 years worth of.
- [09:39]
Robert Rodriguez
Stuff, opened the vault and here we are. Let's just start with a very broad question. I mean, what are some of the things that come to mind that have happened since we last spoke?
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Racer Rodriguez
Well, what's wild is just like a month ago we just put out an audiobook for the first time for Rebel Without a Crew, the book that kind of started it all.
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Robert Rodriguez
When was that published?
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Racer Rodriguez
In the 90s. Like 95. Because I remember Desperado, Dusk Till Dawn, Four Rooms and that book all came out within four months. And my son, my firstborn, Five Things, Four Months I'll never forget. But it was full of stories and my diary on how I did mariachi. And it really, to this day, people Come up and say, not only did it help them start becoming a filmmaker, but it helped them start their own business. You know, it just applied to so many things. You know, the idea of just taking on a big challenge, betting on yourself, going where no one else is. That's very entrepreneurial stuff. What's wild, though, is I hadn't read it since I wrote it. So when I had to suddenly do an audiobook for it a couple months ago, I was astounded. I'd forgotten so much of the details. And then I was like, now I see why it was so inspirational. It blows your mind because when you're younger, six months feels like six years. But now when you hear the dates, because the dates of my journal, how quickly I go from clearly clueless and penniless filmmaker, making a movie, having the idea, having a movie, doing it by myself, trying to sell it to Spanish home video, to instantly being the toast of the town. It's just unbelievable. You could see why people would read the book and just drop it and go, I gotta go make something. Cause the only reason that happened is because he took action. He got up and made that movie.
- [11:24]
Robert Rodriguez
What do you hear most from that book from readers? Because one that pops up a lot from our episode, because we talked about it a bit and also stuck with me in the book, was, and I'm sure you have a better way to phrase this, but basically making a list of assets, right? Not focusing on what you don't have.
- [11:45]
Racer Rodriguez
Yeah. Focus on what you do have.
- [11:46]
Robert Rodriguez
Right. So if you got a turtle, you got a pit bull, and you got a friend who's a school bus driver, it's like, all right, we're going to figure out how to work that into the script.
- [11:53]
Racer Rodriguez
And it's all point of view, right? It's like you can really concentrate on what you don't have in life, and that becomes your focus, and then that becomes your life. All the things you don't have and you never get. But when you leverage what you do have, it's all about leveraging what you do have. It's also a thing I call freedom of limitations. Like, if we had to make a movie right now with this room, that's it. It's kind of very freeing. It's like, okay, this is all we have to work with. You can come up with a million ideas when you can do anything. Remember, we're trying to make a short film. I know when you've got unlimited, it's harder, is it not?
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Robert Rodriguez
I have to say that's one of my great embarrassments. We're going to talk about it.
- [12:32]
Racer Rodriguez
We are going to talk about. Because it's exactly what we're talking about, because you can do anything. And a lot of times when you can do anything, you can't do anything because it's too wide. So the smaller aperture. The fact that I had very little things was a blessing. And people took that lesson, applied it to business. And the whole time I'm reading this, you can hear I'm laughing. And I stopped several times, many times during the book to update. I go, by the way, what you just heard never happened before this and never happened again since. It's very rare. This is lightning in a bottle. And it's like a movie. You see, Incredible Setup, payoff. Setup, payoff, where a setup, huge setup, falls in my lap. Don't even know what to do with it. It pays off in a huge way two weeks later, and then three weeks later, then four weeks later. And then you also see why, like, I was really bummed I couldn't sell the movie to Spanish Home Video. I was gonna sell it for $20,000 before Christmas, and the contracts weren't through. I went home a failure and said, merry Christmas. I didn't sell the movie. I was really bummed. And then you see, because it's so a journal. One month later, I had an agent suddenly, because of the movie. Good thing I didn't sell it. I was chasing those guys down for the contract. They could have had it for $20,000. Two months later, I sell it for 10 times that.
- [13:51]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, incredible.
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Racer Rodriguez
And I'm the toast of the town and getting my first movie deal. I mean, it's unbelievable. When I was reading it, I was like, now I see why. Because when you're living it, you don't know how special it is until later. Thirty years later, it's like, it still is an unbelievable story, and I think it will still inspire people today.
- [14:08]
Robert Rodriguez
And in that example, too, it makes me think of advice I got from a mentor of mine at one point, and he said, sometimes you need life to save you from what you want.
- [14:18]
Racer Rodriguez
Yes. Yes. In that instance, that's what I really wanted. That and when something doesn't work out, we think we made a mistake. Like, that's one of my favorite stories. The keys to your next success is in your failure because you followed your instinct. You got to dig in deep and look, and I show you that. I made a movie called Four Rooms. It bombed, but I took it on instinct, not because I thought it would make money. If I just be upset about it and be bummed about it, like, wow, I must have made a wrong choice. I haven't learned anything. But if I go sift through it, the ashes of that failure I find. I got the idea for Spy Kids from that because I saw Antonio and his Asian wives look like a cool international spy couple because they're dressed in tuxedos. And I thought, what if these two kids have to save the birth? There's five of those movies now. And then also, it's an anthology, and it didn't work. But I thought instead of four stories, maybe three stories, One director, not multiple directors. I'm going to try it again. Even those anthologies never work. Why would I do that? Because I just did it. And I saw what I could do better, and that was Sin City. Two of my biggest movies came directly from a movie that you would consider a failure. So you only know that by journaling, by keeping track of the things that you thought were a mistake. And you realize, oh, with time was the right instinct. But sometimes the only way across the river is to slip on the first two rocks. It's the only way to get there. And if you don't do it, you don't get there.
- [15:36]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah. And I'm sure we'll talk about this more. When I talk to people and they say, yeah, I journal, I'm like, you do, but you should see what Robert does. And I'm sure we'll talk more about journaling because it makes me think of one of my friend's mothers. Very sweet older lady. She was on a chairlift skiing, and she's still very active. She lives in Idaho. She was chatting up the woman next to her on the ski lift. She's like, oh, what do you do? And the woman's like, I'm a swimmer.
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Racer Rodriguez
She goes, oh, me too.
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Robert Rodriguez
I'm a swimmer. It was Dara Torres, the Olympian. Right. So it's kind of like there's journaling and then there's capital J marquee lights. Journaling, which we'll get to. But I want to ask you first, because I just experienced this.
- [16:14]
Tim Ferriss
Was it yesterday?
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Robert Rodriguez
I'm time traveling because there's a whole warp with south by Southwest at the moment. But I got to see you on stage with your daughter, Rhiannon.
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Racer Rodriguez
Yes.
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Robert Rodriguez
And I thought to myself, holy shit, she's really good. Right? Like, I was going to clap anyway, like, no matter what, obviously. But I thought to myself, wow, she's really good. I wonder how many performances she's done. And the Answer was, I know.
- [16:40]
Racer Rodriguez
I waited till the end because I didn't want to tell anybody. I want to make sure it went right. She never, ever performed before on stage or to a crowd. But we'll get to this thing later because I want everybody to hear this. It's so inspiring. And I've stumbled upon it. It's counterintuitive parenting. The kids step up. But we'll get to that because it's a big thing, because it comes back.
- [17:04]
Robert Rodriguez
To parenting and also modeling and coaching.
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Racer Rodriguez
How do you use that creative.
- [17:12]
Robert Rodriguez
Not just capability, but confidence into other people?
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Racer Rodriguez
I stumbled upon it. I'll tell you where it started. It started on Spy Kids. My kids were much younger than my two actors. My two actors were 8 and 11, Alexa and Daryl. And my kids were younger. You know, when you're learning how to raise kids, you tend to go a little easier on your kid. Not to the Spy Kids, because they're actors. I'm treating them like performers. So they were having to do. There's no kid stuntmen. They're having to do their own stunts. They're having to do the daily. Daily challenges. Mind bending challenges for these little kids to be action stars. They're like mini Tom Cruises that you're just throwing them in. There's no training for that. And at the end of it, I would just see them become so confident and superhuman. They're even today, the actors. And I would tell myself, I need to make sure I challenge my own kids like this. Because I saw them go from just regular kids into super kids over the course of those three films. So I started putting my kids making movies with us. Like, one of them came up with Sharkbourne Lavago. I put them in his actors as stunt kids. And I kept thinking, I wonder if they're gonna really resent me later for putting them to work at a young age. Cause it wasn't their passion. These two kids that were in the movie, they wanted to be actors. That's a different. That they chose. But I tried it anyway. It was an experiment because I thought maybe it'll give them. And boy, it has just opened up a whole world. All right, we'll get to.
- [18:35]
Robert Rodriguez
We're gonna come back to that.
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Racer Rodriguez
Yeah, it's big. And I'm gonna tell you some famous people that it's inspired. And you'll go like, oh, it was directly because of something I told them.
- [18:43]
Robert Rodriguez
All right, all right, so we're gonna get to that now. Right next to Rhiannon, there was a huge screen. And there were other things that were being launched, announced.
- [18:55]
Tim Ferriss
So what else?
- [18:56]
Racer Rodriguez
Oh, yeah, the reason we had a big party at my studio, on the backlot of my studio, which still has the huge 90,000 square foot Alita set, because I'm resourceful enough to put it in a corner of my studio where I could keep it since 2016. We built it with steel support beams so we could have forever. It's the largest standing set in the country, if not the world. No kidding. Mow them down after each movie because the next movie's coming in. But I put it in a corner of my big section of my studio so we can have it to film for Mexico, for other cities. You know, we've used it on every movie since then. So we had our party back there to announce this new movie company that I'm doing because I realized I have so many resources there. You know, you've seen my studio. I've got that huge set. I've got all the vehicles, every prop we've ever made, every costume. And usually that savings gets passed on to studios. They just piss it away because, you know, it's just like they got so much overhead. So I thought, let's make a slate of action films. It's called Brass Knuckle Films. Just action. Because action, there's an international appetite always. In fact, if you were to ask Netflix right now what they need, they would say, action, action, action. We don't have enough action. So let's make something that everyone needs and wants. Slate of four pictures. Only that fans, who are usually an afterthought, they're only like right now, people are showing their movies at south by Southwest to get the fans to get their friends to go spend money on their movies for the privilege of seeing the movies. What if they made money on those movies? So you, for the cost of a badge, can invest into my Brass Knuckle Films for a slate of films. That means you got four bites at the apple. One of those is going to make money and sequels. And you share in all that because you're at the ground floor of development and that's the revolution that we're doing. And people come up to me all the time with movie ideas saying, I got an idea for you. And they tell me and they're ready to give it to me. It's like, no, you get to come be a co creator because one of the movies in that slate is going to be picked from one of the fan investors. And even at the lowest level, everyone gets to pitch us their action movie idea. And the top 20 gets to pitch it directly to me. So you can be a co creator and fan. But there's other perks. The perks alone would get you. But it's not crowdsourcing, it's not Kickstarter. You're actually an investor. We're using Republic, which is, you know, can use. Even unaccredited investors can come invest in this. And it's a platform investing platform. They've done it in sports and other arenas. But this is now for film and my movies especially because I've got all my resources to keep the budgets low. Like, you know how much the original John Wick cost? No idea. 20 million. Okay, 20 million. The last one was 100 as the audience group. So we're making budgets between 10 and 30 million. That's like a lower to mid range budget. Right, right. That's not a lot of money for the chance to make something that could turn into the billion dollar franchise that it is. We just keep making bites at the apple. One of those is going to turn into that.
- [21:43]
Robert Rodriguez
It's like venture capital. I mean, it's hits and it's so.
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Racer Rodriguez
Fun because the fan people. The other thing people always ask me, you want me to believe, could you kill me in your movie? I'd love to die in your movie. Can you just have me die in your movie? Chop my head off, run me over, shoot me. Everyone wants to die. So that's one of the perks. If you put in enough money, you get to die on screen in a creative way whenever. It's a lot of fun.
- [22:02]
Robert Rodriguez
I missed that again. Somebody comes in, they say, hey, I like the model a lot. I want to take 90% of it. Are there kind of limits on what investors can.
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Racer Rodriguez
Yeah, this is just for the development. This is to like give us money because we already have. We can get the money for an action film. We can already fund the whole thing.
- [22:17]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, sure.
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Racer Rodriguez
I mean the international buyers alone and we could keep the domestic and sell it to all these guys.
- [22:22]
Robert Rodriguez
Have you like sell the foreign rights and use that to kind of.
- [22:26]
Racer Rodriguez
We sell the foreign rights to go ahead and make it if we want. Or if we have such a big idea, we could take it to a studio and get all the freedoms of an industry. Independent film. We have a lot of avenues because they just need it. This is the thing, the problem is they don't know how to make an action movie at a price because they have too much over and they're just too big. They spend so much.
- [22:42]
Robert Rodriguez
Well, the incentives.
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Racer Rodriguez
And that's why John Wick was an independent movie. That's why Beekeeper wasn't in the movie, because you can go make those for less, but there's always an appetite. We're not making dream projects or, you know, art films. You know, we're not. This is going to be just things that put food on table because I want the fans to win, because it's going to be, one, a great story, and two, they should enjoy it, because other ones, when you've made a movie at a studio, you don't even know what you got, then you take it to the fans and show it to them in a private screening. They give you notes, and then you go, oh, we screwed that up. We got to go fix that. We got to reshoot that. They're brought in at the end and then told to go spend their money on it. It should start with the fans as well as finish with the fans. So that's the revolutionary thing we're doing, because it's just like Rebel that I could. It's part of my whole. Democratizing the process, making it. Removing the smoke and mirrors and letting us all enjoy that process together. Because I've seen the phenomenon of creating a new label. A label on yourself, a label on a business. And we'll get to that, because I have it written down. You'll see the value of brass knuckle. But I'll tell you where I did it before, because this is something that's happened since our last 10 years, and it's a mind blower, and it ties into what the first thing you asked about. Family.
- [23:58]
Robert Rodriguez
All right, sweet. So before we get there, I am so curious because you've written, and I'm sure you've read a lot of scripts. If you get 100, 200, 400, 500, who knows?
- [24:11]
Racer Rodriguez
Pitches.
- [24:12]
Robert Rodriguez
Okay, pitches.
- [24:13]
Tim Ferriss
Right.
- [24:13]
Robert Rodriguez
So you're not getting a script.
- [24:14]
Racer Rodriguez
No.
- [24:15]
Robert Rodriguez
In fact, if you've written, what form does the pic?
- [24:17]
Racer Rodriguez
We'll give a format. It's short. It's like. You could be like. It should be less than five minutes. So maybe two or three pages at the most. Maybe one to three pages, something to tell your story. And if you've already written, I've had a lot of people come and say, I have an action script for you. Can I enjoy? I said, well, come be an investor and you can pitch it. I tell you, I've sold more pitches from scripts I'd already half written or written, because I know more about the story. I really know it. So when I go to pitch it, it's Very easy for me to tell you the story. You've got a much better chance than someone who's just making a pitch. But we'll give you a format. I'm going to train people how to do it so that they know. So it's kind of a film school, too.
- [24:53]
Robert Rodriguez
Can you give us just a teaser of some of the ingredients of a good short pitch?
- [24:58]
Racer Rodriguez
A good pitch is anything. If we could sit here right now and I could tell you a story about, you know, there's a guitar player who comes into town. It's all he wants. Music is his life, and that's all he thinks about. All he wants to do is find a place for somebody, you know, to hire him. He goes into a bar in this new town that he walks into. They don't hire musicians. He leaves. Second later, a guy with a guitar case full of weapons comes in, shoots the place up because he's after the main head honcho to leave a message. So now the word gets out. Find the guy in black with a guitar case full of weapons. It's a mistaken identity thing. By the end, he'll become the guy with a guitar case full of weapons. And he becomes. Every movie is like a ballad, a sad, tragic ballad. He's going to meet somebody, she's going to help him, she's going to die. And he goes to the next town, but no longer can play the guitar because he gets his hand shot. So now he has to become that thing. Okay, that's it. That's a pitch. I can tell you that pitch because I already made that movie, so I already wrote that script. It was harder when I was first just trying to figure it out. I was just taking little cards. But a pitch could be something like that, where I would see the potential in it and go, this one, we can still work on it. We're going to hire a writer. It's that seed of an idea that gets people to stop and listen that you want to. Fine. That's the lightning in the bottle. Sometimes it's just the idea, and everyone's got an idea. Just like everybody wants to get killed in the movie. So it's like, this is our. This is how we're going to make it fun for the fans. Because who's going to consume it? At the end of the day, it's the fans, not the zombies in suits that are up there, who don't even watch these movies. I go up there, the disconnect blows my mind. You go talk to some, not all executives, but you go to Some studios, you can tell, they don't pay to go see a movie. They don't watch movies. They don't love movies. Yeah, it's a business. And then you go talk to the fans. I was just at south by Southwest. They're losing their minds. They tell you about all the movies they've seen, about all the things they collect. They should be sharing in that, not the executives. They're just gonna piss it away. That's the idea.
- [26:57]
Robert Rodriguez
So you're very good at hooks. So before we started recording, when we were out on the sidewalk about to come into the building, you were like, yeah, there's this one line. There's one line at the end that I figured out. What was the line?
- [27:10]
Racer Rodriguez
Oh, at the end. So when I told them all about this investment opportunity, at the end, I said, so this is how you manifest? Because I had been talking about manifesting. They asked me the question, robert, you're very positive, but do you have any human doubts? And I said, no. And I told them why. And they were all clapping afterwards. So at the end, I said, okay, one more thing on manifesting. This is how you do it. Next year, it's our goal to come back to south by Southwest with our first brass knuckle film. Now ask yourself this. If you have the opportunity, invest in being part of it and pitch an idea that might be that idea. Wouldn't you rather be sitting up here with us than down there in the audience? That's how you manifest. They're all tears. Mic drop, mic drop, goodbye. Yeah, it's true. You. You hit it. You set a target. I was talking about my old trainer. I had an old trainer who'd be like, we'd be working now. And you can tell, just making up as he went. 200, 200 setup, 200 pushups, and we just go, go, go, go. You know, just picking a big number and then just hitting it. That's kind of what you need to do. Because if you aim low, you'll hit low. But if you aim high, it might go low, it might go there. And like mariachi, when you read the book, it went straight up. But if I hadn't taken the action, it would never have happened. So so many people. Wait, that's the discussion we had about. Remember, you were talking about making a short film. And I said, we just got to commit to making it. We just got to go. Ready or not, here we go. Let's set a date. We almost did it, but then both of our schedules, both of our schedul, You Understood the lesson.
- [28:40]
Robert Rodriguez
I understood the lesson because I told.
- [28:42]
Racer Rodriguez
Somebody this whole thing and he was there right where you were sitting. I think I told you somebody was right here. And they said, wow, everything you're saying makes sense. You know, I've got a project, all the pieces are actually pretty much there. I just guess I'm not ready. And I said, that's going to be on your tombstone. Here lies so and so. He was never ready. Why is it that art you have to be ready for in life? You didn't know you were going to get a flat tire. You didn't know you were going to go to work and be fired. You didn't know the fires are going to be raging every day. You're like this, you know, trying to move with the. You're not ready. You're not ready for anything life is throwing at you. But you make you become ready on the spot.
- [29:18]
Tim Ferriss
Right.
- [29:18]
Racer Rodriguez
Why is it that we think art and life should not be the same? Why? Art has to be. You have to be ready before you can begin. That's no relation. They should be the same. You're not going to be ready until you're almost done with a project because a lot of the answers you need are not going to happen until you're on the journey. Yeah. And that's what keeps most people from doing it. Yeah. And so that's why I was going to show you that real time. But we are going to do it still. We're going to do it. We're going to make a short film. You're not going to know what you're going to make it on, and it's going to fall in our lap because we start the process. That is a huge, huge, huge lesson.
- [29:52]
Robert Rodriguez
You got to start it.
- [29:53]
Racer Rodriguez
You just have to start.
- [29:54]
Robert Rodriguez
You got to start. I mean, in a couple of weeks, you know, I have this. I don't even know if I've told you about this. I have a card game I've been working on kind of secretly for like two years.
- [30:01]
Racer Rodriguez
Card game? Yeah.
- [30:03]
Robert Rodriguez
Card games?
- [30:03]
Racer Rodriguez
Yeah. You always love you always gifting me card games.
- [30:05]
Robert Rodriguez
So you wanted to do your own card games. And the reason that it happened ultimately is just booking a flight to go spend time with a master game designer and deciding by the time we leave, we are either going to have a game or we will have stopped. Because we did a couple of, I would say B minus attempts.
- [30:26]
Racer Rodriguez
Right.
- [30:26]
Robert Rodriguez
Where we didn't commit in that type of way. And we met in different places around the country and we would play test different options and different concepts. And then this final trip was like, okay, look, we're both really busy. We've given this a few shots. This time we're just going to pound our heads against the wall.
- [30:45]
Racer Rodriguez
You're aiming up there now. Yeah.
- [30:47]
Robert Rodriguez
And we're going to have a game or this is it. And that kicked off the whole process. Now it's going to be in thousands of stores.
- [30:54]
Racer Rodriguez
That's great. That's the way you used to ask me, how do you get so much done? It's like I set the bridge on fire and then I run across. Otherwise it's not enough stake. You have a way out. Like the last ones, you had a way out. Y'all didn't have that goal. You'll take the escape route.
- [31:13]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, it's easier.
- [31:14]
Racer Rodriguez
But if you just have, you've burned the bridge. You've got to go. When we have a deadline, it's a blessing. Like today. I even asked you earlier yesterday, I said, do you really need it by tomorrow? Because we could push it till later. We go, no, let's do it. So when you have a deadline, you said you make it happen, you make it happen. But we tend not to do that with ourselves and it's a crippling thing.
- [31:36]
Tim Ferriss
Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. It's the new year and many of you no doubt are planning for the year ahead. I'm doing the same. And of course, one thing that tends to be top of mind is setting financial goals, getting your finances in order. And it's a mess out there. The hyper complexities of the US economy, Global economy can be very confusing and there's a lot of conflicting advice. But saving and investing doesn't have to be complicated. Here's something refreshingly simple to use and that's Wealthfront. Wealthfront is an app that helps you save and invest your money. Right now you can earn 4% APY, that's annual percentage yield on your cash from partner banks. With the Wealthfront cash account, that's nearly 10 times the national average according to FDIC.gov so don't wait. Earn 4% APY on your cash today. Plus it's eligible for up to 8 million in FDIC insurance through partner banks. When you open an account today, you'll get an extra $50 bonus with a deposit of $500 or more. There are already more than 1 million people using Wealthfront to save more, earn more and build long term wealth. So check it out. Visit wealthfront.comtim to get started one more time. That's wealthfront.com Tim this is a paid endorsement of Wealthfront. Wealthfront Brokerage isn't a bank. The APY is subject to change. For more information, see the episode description.
- [33:01]
Robert Rodriguez
Thinking of the audiobook that you just produced and the book. We have spoken over the years about you writing another book.
- [33:13]
Racer Rodriguez
Yes.
- [33:14]
Robert Rodriguez
So what happened?
- [33:15]
Racer Rodriguez
What happened to that one?
- [33:16]
Robert Rodriguez
What happened to that one?
- [33:17]
Racer Rodriguez
You told me right after we had our talk. He says, did you finish that book? Because I sounded like I was almost ready. The idea was called the Creative Life. Because I gave a talk once about promax or something about creativity. They introduced me and they said, Robert Rodriguez, cinematographer, editor, composer, screenwriter. They went through all my credits and I got up there and I said, I feel dizzy just hearing all that stuff. And there's this book out. I always see it in the bookstores at the airport. It's called the One Thing About Doing One Thing. And I was thinking, well, that doesn't apply to me, obviously. But then I thought, there actually is one thing that I do. When I think about it, it's not those jobs. I live a creative life. I apply creativity to everything I do. And that's why anything that touches creativity is open to me. So I can paint, I can draw, I can do anything. Because 90% of any one of those jobs is actually the creative part, the technical part about any one of those, whether it's music, say 90% creative, some of the best musicians don't know how to read or write music. That's the technical part. So I realized that as they did all those jobs, that was the thing. So I want to write a book called the Creative Life, where every chapter is about raising your kids, painting, drawing, filmmaking. You're going to see the same lesson over and over because it all applies. So that was the idea. And you ask what happened to it. It's like I'm going through this whole new chapter that's so massive I would feel dumb to put out the book now because I know this is going to change all my thinking. And it was when I turned 50. I thought, I wonder if there's some other job I could have where I don't have to be doing as harder work as filmmaking with the knowledge I have. There must be some. I don't even know what jobs are out there. This is the first job I ever got was making movies. I was so young. So I literally bought jobs for dummies. And I was looking through it, no joke, because they have these Little icons just to see what's even out there, what's in there. I was like, I don't want that. I don't want that. It got to filmmaker, and that little icon is a guy with his arms up like this. And it said, this is the best job. Get to be creative with your friends, make stuff, and then just sit back and let the money roll in. It said, but. It says, but 99% of film students don't get this job. So forget that dream. Oh, clearly, I got the best job. But I used to think, well, I guess I could keep making movies. I guess that's been good to me. I guess I could just. Just keep making more. But then I had to work with my kids for that Red 11 project. Remember, it was one where we had to do another Mariachi, another $7,000 movie, but with digital cameras and show people how it's done. Today, we're gonna make one. And I made all the other filmmakers that were in our group for this TV show I was doing called Rebel Without a Crew. You can only bring one person. Just like I had Carlos Gallardo, the main actor from El Mariachi. Only one person. You got to do everything. He can be your sound man or he can be your cameraman, but you got to do everything. You got to edit, you got to shoot it, you got to write it, and you got two weeks. Like, I had only two weeks to do Mariachi. And I saw the filmmakers just like that thing I was saying about the kids pushing them. They'd only done short films. None of them had done a feature. This is your first feature, and we're going to document it. So documentary camera is going to be on you like, you know, reality tv. I saw them turn superhuman between the first week and the second week. Once they started shooting, they had no idea how they were going to do it. They were like, oh, my God, this is just so hard. By the second week, I go to ask them how it's going, they're already talking about their next three films. Suddenly, their idea of what Impossible was went from that to that. And so I did that as well. I wanted to do that. But with my kid, Racer, I picked one kid, my son Racer, who hadn't been working with me in film at all for a while. I brought him to be my co writer, my co lighter, my sound guy. And I didn't show him how to use the sound equipment. I waited till we were about to start filming. Then I was like, okay, this is how it works. Go. Because we're documented And I wanted to show people that even without any experience, you can go make a movie in two weeks with no money. And we did. And that thing ended up going to festivals, even getting over to Director's Fortnite at Cannes. People were flying us and paying us to go speak about our masterclass on how we made that movie and show clips from the making of. We're making money from this little no money movie. The only reason we had to stop doing a tour, we went to Colombia, we went to Sweden, we went to Paris. I mean, we were doing really well. My kids were like, dad, you're right. This is really. This really weird. Better than I thought. We only had to stop because we're shooting. We can be heroes. But the reason I'm talking about this label, what blew my mind about is my kids. I thought labels apply to yourself. Yeah, that'd be to yourself. And to just a label, like a company, a fake company within your realm, like Brass Knuckle, I would call that a label. I still do other things, but that has a very specific target. And I'm getting all kinds of ideas just popping in my head because I started that. It's just this phenomenon, like ideas I never would have thought of before because now it's got a place to go, just like with yourself. There's a label I'll tell you about. Came about that with yourself that really transformed. But my kids, I thought they're going to resent me again. I'm afraid they might resent me for having to do this $7,000 movie for two weeks and see how much hard work it is. Because they had their own interest. They weren't wanting to make movies. But I said, I need him to be in it because he'll be a good example. And I made my other son act in it because he made those knives. I was inspired to make one of their characters, a knife guy. And I asked them to do the score, too, with me, write the score. And I thought, they have their own interest. They're going to work on this one day and hate it. I'm prepared for that. Instead, they came at the end of the day all excited, their eyes all bugging out of their head. And they were like, dad, the actor didn't show up. The script didn't match the location at all. And when we asked you in the morning what we were going to do, you said, I don't know, we'll figure it out. And we thought, flat tire. Finally, the movie that stumped my dad. But then by the end, we Figured it out. They were all excited. I went, oh, they don't realize that's the creative process. That's every day on a movie, but it's also every day in life. It's the same. And I realized on the making of that movie, so little of what I was teaching them was filmmaking. It was all life lessons. How to take on this impossible challenge. Two man crew making a feature. I didn't know we were going to go to Cannes. I actually didn't predict any of that. I just wanted to finish for the project. But you get blessed because of that. And the label we created is because my son had come to me and said, I wanted to draw comics. But I wasn't born in the golden age of comics, but I am born in the golden age of technology. So I'm thinking maybe instead of doing storytelling through comics, give up the drawing thing and do it with VR. So let's start a VR company. Let's start a company. I'll show you how this works. All these VR companies need people to buy their helmets. They need product. If I call them up and say, I have a VR company, they'll give us money to go make them a short film. Sure enough, I just said, here we all have double our names, all the kids. Let's start a company called Double R. It's the label we made. So now we're going to make T shirts, we're going to make notepads. And they loved them. They were looking at me. Because now any project any of you have, if Rhiannon has an album she wants to do or Rebel wants to put on a knife, then we can do it through Double R. It's our company now. When you have a company, you have a label. It's now manifested now. You got to do stuff to fill. You have to do stuff to put into it. Right? You get all these ideas. Michelle Rodriguez and Norman Reedus are in this movie called the Limit. Remember that one?
- [40:36]
Robert Rodriguez
I do.
- [40:37]
Racer Rodriguez
They made us a logo. Double R logo. Big logo. It went in front of our $7,000 movie. Also, it went around the world that same year. Three projects in one year. I went to Netflix to ask if they needed any movies, and they said, we need family. Spy Kids type thing. Can you come up with something? Kind of came up with it in the room. People are always ripping off Spy Kids. I should just rip off myself. Little kids have to save their parents. Only what if they're superheroes and the parents are superheroes that get captured like the Avengers get captured. Little kids with Superpowers, they don't know how to use them yet. And the little girl who has no powers has to wrangle them together to work together to go save the day. Simple pitch, right? I wrote it out, wrote it with my kids. We came up with all these fun special powers we've never seen in any movie. We took it, we sold. It's the biggest movie on Netflix, most watched and rewatched movie in their history. Nothing can touch it because kids watch it over and over and over. And that has a big, glorious. The same double R logo in front of it. And my kids were just like, dad, this really works. I was like, better than I thought. I was just doing it as an example. I did not know it was going to put food on the table in that way. So I'm going to do that again with Brass Knuckle, but with the fans, because we've done that before. Because I told them, come be a part of it. Because proximity is everything. Remember I showed you that painter? I went and watched and how my painting changed. Even though he didn't teach me one thing, except I saw that he just had a regular brush, regular paint. He didn't know how he was going to attack it each time. It made you go like, oh, I thought I needed to know something. I had a mental block. And I went and did it again and I was like, there it was. It was unbelievable, the proximity. Sometimes teacher loss. I tell people, if you come be a part of the company, the proximity to us as a filmmakers making this stuff, you're going to get 10 ideas, 20 ideas on your own. You're going to see your own thing, you'll be part of this. But it's almost like a masterclass without me even trying to teach you. That's just what I found by being proximity, by being around James Cameron, by being around George Lucas, by being around Spielberg. They didn't necessarily give me lessons, but just seeing how they move through the world, even for just a moment in time, transforms you completely.
- [42:53]
Robert Rodriguez
So let's say somebody's listening to this and those are big names, out of.
- [42:57]
Racer Rodriguez
Reach for most folks, but they're equivalent in their world. They're equivalents of people that they really admire, that if they just had proximity to them, they didn't even have to get a lesson from them. And they would just. It would just change because you're just, you know, your parents used to tell you this, be careful who your peers are. That meant one thing when you were younger. It means even more now when you're older. Like surround yourself with people who are heavy hitter. We talk to each other all the time because it just raises our game. I remember you coming over to my house and seeing, hey, what chopper is that that you're using? You know, you're like seeing upgrades that you can have by probably proximity. You pick stuff up.
- [43:32]
Robert Rodriguez
Can you say more about labels?
- [43:34]
Racer Rodriguez
And so label. I'm going to give you my favorite label example. And it's a thing I realize now when I did the audiobook that I already knew and had forgotten. People would come up to me sometimes and tell me some quote from my book. And I would be like, that was for my book. I was smart back then. What happened? But there was something I said in the book saying, stop aspiring. Stop saying you're an aspiring filmmaker. People come up to you, I'm an aspiring filmmaker. The words we use are really strong. You're always going to be aspiring. You're never going to get there. If you call yourself somebody who's on the journey, say, you're a filmmaker. Make a card. Make a business. I said, make a business card that says I did. Director, cinematographer, editor, then what do you have to do? Just like the label, you have to conform to your identity. You have to go do that stuff now. And suddenly I have movies. You go make movies because that's what a filmmaker does. What does an aspiring filmmaker do? Aspire. Aspires? Yeah, you aspire. I knew that back then, but I'd forgotten it. The reason I remember it is, okay, you always remark, hey, Robert, you're always in good shape. Did I ever tell you I hate sports? I hate working out. Did I ever tell you that?
- [44:41]
Robert Rodriguez
I'm not sure.
- [44:42]
Racer Rodriguez
You told me all through high school they would want me to be on the team. Small school. I was so tall. Please come be on our team. I was like, I don't need. Which team sport?
- [44:51]
Robert Rodriguez
Football.
- [44:52]
Racer Rodriguez
Any of them. Basketball? Football. We need players. And you're so big. Come be on the. I was like, I don't even know how these games are played. I've never followed sports. I'm a filmmaker, I'm an artist, I'm a musician. And there's a line in the faculty, Elijah Wood says, that's my line. I used to tell people, I don't think you should run unless you're being chased. I just did not love exercise at all. But then later, when I was making movies, my back kept going out because I was doing Steadicam, because I was sitting drawing for long hours. My back every year would go out really bad where I needed like a walker and quarter zone shots, you know, cortisone shots on my back. I remember Ricardo Montalban in his wheelchair at 84, and I had a walker when Spike Kids 2 is my back. And he goes, Robert, I'm 84. What's your excuse? You have to work out. I was like, I know, I know, but I don't know how. I hate sports. I hate working out. The next year I worked with Stallone on Spy Kids 3. And I said, how can I get better shape so my back doesn't keep going out? He goes, get thee a trainer. Anyone who ever got anywhere physically had a trainer say, even you don't just go train. No. He said, no, no. I'd rather rearrange my sock drawer than go work out. I was like, well, if you even need a trainer, what chance do us mortal men have? So I got a trainer and I would hide from him. I would pay him not to show up. I hated it. I hated working out. I would feel sick when he's coming over and I would half assume the workouts, you know, because I hate it. So this woman friend of mine from Mexico, older woman, my doctor told me I have to stop smoking. So I'm not smoking right now. I said, you're going to go back to smoking because your identity is a smoker. You're saying you're a smoker, you're going to go back. You have to change your identity. You have to say, I'm a non smoker. I'm a non smoker. Because then if you just identify yourself as that, you're going to then conform to your identity and you're going to. What does a non smoker do? They hate smoke makes them sick. Stay away from cigarettes. All right, I'll try that. I don't know if it worked because I didn't follow up. But right away I thought, hey, I should apply that to myself. It's a good thing to go checklist yourself every few years. Where are some places that I'm not doing that, that I can change the label? So you know what I did? And you got to go 180. If you go by degrees, you ain't going to get anywhere. 20%, 30%. Bullshit. 180. Of course I hate working out. What do I say to myself all the time? I hate sports. I hate working out, hate exercise. I love food. I have to change my identity. You know what I said? I'm an athlete. I'm an athlete. I'm an athlete by the next day, everything changed. What does an athlete do? Loves to work out, makes time to work out. There is no time, but you make time. When you love something, you eat right because you're an athlete. As soon as your identity changes your label, you conform to that. So that's the power of identity and the words we choose to describe ourselves. I catch people all the time describing themselves and I go, you got to change that description. You're already out of the gate. You're talking about yourself in a way that's not going to helpful.
- [47:51]
Robert Rodriguez
Besides the aspiring, which you mentioned, where people are handicapping themselves by labeling, using that term within, say, filmmaking, are there other ways that you see people handicap themselves just in terms of how they view themselves or their situation or what they have or don't have? Are there any other common ones that come up?
- [48:16]
Racer Rodriguez
Common ones? I don't know, they just kind of seem to. Anything that kind of takes you out of the game early by a belief you have. I don't have access, or everyone has access. Now you have a phone. You can make actually a story on a phone or you can write. Or I just say whenever I hear anyone use some kind of negative connotation to something like, well, I want to make something, but I just don't have the time. It's like you just, there's no time. If you're waiting for time to happen, it's not going to happen. All the time's gone. There's no time. But we can make time. We can make time for anything that we put our mind to. So don't give me that shit. That's like taking a hatchet and chopping off your left leg before the race. You literally did this to yourself. You just hobbled yourself for no reason with these beliefs and it's all you. You're your worst enemy. You're like the one in the audience in your way. The biggest obstacle in your life is you always. I asked this question outside because I was curious what your answer was. But one of the questions that came up was, so, Robert, you're real positive. Do you have any human doubts?
- [49:15]
Robert Rodriguez
I wanted to come back to that. Yeah. And your answer was no.
- [49:18]
Racer Rodriguez
Yeah, we'll come back to that. I just want to forget. It seemed like I could work it in here.
- [49:21]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, yeah, no, don't get after it. I wanted to because I'm sure a lot of people are like, what?
- [49:25]
Racer Rodriguez
No doubts? Yeah.
- [49:27]
Robert Rodriguez
Okay, so walk us through that.
- [49:30]
Racer Rodriguez
Yeah. So they said, robert, you wrote positive. Do you have any human doubts? And I said, to give me a chance to think. Because I had never heard that way, human doubts. But I said, what do you all think? And then I see people going, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Because that's the real answer you would probably give. But I like to do counterintuitive for everything. So I went, no. Why? Because that's a manifestation, isn't it? I have no human doubts because I know the process, too. You can't wait to be ready. They say knowing is half the battle. What's the other half? Not knowing. I think that's more important because that's where the magic is. You don't know what the other half is. Not knowing is half the battle. You're gonna figure not knowing is the major part of the battle. I got there to the set, I didn't know I was gonna do any of it. But as soon as I saw how limited the options were, suddenly it became very clear there was only one way to do it. And if you have that confidence going into each day, you shouldn't have any doubt. You shouldn't have any fear. A failure. My biggest successes came from my failure. So why would I fear that? What doubts? I couldn't think of any. Can you think of a doubt I should have? Like, give me an example of one. That doubt you think, or even you. What doubts would you have?
- [50:40]
Robert Rodriguez
I think I need to basically take the last four minutes and just listen to it every morning. I just need to replay that every morning. I think it's a good reminder.
- [50:48]
Racer Rodriguez
Okay, but what doubts have you?
- [50:49]
Robert Rodriguez
Well, I'll tell you. I mean, and this is. It's a good question listening to this, but I grew up in a household where there was a lot of. There's a lot of negativity and there's a lot of, we don't have X because we're never going to have Y, because we can't ever have Z, because.
- [51:08]
Racer Rodriguez
Didn'T you already prove that wrong, though?
- [51:10]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, no, exactly.
- [51:11]
Racer Rodriguez
Now you go up your own history now instead of that history.
- [51:13]
Robert Rodriguez
No, totally. So there's software to overwrite.
- [51:16]
Racer Rodriguez
Yeah. And those are formative years. So, yeah, that's.
- [51:21]
Robert Rodriguez
I can't think of any excuses that you should have or just you even.
- [51:25]
Racer Rodriguez
What doubts would you think you would have? Just so I can hear? Because then I go, okay, I agree with that. I just hadn't thought of any. The spot. It was so on the spot. I was wondering what you would answer on the spot.
- [51:33]
Robert Rodriguez
You know, what I appreciate about the question is how effective it is at making you Stumble because of the human doubts. Yeah.
- [51:42]
Racer Rodriguez
I'm like, okay, let's drive the human doubts.
- [51:45]
Robert Rodriguez
Doubts.
- [51:45]
Racer Rodriguez
Let's just drop human guts. But just doubts.
- [51:48]
Robert Rodriguez
But I'm like, wow, that's masterful. If you drop that judo move.
- [51:51]
Racer Rodriguez
Doubts do you. What doubts do you have? They wanted to humanize you because you sound like Superman when you talk. You know, a lot of times when we give these talks, everyone thinks you're Superman. But we know each other. We know that we all have weaknesses and this and that, but we don't want that, and we don't want to manifest that. So we don't dwell on it.
- [52:06]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, totally. I would say that my inclination would be if I were on stage in your place, I probably would have said yes. But then if we dug a little deeper into what that means to me, I think it would differ from probably how a lot of people would use it. So I would have doubts in the sense that I don't know how something is going to turn out. But that doesn't mean that I don't get started. That doesn't mean that I stop experimenting. Because my whole thing is like, look, for instance, I'm launching this game. People are like, what a game. It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't connect to the other things that you're doing. I'm like, exactly, Because I want to see you. What's behind door number three? And I'm not going to know unless I do this thing that's off menu. So what are you going to do with it? What's next? I have no idea. Because anything I could plan now is not going to be as interesting as a lot that is going to surface. If I do well with whatever the next step is in front of me. That's it. That's all I need to figure out. And a lot of the time, as you said, you're going to get there and circumstances will have changed. The thing that was supposed to get shipped from the warehouse isn't there. And you're like, okay. And actually, side story, I'll keep it super short. And then I want to actually ask you about a name that came to mind when you said the creative life. Because then I thought the creative act. And I thought Rick Rubin. And I know you've met Rick Rubin, so I want to ask about that. But when I had my very first presentation at south by Southwest 2007, it was the launch of the four hour workweek, and I had put together the most incredible presentation of my life. I had rehearsed at A friend's garage to his Chihuahuas. That was the only test audience I had. And if they got bored and walked away, I had to change my presentation. That was the only fine tuning. But I was so proud of this huge deck that I put together. PowerPoint. I get to the venue, my computer crashes, and it's like, well, here we are now.
- [54:09]
Racer Rodriguez
Now what? You gotta roll up the sleeves now.
- [54:10]
Robert Rodriguez
And it ended up being so much better than if I had used the slides. It ended up being so much better because I'd rehearsed enough that I knew the material. I didn't need the visual references. That was a self doubt that I had that I wouldn't be able to give it without the slides. And then the slides went away and it was better than I could have.
- [54:26]
Racer Rodriguez
So you might have. So you can have a doubt, but you're not gonna live and breathe by that. You're gonna push past it really quickly because you should have fear. You should have some fear going into something that I call it fear forward. Fear forward, yeah. Fear forward.
- [54:38]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah.
- [54:39]
Racer Rodriguez
Like have the fear, but don't. Don't let it cripple you. Just go forward knowing you're doing something that's outside of your comfort zone. And you're going to reap great benefits. Yeah, you might slip on the first two rocks, it might be four rooms, but if you don't look at it with a negative point of view, you turn it into Spike.
- [54:53]
Robert Rodriguez
I think that's an RR merch T shirt.
- [54:56]
Racer Rodriguez
I told somebody that years ago. They went, fear for it. I like this Ice Sky. It's kind of catchy. But I tell you, I got to tell my kids this. After we did this project together, I said, now you really know how it works. Because my son Racer said he was helping me with a film. Right. By the end of the two weeks, they interviewed him about it. He's waxing philosophical about the creative process, like he's been doing it for a decade. He said, I never knew how my dad did El Mariachi. I mean, every day was. Everything was just falling apart, but we'd figure it out. Every day was figuring it out. I never knew how he did that movie for no money, but now I do, because we just did it. He didn't know either. He just started. Most people never start. He figured it out day by day, and now he knew it in his blood because he had just done it. So I got them together and said this was the greatest project we could have done together. When you work with your kids because they get to be in the boat with you, figuring stuff out. They see you trying to figure it out. They're part of the solution. We're going to get into this. I'm going to talk about nepotism. Why? Anyone who says anything negative on nepotism, you just get slapped in the face and kicked on the balls by their kids. It'll blow your mind.
- [56:08]
Robert Rodriguez
All right, we're going to come back.
- [56:09]
Racer Rodriguez
We'll get back to it. But this is the main thing. This is the main thing about this, is that I told them, if I ever get hit by a bus, you all know what to do now, because we just did it. It's all life lessons. You get together, you make your plan, which is like your script. You make it as bulletproof as possible, so then you can go do your film shoot. So you can go take action, watch it all fucking fall apart just like your projector thing. And then that's when you roll up your sleeves and go, now let's take this chicken shit and make chicken salad. And it always comes out better. It always comes out better than your original plan. Every time. Wash, rinse, repeat. That's life. You just learned the most valuable lesson of life on this little microcosm of what life is, which is a movie. Because, remember, life and art should be the same. You're writing a story, and you're writing your own story while you're doing it. The story of who you are and who you're going to become and what you're going to achieve as you're writing a fake story. That's why they go together. That's why people identify with stories. You're literally, we're writing our own story. So do you have doubts? Yeah, but I'm going to write past it. I'm going to write my story to where I'm not the guy that has doubts. So that's the power of creativity and labeling, and that's a label. Am I going to say I'm a guy who has doubts? No, because then, guess what? Now I have doubts. And if there is a doubt, I can identify, I'm sure, like, you just did figure out a way past it right away. So that's why I would just say blanket. I don't have any doubts because I don't want to be the guy that has doubts. And I'm going to figure out, you know, it's kind of like you have to make your business card first that says guy with no doubts. I'll add that to it. I have no doubts. I remember Kevin Smith, filmmaker, Clerks and all that. He sent me a script called Dogma. He said, I wrote this script. It's got special effects. It's all out of my wheelhouse. But you wrote it. And he goes, yeah, but it's definitely a Robert Rodriguez movie. You direct it. Why didn't you want to direct it? It's too big for me. Well, now you have to make it. You fear forward. You're doing something that pulls you out of your wheelhouse. And he was so thankful that I told him that. And that he did it gave him the permission to go do it. And it transformed his career because he wasn't doing the comfort zone. He was now going way beyond, reaching way beyond. So fear forward, get out of the comfort zone. That means you're on the right track. If you don't have fear on something you're going to do that day, probably fucking wasting your time. You're doing something that you're just spinning your wheels, so you want to put yourself out there. That's not the same as having doubt, I don't think. I think it's just. It's a good litmus test. I have a little bit of doubt that this is. My daughter's going to be able to perform tomorrow because it's the first time in front of a crowd. She may get nervous. I don't know. She's never seen a crowd. She might step out and see the crowd and freeze. Who knows? But I don't want to put that out there because I don't want to manifest that. I want to manifest. And we're going to have cameras filming. We're going to make this a big moment. And she rose to the occasion because that's what happens.
- [58:59]
Robert Rodriguez
She looked like a seasoned vet. So, Rick Rubin, his very first podcast, as far as I'm aware, was on this podcast, the Tim Ferriss show, ages ago, it was in his sauna. He actually. Actually didn't think I was going to say yes because he had a barrel sauna at what was Shangri La in Malibu. Ended up burning down, sadly. This is quite a few years ago now. But he said, okay, okay, we'll do the podcast. At that time, he basically did next to no media, and he said, we'll do the podcast, but it has to be in the sauna. And we're going to do the sauna and then cold plunge and then sauna. And I was like, all right, you're sweating it out. So we did it in the sauna. Now, the one thing we neglected to consider was not the temperature of the recorder, because I could put that on the floor and it was fine. It was the mics, so we had to wrap those in towels as we did the interview. But you got to meet Rick a handful of years ago. What was that like? I don't want to even speculate. I mean, I have my own guesses as to how you guys might mesh or interact. But what was that like?
- [60:03]
Racer Rodriguez
Oh, it was wonderful. He showed up at my house.
- [60:06]
Robert Rodriguez
Okay.
- [60:08]
Racer Rodriguez
He was in town producing a band. I heard he wanted to meet me, so I said, yeah, he can just come to the house. So he shows up at my house. So I figured, oh, he's probably heard some of my podcast stuff. Very similar to his creativity. We all approach it differently. We all have our own theories. So he shows up and he goes, I don't know who you are or what you do or anything about you, but I had a feeling I was supposed to come meet you. So I said, you came to the right place. I'm going to show you my house. You know, you've seen my crazy house. I'm going to talk about my house. I'm talking about how I drew it, first, envisioned it, built it. By the time I finish telling you about my house, you'll know who I am. So I go out and I give him the whole tour, and he's like, okay, okay, yeah, that was just like, my house. It might have been the one in Malibu. That's just like, my house in somewhere. And he goes, we're the same guy. So we go outside to where my waterfall is and my phone. We sit in, he puts his feet up, and we just start talking. He just wants to hear about me. So I started telling him what we're talking about. All this creativity, my whole spiel on it. And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're going on and going on and going on, going on. I'm doing most of the talking. And then as we're leaving, he says, I want to give you my book. I'm about to put out a book. This book wasn't out yet. So he ran to the car, came back out, and it was just like a galley version of the book. I said, what is this? And he goes, actually, pretty much everything we were just talking about is in there. I was like, really? Okay, I'll give you my book. So I gave my books. The picture I have. I'll show you is him with my book in front of my house.
- [61:35]
Robert Rodriguez
Oh, that's cool.
- [61:35]
Racer Rodriguez
And then he left. And then when he left, I'm reading. I'm like, oh, my God. I read the book. It's so similar, but different to things that I. Because we all come at it from a different area. But his solutions were similar, but different because it's from a different world than mine. Same questions, same kind of things. It's that hive brain. I don't know. And you said this before, said because you're a creative. I know other creatives like this. You have one foot in the magic realm, and it's like when your foot's in there, you pick up the signal from the others. You all kind of get ideas from each other before you even met. It's why he knew to show up. And I've had people just show up, drawn there, knowing they're supposed to be there, not knowing why. It's this kind of magical thing that when you get into the creativity world, you really are tapping into the universe in a way to get your ideas because. Because your brain's not smart enough. I'm not smart enough to come up with these ideas. They're out there. And everyone in every discipline has a different line for that. Like Keith Richards says, I don't come up with these riffs. They're all floating around. I'm just the first one to pull it down and use it. They all have their version of that, that it's not from them. That's the best way to think. Because then there's no ego involved. And if you have no ego, that it's just, you're a conduit for this creative spirit to come through you, well, then you can do anything. I can be a good pipe. I just get my ego out of the way and let it come through. Because, you know, when you're in a flow, you know, you start, I don't want to write this book. And you start writing, the first few lines come out, then it starts going, and you can't even believe what's coming out. It's because creative spirit, in my theory, is. Doesn't have hands. It's waiting for you to get off your ass and pick up the pen, and then it can help take over. And so always take action. That's why I say, always take action. Don't wait to be inspired. Action first, inspiration second. Because if you wait to be inspired, like to make your short film, good luck, they ain't ever coming. But if you just start making the film, ideas you never in a million years would have come up with come into your head, because it's not you, it's Coming through you now. It's like, finally you're gonna go make that film we've been wanting to make. Creative spirit must be very disappointed in people who don't take action, who sit there and I tell you where. I figured this out. When I was a cartoonist at 19, I had a daily cartoon strip. It would take me hours to draw it. I would have to draw a little bit, try to figure out a joke, and I'd have a deadline every day or I wouldn't get paid. And I needed the money. I already had two jobs. So one day I thought, I gotta figure out a better, easier way. I wonder if I could just come up with a method where I go home, sit, and just try and picture it. Just picture it and then go draw it. And I'd sit there for hours and be like, deadline's over. Oh, shit, I gotta go do this. I'd have to pick up the pen and draw. And as soon as I started drawing, I would draw one drawing, three others. And then I was kind of, oh, this kind of drawing kind of goes with that. I put that there, and then that would be formulated. That's the process. It's not going to come to you if you're just sitting on your ass waiting for it to make magic. You have to physically pick up the pen or pick up the camera or pick up the guitar. And then it's like, thank God, because it doesn't have hands. Now I can come through now. Now let me take over. And that's the whole magic of creativity. So you shouldn't have any doubts if you could do it. As soon as you. You say, wow, I don't know how I did that. I wonder if I can do it again. You just shut the pipe because your ego got in the way. You thought it was you. It's not you, it's coming through you. So just be a clear pipe. I know that works because I taught that to my kids in a class when they were younger. And right away they each wrote a book. It was unbelievable because they didn't have anything to unlearn. They didn't have any experience yet. Where we all have more doubts now because we're older, we're like. It's like that thing where you teach class full of grade school kids who can write a novel, who can be the president, who can do an opera, who can dance barely. They all put their hands up because they don't know better. You keep asking them, as the years go on, hands start going down. Even with no life experience, they Just all stop believing they're that person without any evidence that they're not. I always wanted to be that kid who had his hand up no matter what, even if it was something I didn't know how to do. Put your hand up because you'll figure it out as you go. Don't have a doubt. Just go do it. Just go do it.
- [65:44]
Robert Rodriguez
Seems to be working for you.
- [65:45]
Racer Rodriguez
It's been working. Do you ever see that movie Being There with Peter Sellars? He's so naive. He's just a gardener, but he gets hit by a car and he ends up in Washington. And everyone thinks he's so smart because he's just talking about the garden. And they all read into him, and by the end, he walks across the lake. Oh. Because he doesn't know you can't.
- [66:10]
Robert Rodriguez
Doesn't know you can't do it.
- [66:12]
Racer Rodriguez
It's the most beautiful movie you can see. Peter Sellers, I think, got an Oscar for it or nomination. And it's amazing. And you're just like, oh, my God. They all think he's this prophet, and everyone's quoting him and doing their own version of what he's saying. But he's just saying, when the roots are strong, the garden will flourish. And everybody's like, whoa. But that naive quality. You want to keep that naive quality. That's what got me to do Mariachi. I didn't know it couldn't be done. It was only till later when people said, how'd you make that movie for $7,000? You know, that's impossible. I was like, really? It was like. It didn't seem that hard. But if you're telling me, I. I guess I just followed my nose and I ended up at the top of Mount Everest somehow. I wasn't trying to do that, but to some people, it was impossible. But to me, it was just solutions I came up with to make up for what I didn't have.
- [66:59]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, what does your journaling look like these days? Or what insights have you?
- [67:04]
Racer Rodriguez
I hope I can inspire everybody to journal, because it's really weird. I go do a talk and I say, how many people keep a diary or journal? It could be, like, a group of 400 people. I'll see two hands, three hands. I'm like, oh, my God. If I can leave you with any impression. My big thing now, I tell people, this is my theory. Living is reliving. Because you go to a concert and people have their video cameras up, and everybody says, put it away. Live in the moment. Counterintuitive. I say, the moment fleets, you're not going to even remember it tomorrow. Do you even remember who was standing next to you tomorrow? Yesterday? From day to day, shit just goes by because we see life at 96 frames per second, 20K resolution, surround sound. Like right now, I'm looking at you, but I can see there's a glass here. I can see in the peripheral. There's someone over here operating this thing. A year from now, five and then ten, all our three pound meat computer can process it might have a file photo of you in a T shirt, me in a T shirt, because we kind of remember each other that way. But the metadata will be some kind of narrative that we spoke and had a good time. That's it. That's all you're going to have. And when you journal, I'm shocked. I was trying to figure out when I bought certain guitars. I couldn't remember. I knew some were gifted, but I couldn't remember. I just did a word search in my journals because I have a year by year journal. Guitar, guitar, guitar. So I'd read and it shocked me that, oh, wow, I thought I bought this one. It was a gift from this person. How can I not remember that? This is a big guitar. This is like a $10,000 guitar. How would I not remember that? And I would read a little bit of the diary around it. I was floored. Have you go back 10 years, even 15 years, it's like you're reading someone else's journal. You're reading someone else's journal and it's like, I guess I just have to take it for what it's there.
- [68:57]
Robert Rodriguez
Well, my mom actually gave me a box of papers that was sitting in one of the rooms in my childhood home. She said, what do you want to do with this? And I opened it up and in that box were printed out emails that I had sent my mom when I was 15 from Japan to tell her what I was up to. And I did not remember. That was one of the most formative experiences of my life. I have a lot of memories from that period. I did not remember 99% of what I put in those emails.
- [69:28]
Racer Rodriguez
It's like a dehydrated version that you have to put water on to reconstruct. But even then, it mostly just fades away. You don't even recognize it. So it's so important to keep your history. But imagine what's your favorite jokes and your favorite things about life that you share with your brothers, your family. It's all past stuff. So living is reliving My kids now love watching the movies of them growing. I shot so much video and kept journals of all their childhood. They all journal now, but they have their whole childhood. Because I gave them the journals of their childhood. They got their whole life journaled. But I've been showing them home movies recently because I've been digitizing all the old tapes, and I thought, they're not going to dig this. Some of this shit looks like vhs. It's so cruddy compared to today's HD stuff. I was showing them footage of them younger, and I have tons of it. I thought later in life I could rewatch and relive their wonderful childhood, Right? Forget it. I don't remember even filming this stuff. It's like New Adventures of we're watching it, not knowing what's going to happen next, and they're watching it. I saw my son leaning into the screen to see what was around the corner. I said, you just leaned into the screen? He said, oh, wow. I left the living room. This is like virtual reality to me. I was like, wow, that's interesting. Then I realized why, compared to our memory, that's virtual reality. Even the crappiest VHS tape, you hear the sounds, you see the place, you start reformulating, they cannot stop watching it. Every time they come over, we watch new fun tape and we find classic new things that become benchmarks of humor and jokes that become iconic. Reliving is living. Like, my mom turned 75, and I said, we got to do something for your 75th birthday. And she said, no, no, no, no, no. We don't want anything done. Why not? Because nothing can top my 65th birthday. 65th. What happened then? Oh, you gave me a car and you flew in everybody from out of town. I was like, really? I don't remember that. It was only 10 years before. I must have tape. I looked it up, found the tape, put it in. Oh, my God. I didn't remember any of this. So I recut the tape, took it to her, and we had a big party. And I showed the tape. She was crying more. Now she knows when she gets the key, what it means. She's like, oh, my God. I was like, I don't have to do anything anymore. We'll just play the old tapes. It was more appreciated. Living is reliving because that's when it becomes iconic. And in the moment, this is all just flying by, and we don't know what's important. It's only by journaling that you go, this person's no longer with us. What he said changed my life and I didn't know and I forgot that he told me this at this time, if I had not journaled that. So if your life is worth anything, write it down because then you'll be surprised how much of it is more valuable than you think. And you're only going to know that by journaling.
- [72:08]
Robert Rodriguez
What's your process? Is it like end of day word document?
- [72:11]
Racer Rodriguez
What is it? 12:12am In a lot, alarm goes off, says journal. Because I figured by 12 at night I was finished with most, that I can actually sit and do it. I've actually got my partner writing journal now. Never kept a journal before, but because of the stuff I just said, it's starting to see the value in it. And they send me their journal too. That's always the best. If your partner also journals seeing someone else's perspective on a big event essay. You have to journal every day if you don't want, but at least the big events, Valentine's, Christmas, birthday, special trip journal. I'm gonna take you on a trip, but journal for me and give me that as a gift.
- [72:49]
Robert Rodriguez
Is it bullet points? Is it?
- [72:50]
Racer Rodriguez
I tell you what, I used to sometimes just do bullets. Just like, I'll try to write more now because I've gone back, I try to write more, just more detail about what happened. Just because it's gonna be gone now I know it goes away, it's not gonna trigger your memory. In the earlier days, if I only had time to write some bullet point type stuff, I would just do that because I thought, no, cumin, gone, gone. It's someone else's journal. Just know that even like seven years ago, before my son started writing music for me, he had told me I found a diary. And he said Rebel told me his one year, five year and ten year plan. It was great. And I was like, what did he tell me? I don't remember. And I asked him, did you have it somewhere? He goes, oh yeah, I have it on my phone. Oh shit, it's not on my phone, it's in my diary. Oh please find it and send it because now I want to know. Now I want to know because your whole life changed after that. But I really want to know now with more interest than when you first told me. Because now we know that whatever you said is not the path that ended up. And so yeah, journaling is so powerful and so needed because you think you're going to remember it's just a meat computer, it's not going to remember it at all. And now I just find myself having to leave myself breadcrumbs all day because my memory's fading anyway, just to know what I'm doing, much less what I already did. But it does become iconic and you find some really fun stuff. And if we find a video, oh, my God, this is the best thing. We find a video of us playing, having a great time, 2003. And the weird thing you'll find if you videotape your kids and journal, you find these weird 20 year full circle moments. You know, full circle moments. Like, we just started working with a studio, their favorite animation studio in Japan. They love Japan. They love Japan. They're all about Japan. Japanese knife making. They build houses with no nails. My kids.
- [74:44]
Robert Rodriguez
Oh, yeah, the joiner is amazing.
- [74:46]
Racer Rodriguez
I found the videotape the first time I told them about Japan, me telling them, and I had, I taped it because I wanted to see their reaction because it was like, you're gonna love this place. And you see their eyes light up and they watch it now and go, that was the moment of inception. That was the moment we never forgot and we built upon. And to see that is amazing. But then you go back to the journal because there's stuff in the Journal that's not on video and vice versa. And I go, wow, you know, what we were doing, what I was doing while we were playing all those games? I was wheeling and dealing big deals in LA for once upon a time, Mexico and Sin City. And they see the context of what was happening in between those moments and you get this clear picture of, oh, my God, you can totally be all in as a dad and all in as a businessman. And that teaches them about life. Like, wow, you can have it all. You really can. You know, it just helps in so many ways to document your life.
- [75:39]
Robert Rodriguez
Do you have any other parenting hacks?
- [75:42]
Racer Rodriguez
The biggest life hacks is just working with your kids. Like I said, I stumbled upon it. But then when I saw Racer being so excited about what he learned about the creative process, and then I realized everything I was teaching them was life lessons. I went from fearing that they were going to resent me to realizing I'm going to make all of them work on a film with me, that's just going to be, this is what you gotta do part of the deal. Not so that you can become a filmmaker, because you're gonna learn more about life. These are life lessons. And it's the best way to do it. It's project based. It's challenging. So my son, when we did, we can Be heroes. I thought, okay, he's done a few scores for me because he'd been playing piano since he was 4. They all played piano and it was just to connect right to the left side of the brain. That's all we gave them that for. But he was our best piano player. And at the end, he did his last recital after high school was finished and he was already doing knives, Japanese knives was making. And he won Forged in Fire. Oh, my God, did I tell you? He won Forged in Fire. My son got on when he was 18, got on Forged in Fire as a TV show and won that TV show out doing all these other blacksmiths because he'd been teaching himself Japanese knife making. And I asked him, how did you win? You won $10,000. How did you. What was your mindset? You were using tools you'd never even used before. They were just throwing stuff at you and problem solving, creative problem solving. And he gives me this samurai answer that I love. He said, I convinced myself that I had already won. Somehow I won. So when I'd come up against the challenge, instead of thinking what I had to do to get past the challenge, I just needed to remember what I did to get there. I was just like, whoa, Musashi, Samurai stuff. Wow. I was like, wow. But again, you'll come up with innovations when you're thrown into the fire. And so he was doing so good with the music. He composed a couple of scores for me, but they were just all Synth based for Red 11 for that short film. That was a VR film. We can be heroes, though. That's my bag. I do orchestral stuff. We'll do the score for that together. That way I can teach him orchestral scoring because that'll be the next stage. He writes the first piece. Not even a picture. He saw what picture I was editing. He went and wrote it. To me. It's like John Williams was huge. It was massive. And I was like, okay, yeah, sure, let me check it out. I'll try it to picture. I didn't want him to see me try it to picture. I put it to picture. It matched. I doubled it, tripled it. It fit this whole 5 minute sequence. I called him up 10 minutes later, come back up here and watch. It hits everything perfectly. If you could do more of this there. More of that there. He was stunned. I said, good news and bad news. Good news is it's awesome. Bad news is I can't help you at all. I don't know how you did this. Where did you learn music theory? They don't teach you that in piano because I never learned theory. And I was always proud of that. That's the 10% I thought you didn't need to know different. Now he can manipulate music because he knows theory. He goes, oh, I learned it on YouTube. I was like, well, I'll tell you what, you're going to have to write the whole score, but I'll help you. I'll be your assistant. I'll edit it. I'll show you how you can repeat themes. And he sat there and he did it. And I could just see he was just under the gauntlet. I said, dude, this is the only way to learn. Throw you in the deep end. If you get a lung full of water, we'll fish you out. And his eyes were like this big. But years later he came back to me and said, I'm so thankful you did that. My whole life changed because I didn't know I could do it. But I had no choice. He knew I could not help him. I wasn't doing it as some kind of weird teaching exercise. I said, let me see your charts, the thing you have going on in the baseline. Only I would do a whole score with that. How'd you come up with all this other, I can't help you? And I remember the conductor said, you know, we recorded in Vienna, stopped midway.
- [79:23]
Robert Rodriguez
I think you sent me a video of him conducting.
- [79:26]
Racer Rodriguez
Yes. I said, go learn on YouTube real quick how to conduct. I want you to conduct one of them because I want video of you with a James Bond orchestra conducting your own piece, because I never got to do that. And you're so proud when your kids can take on the challenge and you see it just transforms their life. But the Vienna conductor stopped the score and said, this is a magnificent score. I can't believe you're 20. He was 20 at the time. But again, you throw your kids in the deep end. And I tell this to all the parents I can because it's counterintuitive. A lot of parents would say, I don't want to push for it. But I tell you, if you have the opportunity to work with your kids, do it because it enriches your life. Because you are mentoring them, they're mentoring you because they're figuring out shit like that that you never would have thought of. You're doing a project based thing together. That's impossible, that you're all going to overcome together. How many parents do you know try to give their kids advice on their job? And the kid's just like, dad, you don't know. You're not in my shoes, you're in their shoes. You're all trying to figure it out together so you're actually useful. You're not just some Geppetto who's worried about their kid all the time. I always say, don't just parent, partner, because after a certain age, as soon as they're teenagers, they replace you with their peers because you become useless to them. If you want a relationship, last long time partner, don't parent anymore. They don't need a parent anymore. They need a partner. They need a mentor. They need an OB1, because that's what they look for in their life. Mentors be their mentor. Their confidence grows when they're mentoring you back and they're seeing their confidence source and it's family time. You're checking all the boxes. I don't even do anything anymore. I don't take any job, any assignment, unless it's going to involve my children. Children. Because life is so good that way. You're checking all the boxes. You're preparing them for life. You're learning from them, they're learning from you. And it's family time. I was telling this to Stallone. I was having dinner with Stallone and his wife this pre Covid, right after Covid, something I'd just done Weekend the Heroes, this movie, the biggest movie on Netflix. And I was telling my son, did score. I wrote it with my kids and all this. And Jennifer was like. Her eyes were just wide, like, whoa. She hits Stallone, she goes, you don't work with your daughters. You don't work with your daughters. I was like. I was like, well, man, I'm gonna get anybody in trouble here. Maybe I should reel it back a little bit. But sure enough, next year, his daughters have podcasts. He would show up every once in a while to help boost some ratings and stuff. Now they have a TV show, Family Stallone. All of them together, working together. They live that dream and they're just so happy. So I tell people, because people can't unhear it when they hear it. They just need to know someone did it and that it worked to know, oh, I have a way to try that with my kids. Because I didn't know my kids would want to work with me. You know, what happened was my kid's teacher told me, you know your son Racer, when He was like, 15, he loves knights. We're studying knights, and we're talking about squires. And I asked, well, who would you want at Pregnancy Under? And he said, my dad I was like, really? He's never told me that. Did he say that? She goes, yeah, he said it to your dad. I was like, wow, How'd that feel to hear? It was wild. It made you see, kids have egos, too. They don't want to come just tell you that. They might tell someone else, but they're not going to tell you. So don't assume. Don't assume they don't want to be part of your life or be part of your work. Since I've been working with my kids since they were very young, I didn't know it would keep going for 20 years, and now it's just become the thing that we do. And they endlessly inspire me because they just have that confidence built in. But we're building a go kart together, so I know some parents would dismiss it as an opportunity like that and call it entitlement, but, wow, you're so wrong. So wrong. Let me set you straight, because this would be a curse on your life if you don't at least know this. I would say, and I'm curious if you agree or not, or if you have your own position on it, I would say that if you have an opportunity to work with your children, if you're in that position, because I know maybe not all jobs adapt to that, but take it. It's a tremendous gift to everyone involved and beyond. Because if you refuse to do so because you're afraid other people will call it nepotism, you are missing out the most important opportunity of your collective lives. Because look what happens as parents when we pass away. Don't we just give everything that we created to our children? Is that not entitlement? They had no part in building. There was an opportunity to build this with them so that when they inherited, they could go, I made this with my dad. Right? Right. So it's like, oh, thanks, dad, for all this shit that I had no part of that you went and made without me being involved at all. Getting that chance to have that mentorship go both ways, to build something together, to have that family time together because you were afraid someone would call you up for nepotism. Thanks, I'm having a ball. And it's inspiring everyone who's a parent to go partner instead of parent their child and have a relationship to last your whole life.
- [84:45]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah. I mean, what strikes me about it also, I mean, there's trust fund kids or trustafarians have a new term. Well, it's not exactly the same, but it gets used similarly. Nepo babies, right? But the connotation of that word I don't think applies to you at all, because at least, and this is not the Merriam Webster definition, but when I think of nepotism, there is a sort of unearned giving implied. There's an unearned giving implied. And then there is teaching, which you do. And then there is another thing, I would say a step above that, which is enabling someone specifically to have the confidence that they can figure it out, that they can learn. You didn't tell your son to go to YouTube and learn music theory, but you put him in situations or you hinted at forthcoming situations that would require a lot of tap dancing and figuring things out. And if we were to create some type of Maslow's hierarchy of working with your kids, there are different things you can impart or give. And I would say the lowest level is giving someone a fish.
- [86:03]
Tim Ferriss
Right.
- [86:03]
Robert Rodriguez
Instead of teaching them to fish. But then above teaching someone to fish, teaching your kids to fish is saying, hey, whether it's piano, fishing, music theory, or something that you are going to come up with on your own as a solution to a problem or a challenge or a dream that I can't even think of, I'm going to put you into enough circumstances that you have the confidence, you can fear forward. You have the confidence that not knowing is half the battle, but you will get there.
- [86:34]
Racer Rodriguez
You can tell them that stuff all you want, but when they're doing it with you, they learn so much.
- [86:38]
Robert Rodriguez
Exactly.
- [86:38]
Racer Rodriguez
I mean, that's why I say, well, it's like you sit even after the.
- [86:40]
Robert Rodriguez
Couch with your hands behind you, trying to come up with the comic strip. It's not going to happen.
- [86:43]
Racer Rodriguez
It's not going to happen. But you can tell them all that. But it's different when they've lived it, too. That's why I did the whole, if I get hit by a bus, you know what to do. Because now they know it in their bones. When we did a talk in Columbia with that. With a $7,000 movie that we did together, me and the boys, we went. They flew us down there to go talk, and everyone was, Columbia. These guys live in poverty. They were leaning forward to find out how to make a movie with no money so they could get out of there. And we were talking, and one woman was asking a question about screenwriting, and I was giving my answer. And Racer said, because he had written the script of me, now, he wanted to stand up and say what he's saying is really true because he had lived it already. It wasn't this is stuff he'd heard before, but now it really sank in because he was there. And what's cool is if you build your family up like your team like that. You know what? I hear so much now that I hadn't probably because I'm older and I've been around longer. A lot of people will just assume I'm too busy to do whatever project I'm doing alone. So they say, yeah, we can't wait to work with you and your team. Most people have a team. My team is my kids and it's got us more jobs. Like a video game company wanted to be in partnership with me and said, well, let me tell you who my team is. All my kids are gamers. I got them into games when they were really little. They know this world inside out. One of them is even a game designer. That's my team and they're in my house. We love this. We want to work with you and we're going to take it to the next level because we've done this other project and this other project and this was the process we did. Done deal. We're doing it now. Now my kids get to make a game, a real game, like a big ass game. And you get to do it together because you've already trained them to be. And it used to be a joke when I had so many kids, I had five kids. I would say, oh yes, my future cast and crew. I would just say it as a joke. Hey, it turned out to be true.
- [88:25]
Robert Rodriguez
Manifested.
- [88:26]
Racer Rodriguez
They're my cast and crew.
- [88:28]
Robert Rodriguez
So is there anything to the story of the double Rs besides the fact that you have the double Rs. Is there more to it?
- [88:37]
Racer Rodriguez
Yeah, double Rs was just. I'm from a family of 10 kids. My mom's name is Rebecca and my sister's name is Rebecca. We're the only RR's. My mom, my sister, my. And I always just loved the alliteration of that, you know, like the double R's. It was really powerful. R. Rebecca Rodriguez. Robert Rodriguez. So once you name the first kid with an R name, well then the second one and then the third one and I gave them regular middle names so they didn't have to be. So like there's Rocket, Valentin Rodriguez Avellan. He can be Valentin Avellan or he could be Rocco Rodriguez or Racing Rodriguez or Maximiliano Avellanex can. If they want to go into politics and not be pro wrestlers, they can change their name, you know, but I didn't know they were going to keep those names past childhood. I thought it was just fun. Kid names. Everybody has five names. One is Rogue, Joaquin, Cecilio Rodriguez. Everyone has five names. So he can pick his identity. I wanted him to just use it as a.
- [89:29]
Robert Rodriguez
Every time he has to fill out.
- [89:30]
Racer Rodriguez
A government form, he's like, God, God damn it, I'm not going to use that. But they didn't want to get rid of their first names. They loved their first names. So I thought, let's keep. If everyone's keeping their first name name, let's own it. Double R is kind of a cool logo. What's fun was that it just looks cool. Double R. And it means all of us. And it makes us like a tribe and it makes us all. And it gave them a lot of pride. I was surprised how much pride they had in it. And they all started coming up with ideas. Rick Rubin comes over and he saw them hold a picture up and he goes, double R. He goes, that was my artist name when he was a dj, he was Double R. I was like, that's amazing. This is one of my other favorite things that when I've told parents, they go, I want to try that with my kids. It was something I stumbled upon where I was having some kind of family talk with the kids. We usually have these things we call tribe talks, where you talk about anything. It's like, we're a tribe, we help each other out. They get so excited about a tribe talk. Let's have a tribe talk.
- [90:22]
Robert Rodriguez
And the tribe talk is asking one another for help.
- [90:26]
Racer Rodriguez
I have a new thing I want to talk about that's going to affect their lives later. Let's have a tribe talk about this. They're so excited as they learn about something that I want to share with them to prepare them for life, Something that I might have just learned that I wish I could take a time machine and tell myself, you can't. The closest thing to it is telling your children. Because I used to think any advice I give them, I'm afraid, might probably just go in one ear and out the other because it's not real to them yet. They probably have to live through it and find their own mistakes. No, they would process it and give it back to me and I would be like, where'd you get that philosophy? You told me that. I didn't tell it to you like that. I might have said, glass is half empty or half full. Oh, yeah, well, we built upon it. Well, they take what you tell them and build upon on it, Right? So this one was. I Thought, I'm going to be very honest with him and tell him all the major decisions I made. And they're like, walk them through. Because there's a funny scene, it came out because of a movie we did, another Spy Kids. There's a scene where the parents are talking about Operation Fireball with such memories about it. And the little girl asks, what is that exactly? Oh, we beat up the bad guy. We blew up his lair and all this stuff. And she's just like, you could have done it a better way. You could have gone to him nicely. You could have talked to him, seen his aesthetic, and it plays it out right. Thought, I'm gonna try that with my kids. I bet if I told them all the decisions I was faced with that a lot of times are, lose, lose. There's no clear way to go. And as you think 10 years later, you'll see what the real answer should have been. Nothing. There's never clarity. Sometimes I'm curious to see what they would have done with the knowledge more evolved. So I walk them through. It was fascinating. It was fascinating at every turn. Okay, A or B, which way would you go? I'm not going to tell you what I did. They both suck. And do you know what they say? I don't want to have to pick. No, you have to pick. I had to pick. You have to pick. They picked every time. It was the same. Until one, they go, it's a big one. You go, well, if that's the circumstances, that's what the knowledge you have. You go, yeah, that's all the knowledge you have. I would have done what you did, too. I would have left. I should have done that. I didn't. I stayed. Let me tell you what happened. Because I stayed. I should have done that. I knew I should have done that. But I went ahead and stayed because that's the right thing to do. I did the right thing, and it blew up in my face. Watch. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
- [92:46]
Robert Rodriguez
The right thing by external.
- [92:47]
Racer Rodriguez
Right thing, external. External. Status that anyone else counterintuitive, though, would say, with the evidence you have, as counterintuitive as it sounds, you should go that way. So you picked the right thing. I should have done that. But because I decided to do the right thing, you just felt so good after, and they were so excited, knowing now what life really is like, it's going to throw shit at you. That's no clear answer. Even with all this time, no clarity, they know that it's a lot tougher and they're Invested because it's you and them in a way. So I tell parents, try. I told. I won't tell you. But several hours were like, I'm gonna try that with my kids, for sure. I'm gonna tell my kids that I'm curious to see what they say, because you want to see if they remix a better version of you. But you might be surprised that it's just as unfathomable to them to have an answer as you did. Okay, life hack. My favorite life hack. Life hack. Have you seen. I showed you that little spark amp, right? That I can play guitar in your kitchen, you know, no time. Even when you try to make time, you can't make consistent time. You're supposed to walk 10,000 steps, you know, for your health, especially after 50. Whatever. No time for that. It takes an hour, an hour and a half. I don't have enough things to listen to or phone calls to make to go do that. Then I love guitar. I can't be playing guitar for a freaking hour. You know, we listen to Tom Morello on this masterclass. You want to get better at guitar play for an hour a day if you want to get better than that more. So I started trying to do an hour a day. I couldn't do it consistently, so I'd be like, God, I want to play guitar. I have no time to walk. So I put them together, the spark amps. They have some that are really small, and now they just came out with a headphone one that you just put it on. It's. The amp is built in, and you plug in your guitar wireless. And I used to have just the one in my pocket, their older one. And I put a playlist on of backing tracks, drums and bass for songs, my favorite songs that I play to. And I walk just around my house, and you forget you're even there. It's like the Angus Young workout. You know, he's always doing that. Or Eddie Van Halen running around. The music drives you. You don't even. The room is gone. You're in a stadium. You're walking across the stage. Your house is bigger than most stages. Walking across. I put on like an hour to an hour and a half playlist. This was like 10 or 12 songs easy. 15,000 steps, 17,000 steps easy. You don't even know you did it. You don't even remember walking. You're so transported. You're so busy doing this that I'll be at the end of my playlist going, I'm going to keep playing. And you Just keep walking. That's why you saw me in the crowd, walking through the crowd. I'm so used to playing, walking. I'm so used to walking. I went walking through the crowd, greeting everybody that I knew instead of. I said, well, shit, I can play and walk and not have to look in my. Because I got that training. But anyway, anyone who's a guitarist, the best life hack, you get an hour plus practice every day. I got so much better on guitar because of it. And you're walking and you're not even feeling it. I don't even remember doing it. Biggest life hack era. I couldn't wait to tell you. I call it the rock walk. The rock walk. Gotta do the rock walk. My friend goes out into the neighborhood with his thing. He just walks around the neighborhood.
- [95:54]
Robert Rodriguez
When I saw you on stage with your daughter, that's the most I've seen you play guitar.
- [95:58]
Racer Rodriguez
Wow.
- [95:58]
Robert Rodriguez
I've only seen your guitars in the house.
- [96:01]
Racer Rodriguez
Right.
- [96:02]
Robert Rodriguez
But that was the most actual playtime I have seen.
- [96:05]
Racer Rodriguez
Wow. Yeah, yeah. So funny. True. That's right, because I don't go just.
- [96:08]
Robert Rodriguez
Play a song with the hello Kitty guitar.
- [96:11]
Racer Rodriguez
Rocking the hello Kitty. It's a good guitar and it looks great.
- [96:15]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah. Robert, we'll have to do this more than once a decade, but thank you so much for all the stories and took a ton of notes. How can people learn more about Brass knuckle films? Where should they go? Should they check out?
- [96:30]
Racer Rodriguez
There's a brass knuckle films website where you can learn all about it, get all the updates, show you how you can invest. You'll see all the perks and things for the different levels. Get a part of it. It's a community. I think it's really going to appeal to anyone who's a fan of action movies, but also filmmakers, but just people who are interested and people who consume. Don't just be a consumer, make the money back. I want you to make the money so that you're not just consuming and watching a movie. If you like movies, this is the best way. I try to figure out ever since I was a kid, how could I get paid to watch a movie? Because I watch movies all the time. This is the closest thing. Yeah, Brass knuckle films. Beautiful.
- [97:12]
Robert Rodriguez
All right, folks, we're going to link in the show. Notes to everything tuned up blog, podcast. Thank you, Robert.
- [97:16]
Racer Rodriguez
Thank you for giving me a forum to tell people. I know people were here because everyone listens to your thing 100%. Just like with my book, I always wanted as soon as I made mariachi. I wanted to share it with people because I knew I would have appreciated hearing that as a filmmaker who had no money from a family of 10, that it was possible because everyone made it sound like it was not. So I just wanted to shout it from the mountaintop. And I still feel that same way. As I discover things I want to tell people because the feedback loop is amazing. You know, when people come back and tell you how they worked it into their life in their own way, it inspires you all over again. Inspires you even. You're like, well, you just inspired me now to go try that way. So, yeah, I love sharing that.
- [97:53]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, incredibly energizing. It's a virtuous circle. And for everybody listening and watching, till next time, be just a little bit kinder than is necessary to others and to yourself. Thanks for tuning in.
- [98:06]
Tim Ferriss
Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off, and that is five Bullet Friday Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between 1 and a half and 2 million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Final Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums, perhaps gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange, esoteric things end up in my field. And then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short. A little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. 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