Robert Rodriguez: preference

Transcript context

…Nice. They just start doing it. Lady Gaga had her fingernails in there, Josh Brolin’s doing his thing. Then I take a picture of them in character, do a line drawing of it, we project it on top, and mostly it’s the painting coming through, their line drawing with a little bit of their eyes painted in. You’re not going to believe these things. They couldn’t believe it, but it teaches them that thing about that the creativity is going to come through. So even though they’re already acting, they’re already being creative, we’re already making a movie. Like you said, that’s already a really great creative endeavor. When we would sneak off and paint, you could tell it’s firing a whole other part of their brain. It was funny, I think Josh Brolin’s girlfriend said, Josh said, “Hey, my girlfriend just said,” she said, his wife now, but at the time, “Are you guys doing drugs? You leave the set and you come back and you’re all excited.” and I go, “No, we’re painting. We’re painting. But that makes sense that you say that because when you get your creativity firing, it’s more powerful than any drug.” And we would come back and he’d be on the set going, “Is it bad that I’m still thinking about the painting?” And I’m like, “No, I think it’s good. I think it’s all good.” But you can tell it’s opening a whole other part of their creative brain. So you can be doing acting in a movie and the painting’s still going to tap, it shows how much untapped potential your creative brain has. So the more you can do, the more you’re firing off. And it was so cool. I remember we did one with Joseph Gordon-Levitt was painting. We came in and the table was like this and they said, we have a problem. You want him to throw the cards out, the playing cards out, but it’s so slick they go sliding off the table and we both look at it and we both got the solution at the same time. Oh, just have them throw them, wherever they go and then we’ll place them. And then digitally, it’s even better that he looks like he gets them all perfectly laid out to show what a card shark he is. But that’s what we have to do because we not going to, we’ll be here all day if we’re trying to get, if we’re going to worry about where they go, just go bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, and then we’ll place the cards down and everyone will pick them up and then we’ll marry the two in post. You just come up with creative solutions better, easier because you were just solving crazy creative solutions in the other one, what paint medium do I use? What kind of gel am I going to use? So when you come back to your main job, which is filmmaking, you’re like, “Oh, I can figure this out in two seconds.” So it helps you creative problem solve. I use? What kind of gel am I going to use? So when you come back to your main job, which is filmmaking, you’re like, “Oh, I can figure this out in two seconds.” So it helps you creative problem solve. So that’s basically working with my kids made me realize, oh, now I know exactly what I want to do for the next 10 years. I only want to make movies with my kids because I’m mentoring them, but they’re teaching me shit the age I was when I made Mariachi and Desperado. And their ideas are really sharp. So the mentoring goes both ways and it’s like the greatest parenting you can do because you’re building a project together and in the same boat together, figuring it out and it’s family time. You’re like checking all the boxes. So I thought my filmmaking going forward is going to be checking all the boxes in life. So I’m not not spending time with my family. We’re actually giving them lessons that they can go do, anything they want in life because they’re going to have different interests. But now it’s kind of like going to college and this college is like the best college because it pays you to learn, you get to do these crazy skills. My son is conducting the orchestra, the James Bond Orchestra in London for the Spy Kid score, the score he wrote, because I can’t write at his level because he was always our best piano player. And you get the charge out of working with him. And then by making a label, there’s this weird phenomenon that happens if you guys want to take your game to another level, I stumbled upon this idea. My son, that was my counterpart on that movie, Racer, he was my sound guy, like I said, came up with Sharkboy and Lavagirl when he was little, he became my writer, co-writer, co-producer, he had come to me and said, “I want to do VR type movie.” And I said, “Oh, well let me show you,” as an example of creativity and manifest, I said, “Let me show you how it works. Let’s make a company. We’ll make a company called Double R, Double R Productions.” Because we all have double R names, all the kids. So if anyone ever wants to do anything, we can use our company. So let’s make a logo and I’ll make t-shirts and notepads and stuff because once you have a company, you now have to make things for that company. Just like the advice I gave to people, stop aspiring, make a business card that says writer, director, cinematographer, I did, editor, because then now you have to conform to that identity. So now if I create a label like Double R, we’re going to come up with ideas. We’ll call up VR companies and say, “Hey, we have company, a VR company. Would you like us to make you a film for you to sell your headsets?” So yeah, they gave us a budget. They’re dying for content. They gave us a budget. We shot a 20-minute action movie we call The Limit with Michelle Rodriguez and Norman Reedus where you’re in an action movie with them. And it was killer. They made us a big Double R logo, animated logo.…

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