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#2310 – Robert Rodriguez Podcast Episode Description
Robert Rodriguez is a director, producer, and screenwriter known for films including “Desperado,” “From Dusk Till Dawn,” and “Machete.” He is the founder of Troublemaker Studios and Brass Knuckles Films.
www.brassknucklefilms.com
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#2310 – Robert Rodriguez Podcast Episode Top Keywords
#2310 – Robert Rodriguez Podcast Episode Summary
In this episode of the Joe Rogan podcast, the conversation centers around creativity, identity, and the importance of taking action. The guest, likely filmmaker Robert Rodriguez, shares insights from his career, emphasizing the significance of starting projects even without a clear path, as creativity often unfolds through the process. He discusses the concept of identity and how it plays a crucial role in achieving one’s desires, suggesting that many people have the desire but lack the identity to pursue their goals.
Rodriguez highlights the importance of being creative in all aspects of life, not just in traditional artistic endeavors. He shares personal anecdotes about working with his family on creative projects, which not only strengthens family bonds but also serves as a mentorship opportunity. He encourages listeners to embrace a creative mindset in everyday activities, which can lead to a more fulfilling and successful life.
The episode also touches on the idea of a “baseline” mindset, where one should appreciate moments above the baseline and not dwell on setbacks. Rodriguez advises committing to a body of work and not being overly precious about individual projects, as each endeavor contributes to overall growth and learning.
Actionable insights include the importance of starting projects without waiting for the perfect moment, embracing creativity in all areas of life, and maintaining a humble and open mindset to foster growth and innovation. The recurring theme is the power of creativity and action in transforming one’s life and the lives of those around them.
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#2310 – Robert Rodriguez Podcast Episode Transcript (Unedited)
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00:01
Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out.
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00:03
The Joe Rogan experience.
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00:06
Ai my day Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
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00:12
Oh, man.
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00:13
Very, very nice to meet you.
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00:14
Incredible to meet you.
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00:15
Fucking gigantic fan.
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00:17
Man, Ai appreciate that.
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00:18
I just love what you’ve done because, like, anybody who could start their career off and make a movie for $7,000
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00:25
Right.
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00:25
Is a hero. That’s such a just an incredible accomplishment to make a a movie that people still watch and talk about today for $7.
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00:35
It was an experience for sure. I I I had a really good plan, and it backfired. So I tried to right away when it worked in a different way, I wanted to share that experience. I wrote a book called Rebel Without a Crew that really inspired filmmakers because you knew that for it too. Just recently, I couldn’t believe it.
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00:55
I hadn’t read it since I wrote it, and I’ve forgotten a lot of the details. And now I can see why it inspired so many people because it you know, when you’re in your early twenties, six months feels like six years.
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01:07
Right.
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01:07
So when you read it now and go, oh my ai. From inception to making it penniless by myself to toast to the town. It’s like that. It was unbelievable. I couldn’t wait to shout from the roof rooftops to all the other filmmakers like me who thought they couldn’t get in. How I did it exactly.
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01:22
I wrote a book about it. And I’d read it now and I go, oh my ai. This is an impossible story. I keep laughing during the audio book going, okay. What you’re reading right now never happened before and it never happened again. It was like lightning in a bottle.
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01:33
And you would see every time I thought something wasn’t going my way and I was really bummed about it. Within weeks, an upshot beyond. And it really taught you that you just gotta follow your instinct. If you have an idea, go. Even if you know no one else has ever done this before, and you’ll end up someplace different.
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01:52
I wanna ask you about that because I know you end end up doing the same thing a lot. Yeah. Where it’s not manifesting so much in that way. You’re just ai following your nose. You’re doing something that just sounds ridiculous.
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02:01
They even when I try to tell one of my teachers what I was gonna go do that summer, I said, I’m gonna go try and make a movie. And he goes, oh, yeah. Who’s gonna be your director of photography? And I said, I didn’t wanna tell him I’m the whole crew. And I said, I’m I’m the DP. Oh, the actors are gonna hate you. You’re gonna be there setting up your lights all the time. I’m like, okay.
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02:19
I’m not even gonna tell him I’m the rest of the crew. It was just because Ai read this advice that meant to be good advice, but it sounded really depressing. It was someone shah bryden, if you sana write screenplays, write three full screenplays, throw them away. Your fourth screenplay will be it. Mhmm. It’s okay. I’ve written a screenplay.
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02:37
It’s very hard to write a screenplay. It’s hard to ai. It’s like three huge meals that you’re just gonna dump. Why not? Okay. Write the script. Throw it away.
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02:45
But ai arya throwing it away? Why not also shoot it and direct it? Light at yourself. Do the sound yourself so that you’re training yourself on each one. So I thought, where can I do this where I can get paid to do that? Like, my own film school where I get paid to learn.
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02:59
So I discovered that there were these straight to Spanish movies that are action movies. You go to the you’ve seen the H E Bs around here? There used to be a video section to rent movies, and there was a Spanish section. The Spanish section had movies ai they were just action movies.
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03:14
They had a soap shah. They were made for $30, 40 grand. Shot on video, no action, but it had a title that looked kinda like a US ai, like, Perros Raviosos Dos, ai, written like Vatsal Weapon two. And you would rent it and be ai, just ram. People in an apartment talking.
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03:27
It wasn’t so I I looked at the back of those and I thought, we can make a better one probably for, like, $5,000 because I had made a short film called Bedhead by myself with a wind up camera. It was eight minutes, and it cost $800. So I thought ai it times 10. I could do an eighty minute movie for $8,000.
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03:45
But with dialogue and everything, I bet I could get it for under 8, probably more like 5 or 6. Let’s go shoot a movie, ai it, shoot it. I’ll be the whole crew. So I learn all the jobs, and then we’ll sell it to the Spanish home video market. No one will know it’s me because it’s Robert Rodriguez, a bunch of Robert Rodriguez’s. I’ll make three of those because I was so young.
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04:04
I was winning a lot of film festivals with short films. But I thought, if someone sees one of my short films that’s winning all these awards, they’re not gonna hire me to do a short film. They’re gonna hire me to do a feature, and I’ve never practiced that. So I need practice.
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04:15
So I’m gonna practice three films, take the best scenes from them, have a demo reel with the money I make from them. I don’t know how much I can sell it for, so I gotta make it really cheap. Let’s just do the first one, then we’ll know. Then I’ll take that money and make my first American independent film, and that’ll be more serious.
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04:31
Because I threw it away like that, I just thought, well, let me just make something fun. Action ai, I guess Sai could do action. I started as a cartoonist. It was more comedic than anything else. I said, well, anything else. I said, well, sai action movie, let’s make it fun.
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04:44
Let’s make it about a guy with a guitar case full of weapons. Ai like Road Warrior who goes from town to town with a guitar case full of weapons. But I can’t afford Road Warrior on the first one. So how about I just do a, a Genesis story? So I took out these cards and I go, okay.
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04:57
Maybe he was a guitar player. In fact, that’ll be a funny title because I have this comedic sense. I thought, I’m gonna make a movie that’s got so much action, and it’s actually shot on film. But I’ll call it basically the guitar player, which promises no action whatsoever. Put it on the shelf.
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05:11
And if someone happens to be so desperate to watch it, they’ll be surprised. You know, that was like my joke to ai, but I just sana practice. So I did this method where I just got the cards and I go guy because I’m used to making short films. Guy with a guitar case walks into a bar looking for work. They refuse saying, we don’t hire people. We use a synthesizer now. He leaves.
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05:32
A guy with a guitar case full of weapons walks in after, shoots the place up, says he’s going after the guy who owns it because he did him wrong. So I put those two cards down and ai, okay. That’s how a short film would start, but shah. This is a feature. So let me put it’s gonna need, like, three scenes before this is how fast you write the script.
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05:51
I wrote that script because it was again, I’m throwing it away. I’m just gonna make something that I wanna see because no one else is gonna see it.
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05:56
You’re getting paid to practice.
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05:58
Ai I’m if I can sell it, I’ll be paid to practice. So I thought, okay. We gotta figure out who this guy okay. How about he’s a control ai who’s coming into town? But wait. Who’s the guy that shoots the place up? Let’s start with him in jail. I read a story about a guy in Mexico who was running his drug business from his from his jail cell, and he used it as protection.
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06:13
He could walk out at any time. Someone puts a hit on him in jail. He shoots them up, tells the bad guy, I’m coming after you now. I’m coming to your town. I’m gonna shoot up your town. He passes the mariachi on the road. The mariachi is a mariachi.
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06:26
The guy just wants to be a musician. We get to know who he is. And then he walks in the bar. And then the guy comes and shoots the place up. Well, now he’s gotta leave and go to another place, so now he’s gotta go meet the girl.
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06:36
Now this is gonna end. Oh, and because it’s a it’s a it’s a, you know, movie about a guitar player, he’s gotta have some ai of tragic past because road warrior had a tragic past. Mad Max, he lost his wife and kid. Oh my gosh. She has to die because that’s gonna be every movie is gonna be like a sad song in a songbook. So it kinda just broke that fast.
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06:53
And when did I shot
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06:55
do it like that with the index cards? Cards. I do this laid out on a table.
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06:58
Ai do this for everything. For every people. I I do this talk where I I by the end of the talk, I say, I keep these in my in my bag. It always makes me smile because I know I’ve made a million dollars with this before.
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07:11
And that’s a tiny little
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07:12
This is a tiny one you carry anywhere. I gave this to my kids when Christmas
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07:16
For people who are just listening, it’s closed together with rubber bands.
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07:18
Rubber bands. I gave this with in a in a cool little leather bag for my kids one Christmas. I thought they would say, what’s the shit? They loved it. I said, you can change your life for this thing. There’s a lot of times, you know, you go to a therapy not for answers. You go for questions.
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07:33
We have the answers inside us. Usually, we ask ourselves terrible questions. The therapist asks you questions ai, why do you why didn’t that make you feel? Why did you do that? And what’s ai? What’s going on? If we do our own questions, like, what’s next? What goes before this?
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07:48
Your mind comes up with the answer if you ask the right question.
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07:51
Mhmm.
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07:52
So I’ve used this for, like, we usually ask unempowering questions. You know, the words we use in ourselves are so important, but so are the questions, like, why am I such a loser? Well, I can
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08:01
give
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08:01
you 10 answers right now. But if I change it to, what three things could I come up with to start this week that would not just change my life, but everyone around me? You don’t come up with three. You come up with, like, 15. Just keep coming out. And as you look at them, you go, these kinda go together and are actionable. I can actually start this right now. I mean, you can literally change your ai.
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08:21
Business ideas, movie ideas, stories, just with a deck of cards. By the time I build up and show all the examples of it, at the end of the talk, I hold up one of these with the rubber bands to the crowd, and I sai, who wants to change your life? Why? His hands go up. I toss one out. They catch it.
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08:40
In fact, I remember my nephew about seven years ago caught one, and ai funny because he’s on Broadway now. It’s just, like, lets you map out your life. Another friend of mine, DJ Saloni, he’s an actor. He caught one, and he said, wow. That talk you gave was so empowering on how you wrote it.
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08:54
I went home, and I picked up an old script. I hadn’t picked up a lot. I just cut off the phone for three days, and I finished it. And I said, you finished the script in three days? I like the feedback loop that happens when you inspire somebody.
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09:06
Oh, I’m gonna try that because I had a bunch of half baked ideas that I’ve never gotten done that way. That’s you did it in three days? Okay. Yeah. If you shut the phone off, you can do it in three days. And now he has that movie’s out. It’s coming out.
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09:16
It’s called ai or flight with, Josh Hartnett. He wrote Wow. Yeah. After hearing the talk, he went and picked up this old thing that he thought. And I I get this a lot when I’ve talked to people. It’s really inspiring to them to hear other people. That’s why I’ll ask you questions about it too.
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09:29
Where did you develop this approach? Like, is this something you completely invented yourself just in to map out life on index cards?
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09:36
Writers, will often put index cards up to just kinda block out a scene. It’s a very it’s a it’s a it’s a visual way to see your story. Like, when you lay it out and you go, oh, this works. I’m missing a section here. But again, like, this is asking you, what can I put there?
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09:50
You’ll come up with a bunch of ai, and it’s it’s almost gives you, like, an overview. But I started it when I was a cartoonist. I I had a daily cartoon strip. So I would draw on different cards, different drawings. And every day, I had to come up with a comedic idea and a drawing and a story. And it was tough.
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10:08
You’d have to draw it out, and you would sometimes make two drawings that you really liked and go, oh, this kind of is the setup. One, two, three, payoff of the joke here. And they come up with it like that. So I kinda use it for everything. It’s kind of a a more I’m a more visual kind of person, so it helps you visually see something that’s normally, like, written words and stuff.
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10:29
So it started off Concepts and ideas.
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10:31
With cartoons and then were worked into ai, but I’ve I haven’t seen too many people apply it the way you’re you’re explaining it, like, you could actually use that to fix your life.
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10:40
Oh, fix your life completely. Because there’s another question. It’s just questions. You’re asking yourself. And amazing thing is once you start doing stories, that’s why I like doing a lot of original franchises. Probably, like, made the most original ai as a filmmaker because I don’t usually direct other people’s stuff. Because you realize you’re creating the story.
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10:58
Like, I just made this guy’s destiny happen, and I can give him a good outcome or a bad outcome. It’s in my control. And you realize you can do that with your own life. So you’re writing the story of your own life of who you’re gonna become, who you’re gonna be, and as a parallel. Mhmm. And you realize you’ve got that power.
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11:16
And when you realize you got that power, you can you can make literally anything happen. And it’s, I you realize art and life should be the same. You know, so many people I Ai was telling this story to somebody, and they said, wow. You’re really positive. And that kinda makes a lot of sense.
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11:31
You know, I have a project that’s pretty much altogether. Almost the pieces are there, but I guess I’m just not ready. You know what? It’s gonna be on your tombstone. Here lies so and so. He was never ready. You can’t wait to go do it.
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11:46
Like, with life, you don’t know what’s gonna happen. Yeah. You wanted to work out today. What happens? Bunch of shah, right, got in the way. Your ai flat.
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11:52
Fires went up. You just got fired. You can’t you’re not ready for life. You’re like this. Right.
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11:57
But for some reason, people or artists think that they need to be ready to create arya. Like, no. You gotta jump in and just start. You just need to start. You’re not gonna really feel ready till you’re almost done with a project.
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12:08
I didn’t feel ready to make that $7,000 movie till the last few days when I was like, okay. Now I wrap my head around it. I have to figure it out day by day.
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12:15
Yeah. The procrastination really cripples people.
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12:17
Yeah. We’re thinking that they need to know more. And you don’t realize the answers you get that you need are not gonna be figured out sitting at a desk, gonna be on the floor. Ai, I
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12:26
think it’s kind of a fear of incompetence and failure, especially if you’re undertaking something like starting a film. Like, some people just, for whatever reason, they did. They don’t have the confidence to just potentially fail and just just ai. Just get moving. Yeah. Just meh, you know, Hemingway my ai, Ari, on his laptop, he has his quote, top of his keyboard. The first draft of everything is shit. Yeah. And it’s Hemingway.
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12:49
Yeah. Oh
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12:50
my god. What a great fucking it’s like society’s important thing to know.
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12:53
Because he knows the process. Yes. If you trust the process Yes. You don’t have to worry. And if you question, well, I don’t know. You’re an artist. That’s what an artist should think, but don’t let that cripple you. I call it fear forward. Like, you should have some fear going into something. Yes.
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13:05
Like, I might screw up, but that’s good. That means you’re not wasting your time.
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13:08
I think it’s really important for people to hear someone like you who’s accomplished so much say it that way because they can internalize it and go, okay, this is what it is. I just have to do something. Yeah. I just to actually get moving. I just can’t sit around waiting for the perfect time because it won’t happen.
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13:23
It’s not gonna happen.
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13:25
And there’s that thing, like, you have to hey. You know, I always give people copies of the War of Art Pressfield book.
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13:31
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. It’s a great book.
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13:33
But it’s all about that. That book is if you’re try trying to figure it out, that book’s the ai. Read that book. It’s a short little book, super easy to read, and it gives you the tools to put in your head, like, oh, this is resistance. Like, this procrastination is this weird fear of doing it.
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13:50
Yeah.
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13:50
Because it’s not like the thing you’re doing is painful, which is really crazy. Like, writing out cool plot lines and this is that’s gotta be fun.
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13:58
It’s really fun. Fun. Now the making of it might be very painful. Tedious. But it’s a very short amount of pain versus a long term pain if you’re not living your dream.
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14:07
That’s the longest
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14:08
That’s the longest time you can spend. That’s the longest time in pain.
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14:12
There’s, You
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14:13
just rip the band aid off and jump in.
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14:15
I mean, I’m sure there’s a a bunch of people out there that are in the middle of that right now, and they’re trying
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14:22
to figure out. We have to keep reminding ourselves because we know and we gotta remind ourselves. Sometimes we forget, and we don’t apply it to other areas of life. We’ll talk about that. That’s when I really found success was ai when I took these ideas and moved it to another area.
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14:33
But, like, I tried to figure this out when I was I was doing that other method, the wrong method when I was cartooning because I would it would be so hard to come up with a cartoon strip each day, but I needed the money. And I had a daily cartoon strip here at UT. We had the biggest comics page in the country.
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14:48
It was really everybody wanted to be the next Burke bread that he’d come out of there. He did Bloom County. He was a UT bryden. And his his college art was, like, national stuff. So we all wanted to be him, so I would go like, this gotta be an easier process than sitting here and working it out.
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15:03
I wanna come home and develop a process where I sit on my couch, and I just picture it first. I picture the comic, I picture the jokes, I picture the drawing, then I ai just go draw it. Right? I’d be there two hours, three hours. My deadline’s coming up. Shit. It’s not working. So I have to go, fuck, start drawing again, and be like, okay. This kinda goes without one.
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15:20
Oh, oh, here it is. And I realized something really profound back at, you know, ai, and it’s really carried into mariachi, which is when you pick up the pen or the keyboard or the camera and you start, it starts doing itself. You realize it’s not you. It’s coming through you because there’s a creative spirit assigned to us that needs hands, and it’s not gonna reward you if you’re doing that because they can do that.
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15:49
But as soon as you pick it up, it takes over. So I I realized, oh, I just have to be a conduit or a pipe. And if I just start, I’m gonna be like, woah. And and you gotta keep your ego out of it because ai you go, wow. How did I do that?
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16:01
I wonder if I could do it again. You just shut ai. You just shut it right back up because you think it’s you and it’s not you. And I know this works because I taught it to my kids when they were younger. I thought I had to teach it to my kids.
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16:12
And since they hadn’t learned any bad habits, they went, oh, we so we didn’t have to do anything. We just have to start writing. It’s gonna come out and go, yeah. And they win. They wrote all this amazing stuff. And I was like, they don’t have to be reversed, you know, reversed.
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16:25
But that that was a very powerful thing. And I saw when I did, another $7,000 movie recently. I had a TV series based on Rebel Without a Crew where I I got independent filmmakers who had only made short films, and I gave him two weeks. So you gotta do like Mariachi. You can bring one person to be your either a cameraman or your sound guy, but you gotta do the whole movie yourself.
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16:45
Write it, direct it, edit it, and be shot in two weeks. That’s how long it took me to shoot Mariachi. And they’re ai, oh, we don’t know how we’re gonna do it. By the week they started shooting, they’re already go talking about their next three films. Like, they changed their idea of what was impossible. It just dropped out. So I was really curious to do mine.
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17:02
I was doing one based on my medical experiments I did to pay for mariachi, which is another story. And I definitely want to
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17:07
get into that.
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17:08
I brought my sana, Racer, because I knew he hadn’t been working with me on the movies for a while. I’m gonna make him my second guy. He’s gonna be my cowriter, my collider, and he’s gonna be doing the sound. I didn’t show him how to use the sound equipment till we’re filming because we’re documenting it.
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17:20
We made a documentary about it, and people really loved about how we made this movie today for $5,000. And he was fumbling around, and and we’re going. And I thought, they’re gonna he’s gonna hate this. You know? He’s got his own interest. He doesn’t wanna work on a movie. But I need him.
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17:35
And so he comes to me at the end of the day with his brother and goes, dad, the actor didn’t show up. The set didn’t match the the location didn’t match the script at all. Everything’s falling apart. We asked you how we’re gonna finish the day, and you said, well, I don’t know. See what happens. And meh thought, oh my god.
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17:52
Is this the movie that finally, you know, he can’t figure out? But by the end of the day, we figured it out. Their eyes were all wide. They went, oh, they don’t realize that’s the creative process, and that’s every day in life and in work. Your ai, you don’t you don’t know.
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18:04
You’re gonna figure it out as you go. Art should be the same way. And by the end of the two speak shoot, they’re interviewing him. He’s all waxing philosophical about the creative process ai he’s been doing it for years. He goes he goes Ai never knew how my dad did mariachi and then now I know because I just did this project. He didn’t know either.
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18:21
He just started and he figured it out day ai day most people never start. I mean he’s succinctly encapsulate everything I try to say in my book which was you just gotta go And identity is key. Identity is the main thing. All these people who are out there, you gotta tell them this.
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18:36
If you are listening and there’s something you’re not getting in your life that you really want, it’s not it’s not a matter of desire. You have the desire. There’s a there’s a missing element that I talked about in the book, and I’d forgotten myself. You know, we forget our own good advice.
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18:52
Over the years, people would say, hey. In your book, it says this. Ai go, I wrote that? That sai so smart back then. What what happened?
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18:59
I gotta go reread my own book. But it was this thing where I told people because they would come up to me a lot because I was making films really early on and say, I’m an aspiring filmmaker. You might hear that. I’m an aspiring comic. You know? I’m an aspiring filmmaker. Ai he goes, stop aspiring. You’re calling yourself an aspiring filmmaker. That’s now your identity.
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19:19
You’re always gonna be aspiring. Just say you’re a filmmaker. Take one of these cards and make a a business card even if you have to ai it, who you are. I’m a direct I I wrote I did one. I had it printed up. Director, cinematographer, editor, composer. I that’s who I am. Now you’re gonna have to conform to that, and you’re gonna start making films.
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19:37
That’s ai I started making these films even for Spanish video. And so you have to think it for and I forgotten that lesson. Sai, you know, I wanted to use your gym because, you know, I like to work out now. I never did. You started as a cartoonist. I’m surprised.
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19:51
I I was always an artist. I was really tall, you know, for school. Yeah.
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19:54
I started I was an illustrator when I was a kid. I wanted to do comic book illustration. Yeah. That was my thing. Yeah. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Visible. Now you know, I tend to go down a lot of rabbit holes. I want to know everything about everything. And if you’re like that, you need wireless that can keep up. Visible is wireless that lets you live in the know. It’s the ultimate wireless hack.
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20:18
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Speaker: 1
21:03
It’s fun. Right? Love because it’s just it’s not you. You know, you start drawing and then suddenly What how when
Speaker: 0
21:08
did you learn that as a I don’t think I knew that. I think I was doing that, but I didn’t know it.
Speaker: 2
21:13
Wow.
Speaker: 0
21:13
And until I started reading about it. Like, the the concept of the muse, the concept of the
Speaker: 1
21:18
Oh, right. Right.
Speaker: 0
21:18
Like that you’ll you just have to sit down and do the work and it comes to you.
Speaker: 1
21:22
Yeah. Well, it started when I was 19 doing the comic, but then it kept getting repeated.
Speaker: 0
21:26
But you realized it at 19.
Speaker: 1
21:28
I realized it at 19 that that was It felt ai something else, but then it really hit me later on. And I’ll get to that one. It’s a it it really hit me later on where I kinda put it all together around 02/2001, ‘2 thousand ‘2 when I was doing a movie where I was, again, kind of going back to the way I did Mariachi.
Speaker: 1
21:48
I was on a big movie though. I was the the writer, the director, the producer, the cinematographer, the editor, the composer. I was doing all these things. Plus, I was doing the production design now, and I was taking on more jobs to make it more like a handmade film, more like a lot of factory movies are being made.
Speaker: 1
22:02
I said, I want people just to feel different. I think they’ll they’ll get a feeling from it they don’t get from, you know, a McDonald’s process. You know? They’re still good, but, you know, there’s something about a home cooked meal. And I didn’t even know how to read or write music, and I was writing music for a hundred piece orchestra.
Speaker: 1
22:21
And I was like, how am I figuring it out by notes going? It’s only 12 notes. Even less than a scale, so you hit three notes, four notes. I guess ai that’s a bad note. Okay. That’s pleasing to the ear.
Speaker: 1
22:30
And I was just writing a note by note because it’s a kid’s movie, so I figured it should sound like a kid wrote it and I’m like a kid. It should sound like that. And I was writing pretty complex stuff, but not knowing what I was doing. I go, how is this even possible that I’m doing all these jobs Sai wasn’t trained in?
Speaker: 1
22:44
So I went on Amazon, and I looked up any book that had the word creative or creativity in it. I just ordered it. I don’t know what section it came from. They just ai. And I’m thumbing through them, and one of them was really speaking about the creative process, how it worked.
Speaker: 1
22:58
And I was like, wow. Wow. That’s how it is. That’s how it is. And then it said gels and mediums.
Speaker: 1
23:03
Ai I was like, oh, this is a book particularly about painting, but it applies to all the other things I’m doing. That’s when I realized that it’s all linked. Yeah. That creativity is 90% of any of those endeavors. 90% of it is just being creative.
Speaker: 1
23:19
The technical part, like write reading or writing music, and there’s a lot of great musicians who don’t read or write music. They’re fantastic. The technical part, you can fudge that. Like, how how to shoot the movie. You can you can fudge a lot of the technical stuff. 90% is created.
Speaker: 1
23:32
And if if you know how to be creative, you can literally jump from job to job and do it really well. Because you’re coming with your own experience, your own point of view. That’s why I teach my actors to paint on the set because they’ve never painted before. And they’re already being creative by acting, but in between takes we’ll go paint a portrait of their character where I take a photo of them in character and have them paint a background.
Speaker: 1
23:55
I said, just pick up the paint. You can use these three meh, any color you want. The paintbrush is gonna know where to go. Even though you’ve never painted before, it’s gonna know where to go. And they do it, and I put a stencil of a line drawing of their face over it.
Speaker: 1
24:08
I’ll show you some. You’re not gonna believe it. Josh Brolin was way into it. Lady Gaga did one. Bruce Willis did one.
Speaker: 1
24:14
And it’s just ai magic how it comes together. And it’s to teach them that you don’t have to know. You know, we always think, I need to know this. I need to know that. What about the other side? Half half of the battle is knowing. What about the other half?
Speaker: 1
24:25
Not knowing, I ai, is the more beautiful and where the magic is because you don’t need to know what’s gonna happen. You just need to show up. You just need to pick up the pen. You need to do the keyboard. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
24:33
Because it just starts coming through you, and they see it, and it helps them go back to the set and solve any creative problem because it was much harder in the fan room figuring out gels and mediums and all this stuff. They go back to the set and they can solve any problem instantly.
Speaker: 1
24:46
And and you think that they’re already in a creative mode by acting, but it fires off a whole other part of your brain
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24:52
to go do something
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24:53
else creative at the same time. I remember on the sai, Josh goes, is it okay? I’m still thinking about the painting. I go, I think so. I think it’s alright. Let’s sai. Let’s see. That’s what he would say to you. It’s so funny.
Speaker: 0
25:07
That’s ai a Miyamoto Musashi quote from ram Book of Five Rings.
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25:11
Right. Right.
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25:11
Once you know the way broadly, you could see it in all things.
Speaker: 1
25:13
Yeah. You start to see and then so that’s where I started piecing together that it was something because I I really wanted to look it up because it would feel like when I would go to write the music, I don’t have to write very many notes before it feels like I’m being pulled by the hand.
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25:28
Mhmm. Like, I didn’t make that. I didn’t make that.
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25:32
Right.
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25:32
I didn’t do that, and I didn’t do that. A lot of it. And then ai
Speaker: 0
25:35
shouldn’t say that, and a lot of comedians say that too.
Speaker: 1
25:38
Well, if you ask any other disciplines Yeah. Ai go I asked Jimmy Vaughn, how how did you play that, lecture? That solo was amazing. Did you have that worked out? It ai it’s kinda like tuning a radio. You know, if you get it just right, you can’t even believe what’s coming through. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
25:52
You know, you always hear everyone’s version of that. And so I called it something. I thought, I’m gonna call it the creative spirit. Like, there’s a creative spirit. Imagine the creative spirit that’s assigned to you, and if you’re someone who’s just ai, I don’t think I can I don’t think I can do this or that?
Speaker: 2
26:06
And they
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26:06
don’t and they don’t pick up the pen. They don’t they don’t actually start. How frustrated that spirit would be. Hovering over to the sun. Oh ai god. Well, you just it’s not you. It’s not you. You just let me through.
Speaker: 0
26:17
And it’s crazy that that concept has been around forever. This concept of the muse, but yet still
Speaker: 1
26:23
Ai never heard it like that where it’s ai takes it still feels that you have to do a lot. About it. You just go, Ai still need to be a pipe.
Speaker: 0
26:30
Yeah.
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26:31
A clean pipe, a conduit, sai more stuff comes through. And that means take your ego out of it. I mean Just just do the work. Just show up and start.
Speaker: 0
26:38
Yeah. Pressfield literally thinks that it’s like like an angel or like some sort of a divine presence that presents you. I think I think there’s something to it, man. Yeah. And it’s it sounds so kooky, but if something is super successful for amazing people and they’re all telling you the same thing, like, why do you have to nah, meh.
Speaker: 0
27:01
I’m not stupid. I’m not gonna believe in the concept that whatever the fuck it is, there’s something that happens when you’re creative where you feel like an antenna. You feel like you just take these ideas are coming to you. They’re entering into your mind. It’s not physical effort.
Speaker: 0
27:16
It’s not like you’re picking up bricks and stacking them on the wall, like, something is happening to you.
Speaker: 1
27:21
Yeah. You’re tapped into, I had a friend of mine, Tim Ferris, who’s over at my house, and I was telling him about some kind you know, it’s very creative house, really, because it’s it’s where I do a lot of my creative work. And a lot of creatives like coming to this place. Sai you have to come check it out.
Speaker: 2
27:34
So you
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27:34
can see the Frizzettas I have.
Speaker: 0
27:36
Oh, you have original Frizzettas?
Speaker: 1
27:37
Yeah. Oh, okay. We’ll get we’ll get to that. We’ll get to that.
Speaker: 0
27:39
Oh my god.
Speaker: 1
27:40
But, it’s just totally totally you have so much fear for that. It’s totally creative place. And I like people to come there, but it’s it’s just inspiring to be in an environment where everything around you is is about creativity because then you get in that headspace.
Speaker: 0
27:54
Yeah. And
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27:55
you’re able to do more because you realize it’s not you. It’s just coming through you, and you just gotta and you just have to witness it. And it just takes a lot of the load off of you. A lot of people can start easier if they know, oh, it doesn’t have to be me. Ai, my kids, like, oh, it’s not I don’t have to do it. I just have to actually pick up the meh. Yeah. It’s it’s very freeing.
Speaker: 0
28:13
Yeah. It’s, it’s something that everyone should learn. If with anything in life, anything that you’re doing in life is just to take action and trust this process that happens. Yeah. But you you have to do things. You can’t just sit and wonder, and it’s that procrastination, the anxiety about starting that’s, like, crippling for people.
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28:30
It
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28:30
keeps them getting off the ground.
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28:31
And they’re doing that to themselves. You’re literally doing this to yourself. Meh. So when you say, well, I don’t know if I you just chopped off your meh. Yeah. Right on the at the beginning of the race. Right. Right. Right.
Speaker: 2
28:42
Or you
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28:42
go, well, I tried it once before. You just cut the other one off. I mean, you’re literally doing you’re you’re your own worst enemy. I had this one gal in fear of failure. This is the base the best thing. One one gal that went on the talks, she said, okay. You’re all positive, but what do I tell myself when I just spent a year and a half doing something and it didn’t work out?
Speaker: 1
29:03
I said, well, that’s a very negative way to ask that. Can you rephrase the question first, then I’ll then I’ll attempt? And she went, I learned a good lesson the hard way. I said, well, that still sucks. If you’re focused on the failure, have you followed your instinct and it didn’t work out? It doesn’t mean you’re wrong.
Speaker: 1
29:18
Sometimes the only way across the river is to slip on the first two rocks. It’s the only way. And if you just stay there, you’re not gonna go. So you have to embrace the failure. Because if you’re going on instinct I mean, you’re doing it literally on instinct, not like someone said, meh. Go over there.
Speaker: 1
29:30
There’s a money making scheme. Go do that. Literally, you had the instinct. And my best example is Four Rooms, a movie I did with Quentin. Because if you study the ashes of your failure, you’ll find the key to your next success.
Speaker: 0
29:42
That was the movie where there was four different stories playing simultaneously. It’s
Speaker: 1
29:46
four different movies, four different stories. And I love short stories ai I had made a bunch of short films. I thought, oh, I wanna do that. So when Quentin asked sana I asked the audience. I like asking the audience, how would you answer this? Quentin goes, hey. I’m gonna make a movie called Four Rooms.
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29:58
Four different directors. You gotta use the Bellhop. It’s New Year’s Eve. You’re in a hotel. You can’t leave your hotel room. You wanna do it? Hand goes up.
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30:04
Now just on instinct. Now ask the ai. Was I wrong to just go by instinct, or should I study it a little bit? Nobody really knows the answer. What would you say? Would you study are you more studious? You’re more are you more instinctual shah me?
Speaker: 0
30:17
%. Yeah. I’m primarily instinctual.
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30:20
I figured because that’s why you’re here right now because we’re not that smart. I’m not that smart. I I couldn’t figure this shit out. It’s because I was just at an instinct to go that way when everyone else was going that way. And you’re gonna stumble. You’re gonna fall, but you’re gonna stumble upon. You’re gonna stumble upon ideas no one thought of because you’re going the way that’s not picked clean already. Right.
Speaker: 1
30:39
So I would just ai four rooms. I said, yeah. Now if I had just studied a little bit, I would have seen that anthologies like that never work. Like, even when it’s Scorsese, you know, Woody Allen and Coppola, they did one. Nobody goes to see it because they don’t know how to wrap their head ai.
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30:52
What’s three movies? It’s anthology. It doesn’t work. If Ai studied first, should I have changed my answer? Nobody knows how to answer. Well, I’m gonna go on instinct.
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31:00
I’m gonna say I say instinct anyway. Movie bombs doesn’t do well at all. Now I could be really upset about that and go ai, wow. I gotta be really careful now going forward. I have to tiptoe around as an artist. Well, that’s that’s not the state of mind I was when I won Sundance.
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31:13
I was throwing stuff out.
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31:15
Can I offer a counter to that?
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31:16
Sure.
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31:17
It only bombed financially.
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31:18
Okay. No. No. I’m not I’m not done with the story.
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31:20
Artistic sai is a very good movie.
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31:22
There’s a lot of great stuff in
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31:23
it,
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31:23
but this goes even better than that. My whole thing is examine the ashes of your failure, and I don’t find one. I find two keys in there to my biggest movies directly from that experience. So my instinct was right, but, again, sometimes the only way across the river is slipping on the first two rocks. I was on the set.
Speaker: 1
31:39
Had to be New Year’s, so I dressed everybody up in tuxedos. And Antonio had just done Desperado. The next week, he came and appeared in there. The little boy from Desperado, he had a little brother, so I hired him. And then I just found the best little actress who’s a half Asian girl, Asian American, so I cast an Asian mom.
Speaker: 1
31:56
So it would look like they were a family. So I’m seeing Antonio and Tamela and Tamida all dressed up to deny ai. I’m like, wow. They look like a really cool international spy couple. What if they were spies and the two little kids that can barely tie their shoes don’t know it?
Speaker: 1
32:11
They get captured and the kids have to go see them. So Ai Kids, there’s five of those now. The other key to success that I got on that set was Ai love doing short films. That’s why I signed up for it. It didn’t work, but I’m gonna try it again. Not four stories, three stories ai a three act structure. Not four directors, but the same director.
Speaker: 1
32:30
I’m gonna try why on earth would I try it again? Except that I ai just done one, and I figured out there might be a different approach. That’s Sin City. So Sin City and Spy Kids directly came from that thing you would call a failure if you if you focused on the failure. Wow.
Speaker: 1
32:45
So go back and look tell everybody. Go back and look at something that you had a real instinct for that you did, and it didn’t work and sift through the ashes of it, and you’re gonna find either that you’ve already had the success from it and you didn’t realize it. What you really need is a boost of confidence in your instinct, or you you will find something that will be the key to your success.
Speaker: 0
33:07
Well, that’s also the the magical part of the creative process is that it’s not always gonna work, and that’s actually good. That means when it does work, it’ll be even more rewarding.
Speaker: 1
33:17
Yeah. I mean, mariachi didn’t work.
Speaker: 0
33:19
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Speaker: 0
33:38
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Speaker: 0
33:59
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34:20
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Speaker: 1
34:45
I failed with that. I was gonna sell that to the Spanish on video. This is what blew me away about rereading the book. I’m like, oh my god. I was so bummed. I finished making that movie. And you you see in the book, clearly, I’m a penniless clueless filmmaker making this movie, I think, by myself.
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34:59
I think it’s gonna work. I don’t know. A borrowed camera. I didn’t even know how to use it. I call a place in Dallas that rents this equipment.
Speaker: 1
35:06
I go, I got an ARRI sixteen s, you know, on the phone. It has two motor looking things. One has one number, and one’s got many. Oh, that’s a variable speed motor. Ai means you oh, can I do slow motion with it? You know, I was literally learned like that.
Speaker: 1
35:18
And then I went and shot the whole movie. I had to shoot the whole movie in two weeks. And I couldn’t develop the film till I got back. So I shot ai, not knowing if that camera was even working.
Speaker: 0
35:27
Is it true that you invented the walk away with the explosion behind you?
Speaker: 1
35:32
Yeah. That was accident. Yeah. Yeah. If you can look at all the compilations, it starts with Desperado. Wow. Because it was an accident. I didn’t think you know, this is what happened. So Desperado, in the script, it says he throws some grenades over the side of this building to blow up the bad guys and him and and and Salma walk away.
Speaker: 1
35:49
It was just supposed to see some body parts fly. It was just a grenade. You know? It was supposed to be a nuclear explosion. Just some body parts, some shrapnel, and some smoke. But it’s two stories up, and we get there. We’re shooting so fast.
Speaker: 1
35:59
I went to my poor effects guy who was just, you know, so busy just having done a big shootout. And I went, Mindy, I know you don’t have body parts we didn’t ask for, but do you have anything we can just it’s so high up. Is there anything you can launch up there? And he goes, oh, no. Ai don’t have anything.
Speaker: 1
36:12
Sai Ai need something to come up because I wanted some shit to fly up behind him. Meh goes, I give you a fibro. I said ai? Like ai what? It’ll go up, 60 feet, but it’s a but it’s propane. So it’s gonna burn off like that. How fast does it burn off? Like that. So okay.
Speaker: 1
36:28
I’ll shoot slow motion. Okay. But she doesn’t shoot slow motion. I tell the actors, just keep walking. Don’t turn around because it’s supposed to be pretty big, and it might be really hot. I want you to singe your eyebrows. Just walk fast.
Speaker: 1
36:37
Walk fast and determined, but I’m gonna shoot it’s gonna feel funny. But when I shoot it in slow motion, it’ll look like you’re just walking normal speed, and it’ll slow down the explosion. Well, it looks fantastic. I remember when I showed you. Yeah. It looks fit. See, they’re just walking. They don’t know. Look at it. Tonio’s just like look at her.
Speaker: 1
36:50
She’s just like so calm. But if you play that if you speak that up and played it normal motion, it goes by like that.
Speaker: 0
36:55
It’s crazy because that that scene has been copied so many times.
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37:00
It became an action, like, staple. Look, so
Speaker: 0
37:03
They even used it for Fear Factor.
Speaker: 2
37:05
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
37:05
Now that I’m thinking about it, we use it for one of the ads for Fear Factor. This is me walking away and they blew some shit up behind me.
Speaker: 1
37:12
Because it’s just like it’s this cool attitude and working with music.
Speaker: 0
37:15
I thought it was the dumbest shit ever.
Speaker: 1
37:16
When I first
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37:17
saw TV show.
Speaker: 1
37:18
Oh, no. About people
Speaker: 0
37:19
leave dicks. It wasn’t a accident.
Speaker: 1
37:21
Silly thing of it. It’s it was just an accident. Again, the accidents that she stumbled upon. There you go. Alright. That’s all there. That’s where it came from. So, that came out in February, of 1995. Just six months later, Dust tyler Dawn came out, and I made that. Ai I enjoyed it so much.
Speaker: 0
37:40
Fucking love that movie.
Speaker: 1
37:41
Oh, thanks.
Speaker: 0
37:42
I love that movie.
Speaker: 1
37:43
Sai showed this explosion shot, you know, the movie to Jim Cameron. He’s watching it. I was waiting for his first, you know, he he was doing, like, movies ai Terminator two blowing the shah up everything. So I was wondering if you like my little rinky dink thing, and his hand went up in the air when he saw that moment.
Speaker: 2
37:55
So I thought,
Speaker: 1
37:56
yeah, I’m doing that. I’m gonna do that dust dust vatsal dawn. Dust till dawn, I had it where the actors come out doing the dialogue, though, and the explosion just keeps going. And they’re walking away while having a conversation. Yeah. So within two move within six months, you saw two versions of that. So people just started doing you see it in Meh and Fire.
Speaker: 1
38:12
You see I mean, you see, like, whole compilations of it. But it’s an accident.
Speaker: 0
38:15
Weird for you. Like, you’re like, bitch, that’s mine.
Speaker: 1
38:18
No. No. Because it wasn’t mine. Again, it came it came Of course. If Ai if I had engineered it, yeah, Ai be really smart. But, again, like I said, I’m not that smart. Ai you just stumble up
Speaker: 2
38:27
to fun.
Speaker: 0
38:27
Cool that it’s become, like, a part of, like, action films. Yeah. Dust till Dawn is so first of all, who knew Quentin Tarantino would play such a good fucking psychopath?
Speaker: 1
38:36
Who knew? What’s so fun is, he’s in Desperado. Now Ai met him on the film festival circuit. So in 1992, we’re both had movies with Ai in Black in violent movies. In fact, I met him at the Toronto Film Festival for Reservoir Dogs. I had mariachi because they put us on a panel together to discuss violence in the movies in the ai, even though it was only ’92.
Speaker: 1
39:01
And so we met there and became friends, and he said, oh, ai next movie is in Pulp Fiction. Ai I just thought, this crazy guy, he’s so funny. And he ai, I’m gonna write him in the Desperado. It was before he did Pulp Fiction or any of that. So by the time Desperado came out, Pulp Fiction was a phenomenon, and then people cheer when he walks on state on set.
Speaker: 1
39:17
But when we were doing that four ram, here’s another thing that came from four rooms. If I hadn’t done four rooms, there’d be no dust till dawn. When we’re doing, four rooms, he takes me into a room and he starts reading me. And I got on it’s on the Internet. I put it out.
Speaker: 1
39:30
Him reading me the first scene of Kill Bill. This was in, you know, eight years before he made the movie. And then he said, my very first script I wrote and I didn’t get paid shit for, like, $1,500, was Dust tyler Dawn. And now because of the sex of the success of Pulp Fiction, they wanna make all my old stuff. And these producers have it. I didn’t get paid dicks.
Speaker: 1
39:53
I’ll do a rewrite, and you and I will go in together. You should be the director because it takes place in Meh, and you’re Mexican. So I was ai, alright. Wow. That’s the second time he read to me the scene in 02/2001.
Speaker: 1
40:04
There was a there’s one video where he’s even younger in, ‘4 rooms reading me a second version of it. So over the years, he would be, we had an office next to each other when I was writing Desperado and he was writing Pulp Fiction. So he’d read out scenes. There he is. And I would read out, you know, show him scenes from Desperado. Fuck. And we just became friends there.
Speaker: 1
40:22
He was originally gonna make Pulp Fiction for a Ai, and then they passed on it because they thought it’s weird. It’s long. And he went did it ram Miramax.
Speaker: 0
40:29
Did he wanna be the serial killer?
Speaker: 1
40:31
I asked him to because I knew he he liked acting, and I and I just knew him as a person. Like, a lot of tyler, I’ll cast somebody just by meeting them. I’m gonna cast you in a room because you just ai you can there’s something about them that captures you that’s gonna just be magnified when you put a 50 feet on screen.
Speaker: 1
40:47
That’s why I’ve discovered a lot of talent that way. Ai why I found Salma. I just knew she was gonna be it. Ai he was so so great. I Ai thought this is a really fun character. I bet he could he likes that.
Speaker: 1
40:59
I can get a performance out of him, and he’ll come in with a take on it. So I said, I’ll do Dust tyler Dawn. Would you be interested in playing Richie? He goes, like, I’d love to play Richie. So, okay.
Speaker: 1
41:08
Well, sai he was the first person we cast, and he’s fantastic in it. He’s really great. He’s really scary. Got all into character.
Speaker: 0
41:15
He was terrified.
Speaker: 1
41:15
Kinda had this really cool haircut. I I showed him a picture of, Burt Reynolds in Deliverance. I said, dude, you got the haircut of Deliverance. It was really cool.
Speaker: 2
41:24
He was
Speaker: 1
41:24
like, oh, wow. You know, he just really slipped into it. He was always in character, and he was always intense on on the set. It was really fun to see him.
Speaker: 0
41:31
He was very believable.
Speaker: 1
41:32
He really enjoyed that performance. I said, dude, you’re so good in this movie. Anyone talks shit, they’re just talking shit. Bullshit through gritted teeth. Don’t listen to anybody. You’re really great in this movie. Meh. No. Listen. The time.
Speaker: 0
41:42
You can’t listen. Anybody’s talking shit about Quentin in that movie? Shut up.
Speaker: 1
41:45
Oh, yeah.
Speaker: 0
41:46
He nailed it. He he scared the fuck out of me.
Speaker: 1
41:48
Well, when you get a lot of success, people would tend to, you know, to get an issue with Arya. You know? Of course. So they would they would say stuff about him and that and being in a way, he shouldn’t be acting in his movie. You know? Of course. Like, ai like, dude, this will shut they’ll shut meh up. And if it doesn’t, then it’s just bullshit because you’re really great in the movie.
Speaker: 0
42:03
Yeah. You just have to tune out the noise.
Speaker: 1
42:05
Yeah. How do you how do you how do you get past the noise?
Speaker: 0
42:07
I just tune it out. I’m busy. Sai busy.
Speaker: 1
42:10
Yeah. I
Speaker: 0
42:10
don’t read anything about me. That’s the big one.
Speaker: 1
42:13
Yeah. Don’t read it. That’s true.
Speaker: 0
42:14
Don’t engage. Like, sometimes people send me things. I’m like, don’t send me that, man. I don’t wanna read it. I’m not gonna read
Speaker: 1
42:19
it anyway. Send it
Speaker: 2
42:20
to you.
Speaker: 0
42:20
Yeah. Friends.
Speaker: 1
42:21
Oh my god. They don’t know any better. My sister might send
Speaker: 0
42:23
me something. Yeah. It’s just I just just leave me out of it.
Speaker: 1
42:27
I got some really good advice early on. I like to share this people. I share this with my actors because they get a lot of shit sometimes. I was afraid to even do, like, a bigger movie because I was flying under the radar with, you know, Mariachi and Desperado, and and then Spielberg sees Desperado ai to do Zorro with Antonio and me directing.
Speaker: 1
42:44
Right? So I go, cool. I’m working with Spielberg. And vatsal like, oh, shit. I’m working with Spielberg. You probably remember this time because we’re about the same age.
Speaker: 1
42:51
Remember the eighties and nineties? People would just throw shit on him all the ai, all the time. Mhmm. No respect for this guy. They were so jealous. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
42:59
Public, everything. He was ai, he couldn’t catch a break, and he was making, like, the coolest move. That movie sucks. Oh, Jurassic Park sucks. It was unbelievable.
Speaker: 1
43:06
So I thought, oh, shit. It’s because he’s got his head way up. Maybe I should fly into the radar and Ai gonna make if I sai make a movie with him, what chance do I have? I went back and rewatched, you know, ai, Temple of Doom, which people say, that’s not as good as Raiders.
Speaker: 1
43:18
I ai it go for if I can make a movie that’s an eighth of that, I’d be lucky. So I call them and say They’re
Speaker: 0
43:24
big close encounters.
Speaker: 1
43:25
I I know. Jeez. That’s sai fucking incredible movie. Movies. But they but do you get that much success and and and then people kinda resent. Right? It
Speaker: 0
43:32
comes with the territory.
Speaker: 1
43:33
Yeah. But how do you get ai past it? I was curious for him. So I I I said, hey, man. I just saw Temple of Doom. I don’t know how I’m gonna make this movie for you. He goes, oh, don’t worry about that. Just make a great movie. So then I go to him and I say, I’m afraid that if I make a movie at the bigger level, I’m just gonna be a target like him.
Speaker: 1
43:51
I mean, he’s the best filmmaker, and he’s getting shah kicked out of him. I said, how do you do it? How do you do it? Do you just you get rocks thrown at you all day long. He goes, oh, Robert. You just don’t blink. Ai was like, wow.
Speaker: 1
44:05
I sound like a Clint Eastwood line. Sai go, wow. That’s how he did it all this time. It’s just like, dude. Just don’t blink.
Speaker: 1
44:11
Commit to making a body of work.
Speaker: 2
44:14
Try
Speaker: 1
44:14
ai tell filmmakers sometimes ai they have a success for the first one. They get really afraid of the second one because they think, oh, shit. Now I might fail. Right? The fail the the fear of failure cripples a lot of people. If you commit to just making a body of work, a body of work ai he did, he just made any movie he wanted, some hit, some don’t, some over perform, some under perform.
Speaker: 1
44:33
A movie like Mariachi that was not supposed to go anywhere way over performs. And you can’t tell what’s gonna be the one. So just commit to a body of work, and now no one gives them any shit.
Speaker: 0
44:44
Now I think it’s also important to recognize that the people that are tossing shit your way, they’re doing it to distract themselves in the fact that they’re not contributing anything. Totally. It’s almost always the case of that.
Speaker: 1
44:53
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
44:53
That’s what the critic is. The critic would not be a critic if they had something to contribute. So they see other people that are taking that chance and going out there, and they’re they’re acting on their instincts, and they’re putting something together, and they try to attack all those things as being garbage because really, they’re not contributing.
Speaker: 1
45:13
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
45:13
And so they’re And
Speaker: 1
45:14
they may very well want to.
Speaker: 0
45:15
Easy to attack.
Speaker: 1
45:16
And they may very well want to, but they’re getting hurt by fear.
Speaker: 0
45:19
Yeah. The both the same instincts that make them wanna attack successful people are the same things that hold them back from being creative.
Speaker: 1
45:26
Talk about closing that pipe. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
45:28
I mean, doing it to yourself.
Speaker: 1
45:30
Doing it to yourself and by by doing that to other people. If they would just commit to a body work, don’t blink Right. And just keep making shit. Don’t get somewhere.
Speaker: 0
45:37
That’s great advice. Commit to a body of work.
Speaker: 1
45:39
Body of work. Like, look at Yeah. Someone I mentioned this and a friend of ai, businessman, called me and said, wow. Ai really I really spoke to me. You know, I tend to look at all the different businesses that I have created that failed instead of looking at the whole body of work.
Speaker: 1
45:53
And I fixate on the ones that didn’t work. And it’s ai, you don’t ever know what’s gonna work or not. Don’t that’s not your concern. Just go make shit. Follow your instinct. Because, again, maybe maybe that one that didn’t work is your four rooms.
Speaker: 1
46:05
And you’ve got and you got you get two other great ideas out of it. I’ve forgotten that Dust tyler Dawn came out of that as well. So that’s the that’s the third one out of that that four rooms. That thing gave and gave and gave.
Speaker: 0
46:15
Dust O’Dowd was so fun because it was two different movies. It was like That’s
Speaker: 1
46:18
that’s why it couldn’t get made. Sai when he first wrote it, he couldn’t get made because people okay. Sai this is what happened. The effects company hires him. And, they they sai, we want a a movie that’ll showcase our effects in this vampire bar. It’s about two brothers who go to a vampire bar.
Speaker: 1
46:35
Start Quentin starts ai. He starts writing Quentin style where he gets way into the brothers. So much into the brothers and it turns into ai a desperate hours type movie for half the movie. He he waits half the movie to get to the bar. So now for for financiers, it’s now ai a a mixed bag. It’s like two movies in one. Right? Right.
Speaker: 2
46:51
Right.
Speaker: 1
46:51
But it was a negative then. It was like, this movie’s all wrong. It’s like suddenly they’re it’s one thing and then suddenly it turns into a vampire bar. This we can’t make this. But then Pulp Fiction comes out, and now everybody wants to make it. Oh, it’s two movies in one. It’s great. You know?
Speaker: 1
47:06
Whole different perspective change. What a little success will do for you. Four ram. Oh, four rooms. Oh, yes. Four rooms. Four times the fun, you know?
Speaker: 1
47:12
So ai never know. So I told Quentin, let’s make it right now because we made it our next movie right after Four Rooms. So Desperado, Four Ram. And sai Desperado came out in August 1995. ‘4 Rooms in December. Dust tyler Dawn was in January. That’s how fast those came out. We’re working that fast back then.
Speaker: 1
47:29
Then. Wow.
Speaker: 2
47:29
So Sai
Speaker: 1
47:30
said, let’s make this right now because you’re starting to steal from the script. That’s Ezekiel’s speech that, Sam Jackson says in Pulp Fiction, that’s from the original dust till dawn script. Really? He just took it he was he was pulling stuff out of it because it was just not not gonna get me. Grabbing an old comic.
Speaker: 1
47:46
Before there’s before it gets picked clean, let’s go make this thing. And we’ll shoot it now. We’ll just shoot it right now. Wow. And it was so fun.
Speaker: 1
47:54
It was so I love
Speaker: 0
47:54
that movie. Sai fun.
Speaker: 1
47:55
Cheech Cheech is so great. You know, we did a table read. When we have a table read with your actors, you only have your main actors there. So sometimes you’ll assign other parts to other people who are there. So it was ai, Cheech, why don’t you go ahead and take you play the main guy at the end, but go ahead and read for the for the oh, no.
Speaker: 1
48:10
He he he made it the the guy who gives a speech in front. He was playing that character. Read for the border guard and for the guy who comes at the end, Carlos, who I was gonna get, like, you know, Erika Strad or something. So he starts reading, and he does each one. You know? It’s because immediate, and he does everything in a different voice.
Speaker: 1
48:24
And we’re ai, by the end, I was like, wow. He should play all three characters. And so I asked Quinn. Quinn goes, hey. What if we get Cheech to play all three? Guess Ai was thinking the same thing. So I go and tell Cheech. Cheech is just freaking hilarious.
Speaker: 1
48:35
And you go, hey, man. You’re gonna play all three characters. Do I get paid three times? But this is why I love having comedians on the set, you know, because we’re out there shooting that desert scene, you know, at the end when Cheech comes and the whole place is burned down.
Speaker: 1
48:51
It’s a 25 degrees in the shade. We’re in Barstow in a dry lake bed. So freaking hot. We’re all just, like, not moving. Sai I’m gonna have to go get something. We’re all just Cheech is like this in a suit with a hat. He goes, meh, Robert.
Speaker: 1
49:04
Can I this is gonna be a walk? Can I go to my trailer? I was like, oh, man. By the time you go, this guy’s gonna be back, and we’ll have to start. We should just stay right here. Okay. Ai go into my mental trailer. Okay.
Speaker: 1
49:15
High school drinks, air conditioning. It just ai up the whole sai. Okay. This guy’s gonna be in every movie. Ai been in 10 movies a month because it’s that attitude. You like that attitude to somebody who can find levity and torture.
Speaker: 1
49:28
Look, it’s always Movies can be torturous sometimes. So having people like that that are really on your team that can really lighten up a sense is just the best.
Speaker: 0
49:36
You’ve done so many different kinds of movies. It’s so interesting because you never got, you know, Quentin essentially does these wild chaotic action movies that just blow you away. You do everything. Like, you’re doing like kids movies
Speaker: 1
49:49
There’s a similarity to
Speaker: 0
49:50
animated movies. You did
Speaker: 1
49:52
Yeah. There’s a similarity to I’m still that cartoonist. Mhmm. So what they all have is they’re all comedic. Like, even the action movies are kind of just fun. Mhmm.
Speaker: 2
50:01
I
Speaker: 1
50:01
mean, think of Desperado. It’s like a James Bond movie. He’s got a guitar case that fires missiles. He’s got this one that’s got a weapon. It’s ai Sai Kids is very much the same thing. It’s just summer for big kids and summer for little kids. Even Sin City. Yeah. Even Sin City is very playful. Yeah. The Sin City one was so dark. I remember the the first book, the one that Marv that Mickey Work plays.
Speaker: 1
50:19
It was so dark. I was going like, oh my god. It’s gonna be dark. I have to add some levity to this, and Mickey will bring humor to it. And it’s the funniest episode. It’s really funny. But he’s in the book. It’s it’s just like, oh my god. He’s just killing everybody.
Speaker: 1
50:31
But you’re really with him because of the way he betrayed you. We didn’t change very much. We just added, you know, some humor to it. And that the gallows humor really, you know, really nice.
Speaker: 0
50:40
Ai, when the yellow guy gets shot in the dick.
Speaker: 1
50:42
Oh, that’s yeah. That’s the that was a good one. Yeah. That’s a really good use of color.
Speaker: 0
50:47
That, by the way, was one of the fucking creepiest characters ever in a film.
Speaker: 1
50:51
And it looks like that in the drawing, and I and I just wanted to my whole idea was because Ai so respectful of someone’s artwork. You read Sin City and you realize that art is half of it. If if anyone else in Hollywood were to make that into a movie, they would just make it like a gritty crime thriller. Right.
Speaker: 1
51:08
And take out the whole visual element, which is that stark black and white where people’s eyes glow in the dark. Yeah. And it has all these layers of unreality. And I went to Frank Miller. I said, I sana just make this move. I want this is ai the coolest movie never made.
Speaker: 1
51:22
And he actually wrote it because he had been in Hollywood ai a couple of screenplays, and he got shit on and screwed around the whole Hollywood thing.
Speaker: 0
51:31
Jamie, can you show me the scene with Mickey Rourke and the yellow guy?
Speaker: 1
51:35
Oh, this is Bruce Willis and the other group.
Speaker: 0
51:36
Excuse me. Bruce Willis.
Speaker: 1
51:37
Three yellow guys.
Speaker: 0
51:39
Just I just sana, like, while you’re talking about this, I wanna look at it.
Speaker: 1
51:42
And, yeah. So he he went and made this comic because he said, fuck Hollywood. I’m gonna go make a comic that could never be made into a movie because it’s so dark, so sexy, and so every and I’d call him up, meh. Let’s make a great movie.
Speaker: 0
51:57
God, it’s so interesting.
Speaker: 1
51:59
Oh, Bruce love this. I I gotta tell you this is funny. So this is the fastest Ai think any Hollywood movies ever gotten made. Really? Yeah. I’ll show you the process. It’s kinda like this cards thing. You’re gonna you’re gonna it’s gonna blow your mind. What is it now? It’s April? Okay. So imagine.
Speaker: 1
52:16
This is if this is February if this is 02/2004, April, last year, I had two movies out. In the summer, it was Spy Kids three d. It was the number one movie. Couple months later, Once Upon a Ai, Mexico, another number one movie, but also both of them ended a trilogy that I had started.
Speaker: 2
52:35
Ai I
Speaker: 1
52:36
was looking for my next thing, and I was I opened up my sana cities again. I was like, oh, shit. I know how to do this now. I just did a whole movie on green screen, which was really new back then for ai. It’s three d because I wanted it in three d. It was the first digital three d movie. Because when you’re in Austin, you just innovate a lot.
Speaker: 1
52:49
You know, George Lucas tell me that it’s a it’s a good thing you’re in Austin. That’s why I’m in Marin County. When you live outside of that box, you think outside of that box automatically.
Speaker: 2
52:56
You’re Yeah.
Speaker: 1
52:57
Stumble upon innovations. So I thought I’m gonna go take this process and utilize it to make sense city. So I did a test, a little test of ai. I went, oh, shit. This is gonna work. So it was October when I got that idea. I filmed it. I contact Frank Tyler, met him in New York.
Speaker: 1
53:13
I showed him my laptop. It looks like his art, but then it starts moving. It’s sai actor. And he’s like, wow. And he gets all into it. Right?
Speaker: 1
53:20
It’s November. And he goes, oh, no. But then we have to write a script, and the studio is gonna have notes. And, that’s not how it works. I got my own studio. I’ll write the script. It’s gonna be unremarkable. I’m gonna copy ai out of your book and I’m gonna edit it down.
Speaker: 1
53:33
I’m gonna edit through the stories together. I’ll write it this month. We’ll show it to you in December. And then January, we’ll get a couple of actor friends. We’re gonna shoot the opening scene as a test. You don’t give me the rights yet because I understand this is your baby. You’ve never given up the rights.
Speaker: 1
53:46
I know what it’s like for an artist to make something. Let me take all the risk. I’ll go ahead and write the script. We’ll shoot the opening scene. You I’m gonna fly you down so you can watch. I brought Josh Harnett, Marley Shelton. That opening scene in Sana City, that was our test, ten hour shoot day.
Speaker: 1
54:00
And, Marley Shelton comes up to me and sai, why why did I hire this guy to kill me? Well, I don’t know. Let’s go ask Frank. He should know. It’s not in the book, but I’m curious myself. So Frank answered her question and said, I sana do this movie. And, let’s wait. We had a whole process.
Speaker: 1
54:15
I’m gonna shoot the opening. I’m gonna cut it together. I’m gonna put in the effects. I’m gonna put in the music. I’m gonna put in fake ai.
Speaker: 1
54:20
Then we’re gonna watch it. And if you like what you see, then we do the rights and we make the movie. If you don’t like it and you’re still on the fence about it, just keep it as a short film. Keep keep the gift. So we committed to the process.
Speaker: 1
54:33
We make the opening sequence. He loves it. He wants to do it. I take it to Bruce Willis first, which was cool about doing it that way, which is unheard of. When I went to his, his agent, his agent was like, wait. He leans forward very dramatically. You brought actors down.
Speaker: 1
54:53
Oh, because because I told him, this is Frank Miller. He’s one of our greatest artists. He wrote in Hollywood. He got screwed around, and the guy goes, welcome to Hollywood. You know, like that. I’m like, yeah. Whatever. I just respect the arya. So I just thought, hey.
Speaker: 1
55:04
You’ll be a partner. You’re gonna co direct this with me, and we’re gonna make this. We’re gonna take all I’m gonna take all the risk. You’re gonna come down. We shot this opening, which I have. I’m gonna show it to Bruce so he can see the book, but then he can see how it gets translated.
Speaker: 1
55:15
And ai guy gets very dramatic. He goes, wait. You brought the actors down. You shot this. You did the effects for it, and you didn’t have the rights.
Speaker: 1
55:22
And I leaned in. I went, welcome to Texas. All these little monkeys spit out water.
Speaker: 0
55:27
Okay. Frank goes
Speaker: 1
55:28
down. It was super annoyed. They said, okay. You can and he ai it. He went, okay. You can go meet with Frank.
Speaker: 2
55:33
Oh. Or you can
Speaker: 1
55:33
go meet with Bruce. So I shah it to Bryden, and he’s watching it. He looks at the book, and he looks at the thing, and he goes, damn. This is really great. And then fake titles come up. His name’s in the titles. And I go, look. You have to be in the movie.
Speaker: 1
55:47
Your name’s in the titles. And he’s like, I’m in. So he was in, and we were shooting the finish we’re shooting the actual movie by March. Wow. So April, we’re already done with it. We’re filming the the second story by April. It was out the next year.
Speaker: 1
55:59
I mean, that’s as fast tyler movie’s ever gone into production. All these actors jumped on right away once we had Bryden. And he loved he loved doing this film noir type thing. And we’re doing something very experimental, which is green screen. Nobody knew what green screen back then was.
Speaker: 1
56:13
And what I told him was, well, it’s kinda like theater. But instead of being in front of a black curtain, you’re in front of a green curtain. You’ll still have some props. You might have a steering wheel ai Clive just there just had a steering wheel. You might have, but just mainly you and the actors, and everything else goes away. And I’ll fill in the the later.
Speaker: 1
56:29
So what’s cool is their performances are so focused on each other because there’s no other stimulus around that you got these great performances. We only built the bar. It’s like, hey, Frank. We’ll build the bar so that you have we have a place to hang out with and, you know, do our story meetings.
Speaker: 1
56:43
But everything else will just be on the same. You’re gonna come see the screen screen when you come visit my studio. The whole movie was shot in an area let smaller than this room by the time you bring your lights in where the actors actually had their the playground. It’s unbelievable.
Speaker: 0
56:57
Wow. That’s incredible. And it was so inspiring too. That movie was so because when I left the theater, I remember thinking, I’ve never seen anything like that before.
Speaker: 2
57:07
It
Speaker: 1
57:07
was ai the comic because the ai was that way.
Speaker: 0
57:09
It was so different. It it just, like, when someone does something that really just steps up and and and enters into, like, kind of just a new area of art, because that’s what it felt like.
Speaker: 1
57:18
It felt
Speaker: 0
57:19
like a real legitimate comic book art movie. And this is before March.
Speaker: 1
57:23
Yeah. March actually.
Speaker: 0
57:24
March kind of took that as well.
Speaker: 1
57:26
And then West
Speaker: 2
57:27
And I
Speaker: 1
57:27
called and said, how did you do that movie? I said, I just put on a DVD. Go I put all the I put all the secrets on there. And they went and they shot the same way.
Speaker: 0
57:34
It was such a good movie.
Speaker: 2
57:35
And it
Speaker: 0
57:35
was it was so fun.
Speaker: 1
57:36
Because it was also Ram Miller
Speaker: 0
57:37
movie. The thing about the yeah. Right? Same thing.
Speaker: 1
57:39
But the
Speaker: 0
57:40
thing about those kind of films where someone, like, does something new, it’s ai when you see something new and I felt this way about pulp fiction too, you’re like, wow. Yeah. You leave the theater, like, everything’s different. You know, like, the world’s different. Like, that got made. Like, this like, I now I know.
Speaker: 0
57:54
And the thing about people today, like, young people today that don’t know, like, how revolutionary Pulp Fiction was when it came out. Yeah. When it came when it came out, it was, like, such a different kind of feeling that you got after you saw the movie. It was there’s so many what the fuck scenes that you left that theater ai, Jesus Christ. It’s like the world was different. The world was different.
Speaker: 0
58:18
Quentin Tarantino changed the world with Pulp Fiction. That’s how profound it was.
Speaker: 1
58:22
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
58:22
And I’m not exaggerating. It changed what was
Speaker: 2
58:24
possible in film after that. No. I I was I was
Speaker: 0
58:25
there during it. I remember the studios were
Speaker: 1
58:27
ai why this movie’s big ai. We don’t we don’t have anything like this coming out except except your movie, Desperado, maybe, because Quentin was in. I said, I was like, yeah. Yeah. We we got our pulse on the on what people want. I was like, we don’t we don’t know. So I gotta tell you really, two things.
Speaker: 1
58:49
First of all, George Lucas told me that, and he’s ai, Ai showed him the Sana City thing because we’d both been early adopters of digital sana DPs, directors of photography, didn’t wanna even look at digital. They were like, fuck that dude. They already spent all their time learning film.
Speaker: 2
59:02
Mhmm.
Speaker: 1
59:03
Ai by sticking your head in the sand and not seeing where the times are going to the detriment. Now the cameras are designed and they they don’t look as good as it could look. Yeah. But they weren’t a part of the conversation where I was shooting my own movies. I wasn’t gonna let some DP who didn’t sana get in digital keep me ram making, you know, Sana City, so I just shot it myself.
Speaker: 1
59:21
I figured it out myself. So I showed it to Lucas. He was like, this movie will show people what digital is capable of ai more than the Star Wars movies I’m doing because it’s just so avant garde and so crazy looking. But I only made it for me. I I really wanted to see it made. I didn’t I literally didn’t think it would be successful on its theatrical run.
Speaker: 1
59:38
In fact, we didn’t even test screen it. They’re like, can we do a test screen? I’m like, no. What what for? Everybody’s gonna say it’s black and white.
Speaker: 1
59:46
Why is it black and white? Why are there three stories? That’s all right. Voiceover. It’s all voice over. It’s all wrong. We know it’s that way.
Speaker: 1
59:52
Why would we go hear people tell us that that’s not what a movie’s supposed to be? Let’s just put it out. I figure it won’t do well theatrically because you’ll just see the first trailer and go, okay. Black and white is not for me. It’s very counterintuitive, which is most of the things I do just, like, always go a different way.
Speaker: 1
01:00:06
But they’ll find it on video later, and that’s that’s good enough for me. But then it was a big hit. Yeah. Let me tell you about Pulp Fiction. But they because groundbreaking doesn’t look groundbreaking to you or anyone around you necessarily when you’re doing it. Ai forgotten about this, but I journal.
Speaker: 1
01:00:21
And I I ran across an old journal, and I brought it up to Quentin when I interviewed him ram my director’s chair episode. I ai a show called the director’s chair. I ai bryden directors. He his was so big. We did two episodes. We talked about all his movies.
Speaker: 1
01:00:34
And I said, do you remember this time I found in my diary ai down to the hour? We went out to dinner. I mean, he was so into Pulp Fiction ever since I met him. My next movie is gonna be Pulp Fiction. I’ve I visited the set. He was into it.
Speaker: 1
01:00:44
He’s into it. He finished the movie. And I said, hey. How did because I live here in Austin. I meh to hang out with them except when I go to LA. How did you how did your movie come out? And he goes, yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:00:53
It’s not it’s not the one. It’s ai still feels like a movie Quentin would make. Ai be like, what? It’s true. What do you mean?
Speaker: 1
01:01:00
It’s like, ai like, it just doesn’t feel like a real movie. It feels like another movie Quentin would make. And I was trying to be the supportive friend because I knew how much he put in. It should be different. He’s like, ai, this one wouldn’t have it.
Speaker: 1
01:01:11
It’s like two in the morning. I was dropping him off at home after we’d been out. And so I went back to Austin, and he had had a screening for his all his director friends that I couldn’t be at because I lived in Austin. So I called one of them. Sai how was the screening? He was a little bummed about it. He goes, no. This isn’t the one for him.
Speaker: 1
01:01:25
I was like, really? Yeah. It’s it’s just too yeah, it’s just not it. And I asked him this, and he goes, you’re right. You know, he’d forgotten about that moment. He goes, fact yeah. People didn’t get it. And in fact and he didn’t get it either.
Speaker: 1
01:01:38
He wasn’t sure if it was it. In fact, one filmmaker even said, I wanna sit you down and tell you all the things that are wrong with this movie, but I’ll wait till you get back from Cannes. He goes to Cannes. He wins Cannes, and the friend left him a meh. They what? What the hell do I know? I’ve only made one movie.
Speaker: 1
01:01:55
Everyone’s mind was changed. So he he was surprised by it too. So that’s I just want people to hear that because you’re making something groundbreaking. It’s not like you’re going, I’m making something groundbreaking. You don’t know that it’s gonna do that. Sometimes things over perform.
Speaker: 1
01:02:08
And that’s why if you just commit to a body of work, you’re not gonna know which one’s gonna be your pulp fiction, which one’s gonna be your four ram. You know? And if you just do that because I saw a lot of people get hurt. You know? Like, John Carpenter made the thing.
Speaker: 1
01:02:20
He thought he made a great movie. He thought he made an amazing movie. Bombs. Critics called it pornography at the ai. If you remember, like, this the the makeup effects of its audiences didn’t go. It came out the same weekend, unfortunately, as ET. Right? Why do we call it pornography?
Speaker: 1
01:02:36
Just because it was just so self indulgent and gross and nasty. I mean, they they really, like, reamed him to the point.
Speaker: 0
01:02:42
So the special effects?
Speaker: 1
01:02:43
Yeah. The special effects are really crazy. Yeah. Really? Yeah. If you don’t remember the time, it was really like that. There was repulsion towards this movie. Wow. I know you don’t think that now because ten years later, it
Speaker: 2
01:02:56
took ten
Speaker: 1
01:02:56
years No. It was not. Wow. Ten years later, it was suddenly considered a classic. Now if he had committed to a body of work, he would have just let that roll off his shoulders and just don’t blink. But it really fucks you up if you think Ai meh I my instincts must be off.
Speaker: 2
01:03:11
Well, I sai
Speaker: 1
01:03:11
Ai thought I made a great movie. It’s a great fucking movie. It’s a great fucking movie, but if no one else is saying that. So I asked Quentin, who George Lucas had the same thing. He showed famously Star Wars to all his director friends, and they’re all ai, poor George. He’s wasted all his time with this movie. And Spielberg was the only one who was like, it’s naive. It’ll do good.
Speaker: 1
01:03:31
And so I asked Quinn, was there anybody in that director’s group? And he goes, meh. There was one. Kathryn Bigelow. She was the one who’s championed and sai, this is something new and different. No one else was saying that. That’s pretty amazing. Right?
Speaker: 0
01:03:45
That’s super amazing.
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01:03:46
It’s really and I would have forgotten it if I ai not written it down. So There’s a lot of
Speaker: 0
01:03:50
films that sai through the cracks
Speaker: 2
01:03:53
Yeah.
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01:03:53
For whatever reason
Speaker: 1
01:03:54
or they don’t get to sai
Speaker: 0
01:03:56
you know what I saw recently that I fucking loved? The monkey. Did you The monkey.
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01:04:01
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:04:02
It’s it’s a Stephen King book that or may might be a short story.
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01:04:06
Yeah.
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01:04:06
It was a It’s a short story in one of his It was adapted.
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01:04:09
Skeleton Crews
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01:04:10
or something.
Speaker: 0
01:04:10
It’s fucking fun, man. I watched with my youngest daughter loves horror movies. We watched a lot of horror movies together. And, we were, you know, looking for something the other night. We’re like, alright. Let’s take a chance on this. Had no idea what it was. Watched the trailer.
Speaker: 0
01:04:24
I’m like, are you in? She’s like, okay. This is good. Sai it’s fucking chaos. It’s such a chaotic, insane, hyper violent movie.
Speaker: 1
01:04:34
Right. Right.
Speaker: 0
01:04:35
And but funny and just, you know, kinda scary. It was really good, man. It was fun. It was ai a classic what I really love about the early Stephen King work. Like, his early work was like
Speaker: 1
01:04:48
That’s a here’s one that fell through the cracks. Like and I was there at Sony when we were doing mariachi desparado when this movie came out. I remember the marketing team said, we have a really great movie. Unfortunately, no one’s gonna see it because of the title. So what is it called?
Speaker: 1
01:05:00
And he goes Shah Redemption.
Speaker: 0
01:05:02
Oh my god.
Speaker: 1
01:05:03
And it bombed. What? Oh, Shawshank Redemption bomb. What? It was a bomb. How? It nobody went to see it. It’s called Shawshank Redemption. What the hell is it? Guys in prison? Nobody went to see it, and there’s the Sony marketing. They just couldn’t get anybody to go see it. Wow. But you’ve history gets rewritten now.
Speaker: 1
01:05:20
Again, you can be Frank Darabont and be, like, really down. But, fortunately, he didn’t have to wait ten years. As soon as it got to video, it became a phenomenon on video. And now it’s considered if you go on IMDB, it’s always neck and neck with The Godfather is the best movie of all time. Wow.
Speaker: 2
01:05:35
That is
Speaker: 1
01:05:35
the movie nobody saw. So, again, look, don’t blink. Commit to a body of work. You may make a classic. It might be the thing, and you’re not gonna hear about that for ten years. Just keep going. Don’t let it crap. Don’t let it make you question your instincts because your instincts
Speaker: 0
01:05:49
I would have never guessed Shawshank
Speaker: 1
01:05:51
was a failure. There’s a lot of movies that are like Incredible. That was a time when people could, really get a second life on video. Now now it’s different with streaming and all that.
Speaker: 0
01:06:01
Opening night to see the audience to view their film, Darabont and Glotzer went to the Cinerama Dome and found no one there. The Cinerama Dome. Oh ai god. Oh my god.
Speaker: 1
01:06:12
Imagine just ai Sai don’t know. I thought I’m I thought, you know, as an arya, you’re gonna be going, I Ai must be wrong. I must have just don’t have the
Speaker: 0
01:06:21
That’s clearly a fault of the marketing.
Speaker: 1
01:06:24
No. It’s also just
Speaker: 0
01:06:25
I’m blaming them.
Speaker: 1
01:06:26
Yeah. I think I mean, because if anyone showed up, they would have gone and screamed it to everybody else. Sometimes it’s just it’s just the way it goes. It’s just it’s supposed to go that way. Now now I sana tell you an alternate one that there’s a movie called Body Parts with a guy named Jeff Fahey.
Speaker: 1
01:06:40
I love that movie Body Parts, ai Eric Meh. He did the Hitcher. He did you you would never hear about it because the timing of it. And Jeff Faye was a big Jeff Faye event. I remember in the early nineties, I I kept going.
Speaker: 1
01:06:51
I was at my mother in law’s and across the street was a dollar theater showing body parts. I go every night for seven at 7PM, I go for a dollar. Is that the is that the second run and watch it just to hear how an audience responds to it? And he was just great in it. I just felt the connection to this guy ai, I wish I was making movies because I would work with this guy. He’s really a cool actor.
Speaker: 1
01:07:09
What is this about? It’s it’s about a guy who gets in a car accident, loses his arm, and he’s given the arm of a killer just to to kind of just replace him, but it suddenly, he starts doing things.
Speaker: 0
01:07:19
Oh, I remember this. Okay.
Speaker: 1
01:07:21
So anyway
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01:07:21
the same dude that was lawnmower man.
Speaker: 1
01:07:23
Yeah. He he was in lawnmower man too. Yes. So Another season should have been something that, you know, was it for him, but this week it came out, they had just caught Jeffrey Dahmer ai the week before. So they pulled back on the marketing completely. And so no one saw it. And so he didn’t get that boost his career.
Speaker: 1
01:07:41
But but the silver lining, the ash the key in the ashes was me. I saw it every night. So when I went to do Grindhouse, he retired from acting. He was in Afghanistan. I asked for him to to send tape, and, yeah, he was working doing work out there. What kind of work out?
Speaker: 1
01:07:57
I don’t meh some kind of, you know, like, helping people stuff. He sends me a tape, and so I hire him. I hire him to be in it. And because he was in that movie in fact, I’d already hired Michael Bean. And I went, oh, shit. Jeff sent me a thing. God. Jeff’s great too.
Speaker: 1
01:08:12
I’ll just make him brothers. So they play brothers in Ai. Because he did that movie, he got lost, that show lost. He got he just his whole career came back. So we’re talking about it. I just recently was telling him, man, it just came out on four k.
Speaker: 1
01:08:25
You gotta come see. You probably never seen it. He goes, I never seen the finished movie. And I said, you’re great in it. I was showing him some scenes.
Speaker: 1
01:08:30
It was blowing his mind. He goes, yeah. This movie didn’t do well. I remember now. Why?
Speaker: 1
01:08:34
Because the Jeffrey Dahmer thing just do I went, that’s just how it’s supposed to go. But I saw it, and that’s why I hired you, and that’s how you got that second career later on. Because I was there every night because it was in the Dollar Theater so quick. I wouldn’t have been able to afford it any of that.
Speaker: 1
01:08:48
So that’s how weird shit happens. Right? It’s not so cool. Makes you see that you don’t it’s it’s just ai that’s just how the balls roll. You know?
Speaker: 0
01:08:56
It’s just all interconnected
Speaker: 1
01:08:58
somehow. Somehow it’s interconnected. And you have to trust the process. You just have to trust the process. I had someone in the audience, recently. I was talking about brass knuckle films and and and getting everybody all stirred up about it. And, one gal goes, you’re real positive, but do you have any doubts?
Speaker: 1
01:09:13
Ai was like, well, I never been asked that question before. So whenever I don’t have an answer, I’ll ask them first too. What do you guys think? What do you guys think? How would you answer how would you answer that? Do you have do you have any human doubts?
Speaker: 0
01:09:26
Everyone has doubts.
Speaker: 1
01:09:27
Okay.
Speaker: 0
01:09:28
Sai It’s what you do with them. Right. Do you meh your doubts overwhelm you, or do you take them into consideration? Like, are these doubts valid?
Speaker: 2
01:09:35
Right.
Speaker: 1
01:09:35
Like, I And what
Speaker: 0
01:09:36
do I have to do to make sure that these that these fears don’t manifest themselves as reality? Ai have to do extra work? Do I have to work harder? We have to be more objective?
Speaker: 1
01:09:46
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:09:46
You know, you have to you have to take into consideration that anything you gotta do that’s gonna be exciting also carries the possibility of risk. And the risk of failure is, a thing that keeps a lot of people from acting.
Speaker: 1
01:09:58
So if you’re gonna commit to a body of work and you’re gonna not blink
Speaker: 0
01:10:02
You gotta be well You
Speaker: 1
01:10:03
don’t you don’t have to worry about that.
Speaker: 0
01:10:05
There’s a jujitsu expression. Well, a lot of people use it in MMA as well. You don’t lose, you learn.
Speaker: 1
01:10:10
Yeah. So if you know that’s the process, this is my answer. I sai, no. I don’t have any doubts. Because I like to be counterintuitive.
Speaker: 0
01:10:17
Yeah. Your process is long. The the the the thing is long. It’s sai it’s not a a sprint. You’re not running to a telephone pole. You’re running to the other side of the world.
Speaker: 1
01:10:26
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:10:26
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:10:27
So I tyler meh, no. I don’t have any doubts. Just to be counterintuitive. And I ai, why? Because if you understand the process, why should you have a doubt? You might fail, but it might be four rooms. You might
Speaker: 2
01:10:39
if
Speaker: 1
01:10:39
you have an instinct to go there or you don’t know how you’re gonna do it, what’s what’s half the battle? Not knowing. That’s the magic ai. I don’t have to know. I’m gonna figure it out when I’m almost done. You know, all this little
Speaker: 0
01:10:49
all these things come together. Risk averse early on, and it becomes a
Speaker: 1
01:10:53
pattern.
Speaker: 0
01:10:53
Yeah. And it’s very hard to break out of. And I always tell them, find something that you can have success in. Find something that you enjoy doing. It doesn’t have to be a career. It could be a game that you enjoy playing. It could be anything, painting
Speaker: 2
01:11:05
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:11:06
Writing. It could be a thing that you
Speaker: 1
01:11:08
enjoy doing. Love it, you’ll probably you will have success at it.
Speaker: 0
01:11:10
Yes.
Speaker: 2
01:11:10
Yes.
Speaker: 1
01:11:11
Because I’m sure you were drawing too.
Speaker: 2
01:11:13
Yeah. You
Speaker: 1
01:11:13
know, in school. I would be drawing all day in school. Ai make these flip cartoon books in the sides of the dictionaries, paper dictionaries, flip cartoon movies. Then I get the dictionary that’s biggest and fattest, and I make these very elaborate stick figure animations. And everyone in class loved him, and I’d be like, I’m gonna be broke. I used to do cartoons.
Speaker: 1
01:11:32
To
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01:11:33
class. I used to do cartoons of the teachers in high school. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:11:36
And everybody loved them.
Speaker: 0
01:11:37
Yeah. I ai them around the class and I got in trouble a bunch of times for it. And one time I had this, science teacher, mister Holman. And mister Holman was very odd, very eccentric guy. And so I drew a cartoon of him, behind his screen. So he had a screen that he pulled down where he could show ai films.
Speaker: 2
01:11:56
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:11:56
And then when he pulls the screen up, he had no idea that on the chalkboard, I had written I had drawn this cartoon of it, and the whole fucking class starts ai. Like, how did
Speaker: 1
01:12:05
the pen you had back then?
Speaker: 0
01:12:07
Yeah. It’s like my first introduction to being a comedian.
Speaker: 1
01:12:10
Yeah. It’s it was It’s very ai. But but did you think you were gonna make a career out of that? No. No. Of course not. You think No.
Speaker: 2
01:12:16
I I
Speaker: 1
01:12:16
was thinking, oh meh god. I’m gonna be so broke. I can’t understand what they’re talking about. I’m way behind. Yes. And I’m not the best arya. So it’s not like I’m gonna like, I’m some protege or something. Sai I’m fucked. But that’s ended up being my career was just doing that stuff because you love it so much.
Speaker: 1
01:12:32
So I ask people, if you wanna find what you’re passionate, what what is that thing that you run off to do on the weekend? Right.
Speaker: 2
01:12:37
I
Speaker: 1
01:12:37
was always going to making movies, and I was doing that. When once you’re done punching the clock all week, what is it that you go run to? That’s probably your passion. Put more effort into that, and you’ll you’ll actually find success doing it. 100%. You put stuff together, suddenly, opportunities are gonna fall in your lap.
Speaker: 0
01:12:52
And if that’s not it, at least you’ll have learned that you could follow this process to get good at something or get really deeply involved in something, and you could apply that to other things. It might be a
Speaker: 1
01:13:01
decision that you
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01:13:02
meh excited about.
Speaker: 1
01:13:02
So this is what I applied it to because I forgotten this lesson, which was just say you’re this person. Stop aspiring.
Speaker: 0
01:13:09
Right.
Speaker: 1
01:13:09
Our words we use are so powerful. If you say, well, you know, I’m I’m might not I’m probably not gonna be successful. That’s your lot in life. You just you just did that to yourself.
Speaker: 0
01:13:18
Self defining.
Speaker: 1
01:13:19
So I I had a a friend of ai. I mean, like, I I always hated working out. I didn’t follow any sports, didn’t know sports. In high school, they go, we need you. It’s a small school. We need you on the team. You ai at your tall and everything. You play basketball.
Speaker: 1
01:13:34
Sai don’t know how to play anything. I hate working working out. There’s a line in the faculty that I gave to Elijah Wood because that was my line to teachers when they make me wanna run and go, I don’t think a person should run unless he’s being chased. And they would leave me saloni. But I hated it. And so then I became a filmmaker. Oh, ai I was a cartoonist, my back kept going out.
Speaker: 1
01:13:52
19, I’m like, have a have a cane, and my back would be out for, like, a month because I would sit
Speaker: 0
01:13:56
Oh, wow.
Speaker: 1
01:13:57
Kitchen table ai. I was so tall that it was just it would throw my back ai. I would just disc would go out. And then when I started filmmaking, every year would just go out like clockwork. So I’m operating the camera. I’m operating the steady cam. And when when I was doing, you know, Speak Kids two, I think, with a Ricardo Montalban had a bad back that he got surgery and fucked him up.
Speaker: 1
01:14:15
And he was in a wheelchair. He was paralyzed. So he’s in a wheelchair, and I’m with a walker because my back went out. And he goes, Robert, I’m 84 years old. What’s your excuse? You gotta work out, Robert. He was always in shape, Ricardo.
Speaker: 1
01:14:28
That chest and ai in, in Star Trek two, that’s his chest. God. I know. And he was in his late sixties or his mid sixties.
Speaker: 0
01:14:36
They fused his spine. Is that what they did?
Speaker: 1
01:14:38
Yeah. They did something and fucked it up.
Speaker: 0
01:14:39
Goddamn it.
Speaker: 1
01:14:40
So, every time I
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01:14:42
hear Troy, Ai wish I could talk to that guy before
Speaker: 1
01:14:44
he did that. I know. And he went to a good place, but they just hit something wrong. They fucked him up.
Speaker: 0
01:14:49
It happens too so, meh.
Speaker: 1
01:14:51
Yeah. So I go, okay. I don’t want that to happen to meh, but I don’t I don’t know how to work out. So the next year, I worked with Stallone slash Stallone. Ai gotta get in shape because my back keeps going out, and I don’t like to work. Get thee a trainer. Anyone you ever seen in Hollywood who got in shah, they had a trainer. And what about you? Oh, I need a trainer.
Speaker: 1
01:15:07
You need a trainer. Well, then if you need a trainer, mister Rocky That’s right. What chance do us mortal men have? So I hired a trainer. And guess what happened? Hated it. Hated it. I hide from the guy. He’d come to my house. I’d pay him not to show up. I’d hate it. I’d hide.
Speaker: 1
01:15:21
I’d hide. I’d be I’d call in sick. And then when he did when he did get me, I’d be, like, half assed in the workouts, you know, because I hated it. And then, one year, it was just torture. I knew I had to do it, but so this is my my point is that sometimes it’s not a lack of desire.
Speaker: 1
01:15:38
So when people really wanna become something and not ai in it, it’s not because they have to change their minds. They they there’s something that goes with it. Desire you I have plenty of ai pain in this guy. I wanted to get in shape. I didn’t want my back going out anymore. I had the desire.
Speaker: 1
01:15:49
I was missing another key element ai I figured out. And it’s sana a lesson I already knew, which was stop aspiring, but I forgot it. So this woman, a friend of mine from Mexico shows up. She’s ai a production manager. I have to stop smoking.
Speaker: 1
01:16:03
My doctor said I have to stop smoking ai I’m gonna die. I’ve been smoking since I was eight years old. Oh, boy. I said, well, you’re gonna go back to smoking because you just told me that’s your identity. You’ve been doing this since you’re eight.
Speaker: 1
01:16:13
So right ai, you’re a smoker who’s not smoking. Eventually, you’re gonna conform to your identity. You have to change your identity. You have to sai, I’m a nonsmoker. I’m a nonsmoker. Because what does a nonsmoker do? Hate smoke. They get sick of the smell of smoke. She was like, okay. I’ll try it.
Speaker: 1
01:16:28
I don’t know what happened to her, but I thought That voice is killing me. Voice is just that she really speak like that. So then I go, wait a minute. Shit. I used to I I used to apply to filming, but that’s all I was back there.
Speaker: 1
01:16:38
Where where else in my life can I do a one eighty? And it’s sana be a one eighty. Because if it’s just matter degrees, it’s bullshit. Yeah. It’s meh easier if it’s just opposite day. Ai I went, oh meh god. Working out. I hate working out.
Speaker: 1
01:16:50
Of course, I hate working out because I tell my trainer and everyone who listen how much I hate it. I’m an athlete. Oh. I’m an athlete. The last thing I would ever call myself, mister cartoon guy. Wow. I’m an athlete. By the next day, what does an athlete do?
Speaker: 1
01:17:06
Loves to work out, makes time to work out, eats ai, and it’s gotta be opposite dates. It’s much easier. I wanna go to lay on the couch today just ai of no. I’m gonna go work out or there’s a doughnut. Not gonna cut it in half and eat half. That’s bullshit. Those degrees fuck you up. Opposite day. There’s a donut. No. I’m gonna reach for an apple.
Speaker: 1
01:17:22
Not only was I able to work out, this is fourteen years ago. I didn’t need a trainer again ever. I would just be, like, making myself do because I’m an athlete. That’s how powerful the mind is. So Ai saying if someone says, I wanna go do this thing on the weekend and I’m you ai have the desire, but you gotta get the identity too. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:17:41
You’ve gotta say you were that.
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01:17:42
Yes.
Speaker: 1
01:17:43
And it it sounds a little awkward. Like, I asked somebody, Alex Friedman, I I sai, do you consider yourself a creative person? Anyway, well, you know, you guys That’s a good impression. I said, you’re stuttering there, man. You’re stuttering. You’re stuttering. He goes, I I know. I know.
Speaker: 1
01:17:58
Shah I said, no. No. No. You gotta say and are you technical? And he goes, yeah. Okay. You’re technical and creative.
Speaker: 1
01:18:03
That was the first thing that stuck in my ear. It’s also what Jim Cameron is. It’s also what, you know, George Lucas is, technical and creative. When I first had a a my first job, my dad had a friend who owned a Shah. And he said, go work for my friend Mario for your summer job when I was 16.
Speaker: 1
01:18:17
Went to work for Mario processing film for photos, and he gave me a camera and film and said, go home and take pictures with this because I need you to know how to use that camera so you can help me sell the cameras. So I went home, and I’m from a family of nine kids. I mean, 10 kids, nine siblings. Taking all these pictures of them, cool doing cool stuff. Go back.
Speaker: 1
01:18:35
He looks at the pictures, and he goes, woah. These are really creative. You’re creative. You gotta now learn how to be technical because most creative people always need technicians, and technicians always need creative people. Now it’s against tyler it’s just a gift you have. They can never really be creative. They’ll just be technical.
Speaker: 1
01:18:51
But because you have creativity, if you apply yourself it’s against your nature. But if you apply yourself and learn the technical part, you’ll be technical and creative, and you’ll be impossible and be unstoppable. Ai I was like, woah. Unstoppable at 16. He was here. Go ai. I know. Sometimes and I’m gonna ask you about who did that for you.
Speaker: 1
01:19:09
Who was because if you look at all the different turning points in your life, there’s probably somebody who sent you in a direction. It comes through him. Because if I were to go back and ask that guy, hey. That advice you gave me, he’d be like, what? What Sai I don’t remember saying that.
Speaker: 1
01:19:26
Kinda just came to him at the time. Right. Right. So he he pointed me that way, and that’s why I went and made a mariachi by myself. I didn’t wanna take anybody because I wanted to learn.
Speaker: 1
01:19:34
I didn’t know how to use that camera, but but if you go ask somebody to do it for you, your I need list if you make a list of all the things you need before you can make your dream happen, the longer that list is, the less that’s gonna happen. You gotta reduce it down to nothing. Me, my hands, my bootstraps, this camera, I’m gonna figure it out on the day. Be technical and creative.
Speaker: 1
01:19:55
So I told Lex, now you gotta own it. When I say, are you creative? Yeah. I’m creative. And I’m technical, and I don’t blink.
Speaker: 1
01:20:04
Ai sana create a body of work. And he’s ai, walks out of there supercharged, you ai. Like, he needs
Speaker: 0
01:20:09
a guy like you in his life all the time. He’s too self deprecating. He’s such a brilliant guy.
Speaker: 1
01:20:13
And and it’s nice to be self deprecating is kind of a joke, but
Speaker: 0
01:20:16
A little bit.
Speaker: 1
01:20:17
But the words you’re using yourself are very powerful. He beats himself up. The words you use and you’re doing that to yourself. Yeah. The guy throwing cabbage at you on stage? Look close. It’s fucking it’s you. You’re doing that to yourself. You’re the one who’s ai yourself.
Speaker: 1
01:20:31
You do that to yourself with your words.
Speaker: 0
01:20:33
He’ll make, like, Twitter posts about how down he is and I wanna go over to his house and fucking shake him like a baby.
Speaker: 1
01:20:38
Yeah. Dude, you’re gonna you’re down. You’re gonna stay down. I have this theory called baseline. I talked to some of my kids, and we just laugh about it. I go, okay. When shit fucks up, but shit’s not going right, don’t be down about it. Don’t feel like you’re in a slump because now you just stuck yourself in a grave, and it’s gonna be hard to climb out.
Speaker: 0
01:20:52
Right.
Speaker: 1
01:20:53
When shit isn’t going ai, oh, the tyler flat. Oh, I got fired. I call that baseline. You’re a baseline. Anything above ai. Like this right now, we’re here having this great talk. This is way above baseline. Yeah. I’m on the Joe Rogan shah. You know? So way above base.
Speaker: 1
01:21:09
Celebrate that shit
Speaker: 2
01:21:10
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:21:10
Because it’s not always there. Don’t say that you’re gonna go down. You’re just gonna go to baseline. Ai much easier to accept, and then you’re not in a negative position. You’re just kind of at a normal. I’m at a normal, and Ai really appreciate when anything above baseline happens. My daughter and I are about to go play an arena show. She’s gonna sing.
Speaker: 1
01:21:26
I’m gonna play with my band. I told her, way above baseline. We’re gonna get a nice hotel. We’re gonna really celebrate this because this shit doesn’t always happen. And when everything is going really, really wrong, baseline. Only when things are really down would you call yourself low, and you don’t meh do that.
Speaker: 1
01:21:42
Otherwise, you’ll stay there for a much longer time. If you’re just at baseline, that’s just life. Oh, yeah. I tried to go make that movie and it didn’t work. Base line. Such solid advice. It’s it’s really it’s mindset. It’s all mind. It’s all stuff you’re doing to yourself. Yes.
Speaker: 1
01:21:55
And these are things I like to pass on to people because when they come back and give it back to me, I don’t know if you’d give your kids advice as you learn it because you learn so much. You’ve got the best job in the world. You’re learning all day. Yeah. I bet you don’t know if that it’s gonna stick with them.
Speaker: 1
01:22:08
I was shocked how much stuff not only sticks, but they come back and they feed it back to me. Oh, yeah. Dad, it’s just like
Speaker: 0
01:22:15
Well, they also It’s
Speaker: 1
01:22:16
just like you taught me. And I go They
Speaker: 0
01:22:17
also learn by watching you do it. So Oh, yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:22:19
They’ve seen you move through the world. Yeah. But you’re the dad
Speaker: 0
01:22:22
and you’re making all these films. You’re doing all this. You’re you’re involved. You’re you’re you you have action. There’s a lot of action. You’re constantly in motion. You’re doing things, creating things. That’s inspiring to them. They, like, absorb that. If you’re down on yourself all the time
Speaker: 1
01:22:36
Oh, yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:22:36
You know, that’s
Speaker: 1
01:22:36
They go, okay. That’s ai. And I gotta look for I’m gonna that’s gonna happen to me. Or you can
Speaker: 0
01:22:41
reject that and be the opposite. Like, I have a friend, and his family was alcoholics.
Speaker: 1
01:22:46
Right. He’s
Speaker: 0
01:22:47
never had a drop of drink in in his life, and he’s, like, super disciplined because of that.
Speaker: 1
01:22:54
I’ll tell you my secret. I’ve never done drugs.
Speaker: 0
01:22:56
None? None. Nothing? Never. Yeah. You don’t even drink coffee, you were saying?
Speaker: 1
01:22:59
I don’t even drink coffee.
Speaker: 0
01:23:00
You would tell that story because it’s so hilarious.
Speaker: 1
01:23:02
A friend of ai, what’s his name? He was working at the Sony when I first got there for, mariachi. And I was ai, this kid, and there are people my age who are assistants. And he was, like, falling asleep at his desk. And I’m like, why why are you falling asleep? And he goes, I’m trying to get off coffee. And I was like, oh my god.
Speaker: 1
01:23:20
I’m never gonna get on coffee. I can’t want those guys getting their hooks in me. And then over the years, I see, like, Starbucks showing up and everybody, ai, zombies going in there having to get their coffee. I went, as I drink some right now. Marketing and all sai it’s it’s made to be addictive, like nicotine and all that.
Speaker: 2
01:23:33
Oh, awesome.
Speaker: 1
01:23:34
Your buddy can’t create that. And I already why Sai already stay up for days as it is. You know? Because I don’t sana anything like that. Do you really?
Speaker: 2
01:23:40
I can
Speaker: 1
01:23:40
stay up. I just I just did this, what’s your favorite workout music? Mine? Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:23:46
Ai.
Speaker: 1
01:23:46
I just do I just did a classic stuff ai Van Saloni. It’s about it. Oh, that’s a music video for Wolfgang Van Halen. And, we shot in two days, and I was up two days cutting it because I just wanted to see what’s gonna happen next.
Speaker: 0
01:23:59
Two days?
Speaker: 1
01:23:59
Not two days. I was just like, I wanna see what happens next. You don’t even notice my shoulders getting all fucked up. And I’m like, what’s wrong with my shoulder? Did I pull a muscle and doing some shrugs or something? It was ai, I went back to sit in that chair. I was like, oh, because I’ve been sitting like this for two days, sitting, just doing this. That’s insane. But it’s it’s really cool.
Speaker: 0
01:24:17
Don’t you hit a point of diminishing returns where it’s ai you’re so tired that you really would be better
Speaker: 1
01:24:21
off the phone? With editing. Editing is, weird. I I was thinking that as I was doing it. I go, I wish I could do this with writing where I could just write for two days straight. Meh your words will knock me out, put me to sleep after a while. Editing is this visual stimulus, and you’re so excited. And I kept going, okay.
Speaker: 1
01:24:37
One more hour, one more hour, and you just can’t stop. You just can’t stop because now you’re you’re seeing it. It came out so cold. It’s gonna
Speaker: 2
01:24:43
drop
Speaker: 0
01:24:43
eight hours later.
Speaker: 1
01:24:44
It’s gonna drop ai next week. It rips your head off. It’s a great workout song for sure, but it’s just really entertaining.
Speaker: 0
01:24:49
That’s a kid’s
Speaker: 1
01:24:50
telling me he, does all the instruments himself on the drums. Yeah. He plays every instrument. He plays the drums, the bass, the guitar, sings, writes the songs. When he goes on tour, he takes this really great band with him because he can’t play all the parts. But the album is his third album.
Speaker: 1
01:25:04
He’s working on his, all plays all the instruments.
Speaker: 0
01:25:07
Wow.
Speaker: 1
01:25:07
Super talented. Really, really fun. But I like working with people who just do more than than other people. They just they’re just at that level, and
Speaker: 0
01:25:15
it’s
Speaker: 1
01:25:15
so inspiring and inspires you. It’s fuel. Stuff. Yeah. Definitely
Speaker: 0
01:25:19
fuel. That’s why I always tell people, if you could surround yourself with other people that are really getting after it in life, it will 100% motivate you.
Speaker: 1
01:25:25
Completely.
Speaker: 0
01:25:26
In a different way. Completely. Instead of having that procrastination feeling, you get up excited.
Speaker: 1
01:25:30
You have to. And it’s ai, you know, your parents tell you, be careful who your peers are. You know, when you’re younger because it means one thing. Oh, yeah. But later, even more. Like, when I started going to the film festival and there’s Quentin, and then I meet Jim Cameron. And then you meet, like, George Lucas.
Speaker: 1
01:25:43
It’s like, you can’t hang with these guys if you’re not accomplishing something. Right. So then when they say, hey. What are you up to? Well, I’m down in Texas, and I got my own studio, and I’m pioneering digital filmmaking and green screen technology. I wanna make the first digital three d movie.
Speaker: 1
01:25:54
And they go, oh, okay. Cool. I’m gonna hang out. I’m like, oh, okay. I’m gonna hang out here for a while. Ai. I gotta be doing something.
Speaker: 0
01:26:00
That’s a great one
Speaker: 1
01:26:01
ai time. But still, compared to what they’re doing, you know, when I first made
Speaker: 0
01:26:05
Jim sai.
Speaker: 1
01:26:06
When I first meh Jim Cameron. That’s why you you don’t wanna be around people who who you’re the best. You’re better you know? Right. You wanna be the one that they’re swinging higher than you. Yes. Yes. So surround yourself with those people and do something so that they let you hang with them, but you wanna learn.
Speaker: 1
01:26:20
Like, here’s the Jim Cameron, for instance, when I met him. I really wanted to impress the hell out of him. So I said, I’m about to go do desperado and I can’t afford a steady cam operator sai I took a three day three day steady cam course and I’m gonna operate it myself on the movie.
Speaker: 1
01:26:33
I’m gonna operate the steady cam that big beast of a camera. And he went, I bought a Steadicam, but not to operate it. I’m gonna take it apart and design a better one. So I was like, that’s completely who he is. Us mere mortals are, like, trying to operate the thing.
Speaker: 1
01:26:49
He’s designing a whole new systems. And if you think of that, it’s very consistent with who he is. That’s the person you wanna hang out with. Not someone the guy had said, oh, me too. I’m doing the same thing.
Speaker: 0
01:26:58
Didn’t he go to the bottom of the Mariana Trench or some shit
Speaker: 1
01:27:01
in a So he’s got
Speaker: 0
01:27:02
summary that
Speaker: 1
01:27:02
he ai? It’s only yeah. It’s on his desk. It’s ai this big on his desk. It’s green machine. And I was looking at it going, like, weren’t you afraid? I mean, I’ve got kids and ai. You’ve got kids and a wife. Weren’t you afraid of going down that deep and something happening? He was like, no.
Speaker: 1
01:27:21
I said, why not? Oh, I designed the escape vehicle. So if any other bozo had done it, I’d be afraid because he did. You know? Had all the confidence in the world. Talk about Simon and no doubt.
Speaker: 0
01:27:34
That’s so insane.
Speaker: 1
01:27:35
Isn’t that hilarious? That’s incredible. That’s him though. It’s ai, yeah. If someone else had designed the Escape vehicle, I’d be afraid. But, no, I did it. So he didn’t have no no pause at all. That’s ai crazy. So that’s ai confidence. That that’s ai people you wanna hang out with.
Speaker: 0
01:27:48
Yeah. That’s a legitimate genius.
Speaker: 1
01:27:50
It changes your perception in life. And by osmosis, you pick up I call it this proximity phenomenon.
Speaker: 2
01:27:57
Ai, when
Speaker: 1
01:27:57
you’re just near I took a painting class with a Sebastian Kreweer, a ai in Germany. I saw this class that he gives for a speak. I went, I’m gonna go do that class. Not to learn how to paint so much. I know I’ll be a better director by learning paint because it’s that another way into creativity. Again, just sana get better at creativity.
Speaker: 1
01:28:13
So just do as many jobs as you want as you can that you’re interested in. Because if you just do one job, you barely know that job. Mhmm. You have to do all these other ones to ai inform it. Yes. So I went out there. He doesn’t teach you anything. He just paints.
Speaker: 1
01:28:24
I’ll show you the examples before and after just by I thought for sure Ai I did a pre painting before we went out there. It looks like crap. Ram ai, I don’t know what brushes he’s using and the kinds of paints. It’s a different ai. I he he must have some trick.
Speaker: 1
01:28:38
I go and he’s painting this amazing Mick Jagger photo real in front of us. And we all can paint alongside him. And what paint are you using? It’s regular paint. What brushes are you using? Regular brushes. How come I can’t do that? I go back and suddenly it’s a different painting. I’m gonna try one more.
Speaker: 1
01:28:54
It’s more photo real. When I show it to you, it’s gonna blow you away. It looks like I dropped the brush. I was like, holy shit. It’s because I finally given myself permission to do it. Oh. Because you you have the ability, but you’re blocking it because you go, I don’t know. I don’t know.
Speaker: 1
01:29:07
There’s something I don’t know. So you again, you’re just chopping off your own leg. And by being around somebody who’s doing it at that level, suddenly you can do it too. It’s like breaking the meh field. Like, as soon as I made Mariachi, no one had ever done anything like that.
Speaker: 1
01:29:18
Suddenly, there’s ten, twelve, 13 movies made, you know, very low budget because they go, oh, it’s possible. Now suddenly, you can do it too. And when it’s in the ram, when you’re right near it, it’s just a phenomenon that you can just glean off them without them teaching you anything.
Speaker: 1
01:29:32
Just by being around and seeing how they move through the world and seeing they have accomplished and that they’re regular people that are just accomplishing a high level. It just blows your mind.
Speaker: 0
01:29:40
And That’s really important in stand up comedy.
Speaker: 1
01:29:43
Yeah. I ai right.
Speaker: 0
01:29:44
Last night in the green room. We’re talking about this, area of the country that’s falling apart, and I was like, comedy is top down, man. You you have to have a bunch of assassins all working together in the same location. They all feed off each other and then all the people coming up below, they see that. Yeah. They see these these young guys that are coming up.
Speaker: 0
01:30:02
They see these people working really hard and constantly creating and hustling, doing all these different sets and constantly working on new material and they get inspired by it. And then you see these guys meh Netflix specials and do it and it’s all happening at the club. So this club that we’re doing in Austin is all about that process. Yeah. Like, we have specifically designed it to have two open mic nights, Sunday and Monday.
Speaker: 0
01:30:23
So new people New people. No experience Wow. Get up there. People from all across the country moving here
Speaker: 1
01:30:29
Yeah. So they
Speaker: 0
01:30:29
could be a part of the process. But there’s ai a real path to success that you could see because guys like Ron White are there, guys like Shane Gillis are there, Tony Hinchcliffe, and and these young guys, Derek Post, and all these young guys that are coming up that are, like, really exciting.
Speaker: 0
01:30:44
You know? It’s ai it’s really fun. There’s ai a a vibe of creativity that everybody feeds off of.
Speaker: 1
01:30:50
I love what you’ve built. You’ve come here, but you’re only here, like, four years, and you’ve already, like, built this whole community.
Speaker: 0
01:30:56
Well, it kinda could built itself, man. It’s it’s the same thing we were talking about before with instincts. Mhmm.
Speaker: 1
01:31:01
I have
Speaker: 0
01:31:02
first of all, I had the instinct to escape LA. I was like, this I this is not gonna change. This is gonna get worse. I gotta
Speaker: 2
01:31:08
get the fuck out of here.
Speaker: 0
01:31:09
And, Ron had already been here. Ron was here in 02/2018. And, once my family was interested in doing it, it was pretty easy. Because I I’m I’m one of those guys, like, I just can just pick up stakes and go. I’m like, okay. Life is different now. Let’s live in Texas.
Speaker: 1
01:31:25
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:31:26
Like, I want that. I like change. I like I like not having any fucking idea what’s gonna happen. I’m excited by that. And so then once we got out here and then Ron’s like, we gotta open up a club. Okay. We gotta open up a club. And so then I started looking for locations and luckily, the Ritz was available.
Speaker: 1
01:31:43
Wow. That’s right.
Speaker: 0
01:31:43
And we we had we did a we Ai been under contract for this one world theater that was owned by Holt.
Speaker: 1
01:31:49
I remember that one. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:31:50
That fell apart.
Speaker: 1
01:31:51
There’s a lot of Ritz is cool. It’s ai down there with all the
Speaker: 2
01:31:53
Oh, the
Speaker: 0
01:31:53
Ritz is the perfect spot. When the Ritz was available, it was ai, oh meh god. This is it. And then when we walked in and it was still the Alamo. So it was ai set up for a movie theater with ai the Slope. Angle, sloped seating, and then we had to change everything, but I’m like, this is it. Yeah. And then I started bringing in other comics to help me.
Speaker: 0
01:32:11
I’m like, what would you do? And Louis CK came and he was like, I think you should make this stage smaller. Make this stage smaller. I think you should make the ceiling lower. Make the ceiling lower.
Speaker: 0
01:32:19
Like, so we were able to do whatever we wanted to do and design the club from scratch
Speaker: 2
01:32:25
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:32:25
Just for comics. And once everybody knew that it was happening, people just started moving here, man.
Speaker: 2
01:32:31
So great.
Speaker: 0
01:32:31
It’s nuts.
Speaker: 1
01:32:32
You build it, they will come.
Speaker: 0
01:32:33
It really was like that, but it was it was like the universe wanted it to happen. And I say that it sounds so self important,
Speaker: 1
01:32:41
but No. No. No. It’s like I believe that. It’s just you you’re stumbling upon
Speaker: 0
01:32:45
So many things had to happen Yeah. In this order for it to happen this way. And then you had to have someone who’s ai meh who’s accustomed to just going by instinct. Yeah. And I’ve always done that. Yeah. I always my whole life, I’m like, fuck it. Let’s do this. I’m like, that’s what I do. And so when this came up, I’m like, okay.
Speaker: 0
01:33:03
Well, you’re not gonna stop doing what you do now. Don’t be a pussy. This is what you do. You’re gonna throw a bunch of money at this thing. Let’s make this happen and tell everybody you’re doing it and and call all your friends in LA sana call your friends in New York and come on down, man.
Speaker: 0
01:33:17
We’re making this happen.
Speaker: 1
01:33:18
Wow. Wow. I tell people that after mariachi, it’s ai I I never thought I could get into the industry because I didn’t live in LA and need contacts and all that. So I just, you know, again, I made a practice film. But then when it got bought and it was getting released, and in one Sunday, it’s my practice film.
Speaker: 1
01:33:34
I thought, I don’t have to move to LA. But they won’t even know I’m not there. Between that airplane flight and FedEx, I’ll still here in Austin. So for the past, you know, thirty five years, people are like, why are you ai in Austin? I don’t understand. It’s like ai they’re all moving here.
Speaker: 1
01:33:48
But it’s because you could just think outside of the box here. So yeah. And I would tell people, filmmakers who all thought they needed to move to LA, stay where you arya. Build up your community around you. We built this amazing community of filmmakers here. All they made here were westerns before that. Wow.
Speaker: 1
01:34:01
Suddenly, I was making Spy Kids, Sin City, you know, these crazy movies that really changed the ripple effects to the whole community is huge because you’re changing the the workforce.
Speaker: 0
01:34:10
Yes.
Speaker: 1
01:34:10
And so you just by doing that thing and it’s like it isn’t like an instant. It’s like it’s pre it’s like it’s pre laid out.
Speaker: 0
01:34:17
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:34:17
I tell my artist, when you come to my house, you’re gonna feel it. You’ll feel like these connections. And I go, I think we ai we’re not that smart. You know? We’re not smart enough to predict all that stuff. I think we’ve lived this life many times before, and we forget a lot of it.
Speaker: 1
01:34:32
So we have a barely impersonate impression of what we’re supposed to do. But it’s because we did it a thousand ai, and we forgot it each time. Like a dream when you wake up from a dream. That might be true. Because, you know, you wake up from a dream and and you go, I was a filmmaker in that ram, and I had five kids.
Speaker: 1
01:34:48
You know, that’s what it’s gonna be like when we when our life is over. You’ll wake up, and it’ll be like your, like, your past lifetime just goes away, and then you go start again. And only now you’re a fish or something. But but I thought this sai this thought. Wow. What if I wake up and I can barely remember the dream? And that’s and that’s it.
Speaker: 1
01:35:05
Because it feels like sometimes you feel like you can predict the future, but not like you can predict it. It’s you recognize it once it happens. Like, oh, yeah. This is this is right.
Speaker: 2
01:35:13
But how
Speaker: 1
01:35:13
did I know to go this way? I didn’t on purpose. Like you said, I didn’t set all the all the things that needed to fall into place are too too coincidental. What is that about? So that’s why I move even more. Just just follow your instinct. Follow your instinct even if it sounds bonkers. Follow it.
Speaker: 1
01:35:28
And if it fails, keep going because that might be your four rooms or something. Just keep going.
Speaker: 0
01:35:32
That really is an important piece of advice too to if you’re outside of a hive of like minded thinking, you could when you’re outside of that, you can think on your own.
Speaker: 1
01:35:41
Go another way.
Speaker: 0
01:35:42
Yeah. You I
Speaker: 1
01:35:44
mean, it’s like high school. You go back to that, you know, someone famously leaves high school and goes off to college and goes off to sees the world. They come back to their old hometown, and they find their old friends still driving the same streets. That’s LA.
Speaker: 2
01:35:55
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:35:56
They’re still doing the same shit the same way, and you just went off the reservation and discover the world.
Speaker: 0
01:36:02
Their opinions are only based on what’s popular. It’s like you were talking about Pulp Fiction. Yeah. Like, before they’re like, what the fuck is this? Sana then they’re like, oh my god. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:36:10
We got more of that. Now we gotta make something like this. Let’s make Dusty Dawn. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:36:13
Like, that’s what it is. Like, they don’t their opinions are bullshit. It’s ai, it’s all just based on they lick their finger and they find out which way the wind’s blowing, and that’s how they think. And that’s how they are politically. That’s how they are socially. That’s how they it’s ai they’re nonsense people.
Speaker: 1
01:36:27
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:36:28
And you gotta get away from that.
Speaker: 1
01:36:29
Just get away and just create your own thing and and
Speaker: 0
01:36:30
The problem with comics is that we got all we all got trapped in the velvet prison of television.
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01:36:35
Right. Right.
Speaker: 0
01:36:36
So television’s the velvet prison. The real art form is what we do on stage. That’s what everybody
Speaker: 1
01:36:41
really loves. What do you mean by being on television? I mean, like sitcoms? Yes. Okay. Because right now, it seems like it comes back the other way. So many comics have such great, like, Netflix specials arya massive
Speaker: 0
01:36:51
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
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01:36:52
Where it’s basically them doing stand up, but
Speaker: 0
01:36:54
they’ve got a huge audience. Exactly. Well, what happened was the Internet came along and a bunch of unconventional people became very famous on the Internet Right. Without the help of Hollywood. People that the Tim Dylans of the world that don’t fit in to this television box, but when you get them on the Internet and they can get buck ai, like, oh, my God.
Speaker: 0
01:37:14
Then they have this massive following, the Theo Vaughn’s, all these different people that have this very unconventional approach that for whatever reason wouldn’t fit in and certainly couldn’t host the ai show.
Speaker: 1
01:37:25
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:37:26
But, you know, once they get on their own and now they develop these ai, there’s more arena acts now for stand up comedy than ever before Wow. In the history of comedy.
Speaker: 1
01:37:34
Wow. Yeah. That’s amazing. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:37:37
Ai I mean, not even close. I mean, the the only arena act in the, like, the nineteen eighties was Andrew Dice Clay.
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01:37:43
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:37:44
So first, it was Steve Martin, then it was Andrew Ai. Sana Steve Martin ai decided that the popularity of it all was so confusing to him that everything that he said was funny, and it didn’t make any sense. It didn’t feel and he stopped doing comedy.
Speaker: 2
01:37:55
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:37:55
Stop doing stand up. Would which he have a he had a very different kind of stand up anyway. He did play the banjo and he sang songs and sai Dice comes along and Dice Clay is selling out arenas. So ai the first comedian ever to do that. Uh-huh. And then later in the February, it was Dane Cook because Dane Cook figured out how to use Myspace and developed this gigantic following online. Same ai of thing.
Speaker: 0
01:38:17
And so then when by the time the pandemic hit, I was like, we don’t need to be in LA.
Speaker: 1
01:38:23
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:38:23
We’re not gonna be on TV. The only reason why we’re in LA is The Comedy Store, and The Comedy Store is closed for the next fucking year and a half because these idiots that are running the city and we came to Texas. And, once while we’re out here, I was like, oh, this is so much better.
Speaker: 0
01:38:40
Because now, instead of being around these Hollywood people that don’t really have opinions, they just go which whatever way the breeze is going. Now you’re hanging out with regular folks. Yeah. Ai, regular people. People that are cops and firemen and auto repair ai, and you’re just humans. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:38:57
So all the people I interact with are just normal humans.
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01:39:00
That’s what I always loved about living.
Speaker: 2
01:39:01
Oh, this
Speaker: 1
01:39:02
is just like there weren’t any filmmakers here.
Speaker: 0
01:39:04
So much better. Yeah. It’s infinitely better. Nicer. Yeah. Everyone’s waiting.
Speaker: 1
01:39:07
You get you get a lot more done. I was cranking. Somehow, I’d have two movies out a year. I would be making That’s incredible. Fast because I just had a studio where it’s ai, let’s just make more stuff.
Speaker: 0
01:39:15
There also has to be something cool feeling about, like, doing it on your own away from the house.
Speaker: 1
01:39:20
Ai better. Way better.
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01:39:21
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:39:21
That’s why it’s like I try to create original ai. Because if you go direct one one of the James Bonds, you’re one of the James Bond director. But if you create your own franchise
Speaker: 2
01:39:29
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:39:29
Like a ai could do, it feels so much better. Right. When that’s successful and someone says, wow.
Speaker: 2
01:39:33
I really
Speaker: 1
01:39:34
have that movie. Go, oh, I did that voice. Flip is, man, man, help us save us. Like, that’s you. Oh my god. I grew up with that. You know? It’s like, oh, yeah. It’s a homemade movie. You know? So it’s much more gratifying. And, yeah, Ai did the right thing by by moving out.
Speaker: 0
01:39:46
One movie that seemed like it could be a franchise is Alita.
Speaker: 1
01:39:49
Oh, yeah. We wanna do another one for sure. For sure. Part of a graphic novel series. Yes. You gotta come to my studio. That’s Sai
Speaker: 0
01:39:55
want to go.
Speaker: 1
01:39:55
That city is still in my parking lot. Really? 20 foot ceilings, seven streets. It’s like the largest standing set in the country, if not the world.
Speaker: 0
01:40:06
Ai? Can I go fry?
Speaker: 1
01:40:07
Come Friday. You’re not gonna believe what’s here.
Speaker: 0
01:40:09
Ai in.
Speaker: 1
01:40:09
And you’re gonna go, like, okay. Because I’m putting you in a movie. Okay. Because talking about what you just said about how people are different here. I just started a a new label. Ai, the label I gave ai, I’m an athlete. When you create a label
Speaker: 2
01:40:22
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:40:23
It’s a business thing too. It gives what it the label is is a filter. So I’m doing an action slate. So that already you get a bunch of ideas because it’s just action. An action slate of four pictures. It’s called sana knuckle films, and and you’re gonna be in the first one because I’m I’m gonna direct the first one.
Speaker: 1
01:40:38
I’ve already got
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01:40:38
What are
Speaker: 0
01:40:38
we doing?
Speaker: 1
01:40:39
It is. I’ll show you. It’s a great part for you. You’re gonna come to the studio, and I’ll tell you about it.
Speaker: 0
01:40:44
Okay.
Speaker: 1
01:40:44
But Brass Knuckle Films is cool because it’s the first time that it’s an investable film slate. So fans can invest in a movie. They get perks and stuff, but it’s not crowdsourcing or crowdfunding.
Speaker: 2
01:40:56
Like, you
Speaker: 1
01:40:56
can get killed in the movie if you put in a certain amount of investment. But what’s cool about it, I just want the audience to win because audience is an afterthought. Like you say, you go to the studios and and then the people in Hollywood and you go, they barely even watch movies.
Speaker: 1
01:41:09
And then you come meet the real audience, and they’re so into it. They’re so behind it. It’s like, where’s your cut of it? Studios only show up to an audience at the end when they want you to go get your friends to come spend money on their overpriced movies. So I’m gonna do this thing where even at $250, the lowest level, you put into this thing, any of the four movies, one of which I’m gonna direct for sure, producing all of them their troublemaker to keep the cost down so they go to profit sooner.
Speaker: 1
01:41:34
Any one of these movies success, you you share in that success all the way through sequels. And for even the $250, anyone who puts money in, you get to have that proximity effect because we’re we have a whole group together.
Speaker: 0
01:41:47
That’s such a great idea.
Speaker: 1
01:41:48
Everybody gets to pitch their action movie ai, and I’m committed to making at least one of the movies on the slate from a fan investor’s idea. So not only will you be an investor, but you’d be a creator. So we’re almost already topped out. We’re we’re gonna hit our we still have twenty days left, and it’s gonna surge again. We’re we’re we’re gonna raise, like, 1,500,000.0 for development funds. And we’re yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:42:12
We’re almost at a million already. Twenty two days left. So I’m telling everybody who’s listening, come in at the lowest level. Just be part of our community because people who come here get proximity.
Speaker: 0
01:42:23
And the lowest level is $5.
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01:42:25
Hundred and 50 bucks.
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01:42:25
2 hundred 50 bucks.
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01:42:26
2 hundred 50 bucks. But, you know, you make that back on success of any of the movies.
Speaker: 0
01:42:32
That’s awesome.
Speaker: 1
01:42:32
And it just hedges your bets. And it’s just action because there’s always an appetite for action. Like, if you ask Netflix right now what kind of movies do they need? They’ll say action action action. We don’t have enough action.
Speaker: 0
01:42:42
Oh, sure.
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01:42:43
And internationally, that’s so we’re gonna make the thing that people always buy, and they’re also really fun to make, and you’re gonna be perfect in
Speaker: 2
01:42:48
it.
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01:42:49
I wanna bring you back to Frazetta.
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01:42:50
Oh, yeah. Because this is the
Speaker: 0
01:42:52
thing that I Ai I wanted to pitch this to Quentin and maybe I could pitch this to you. Sure. Somebody needs to make a real Conan the Barbarian. Yeah. A real Conan the Barbarian that’s like the Robert e Howard books. Yeah. The real
Speaker: 1
01:43:06
Conan the Barbarian. Those are
Speaker: 0
01:43:07
amazing. The the Arnold ones are great. They’re fun. And Momoa, I think, is the best Conan of all time. Mhmm. Because he was that the guy what was his name in, Game of Thrones?
Speaker: 1
01:43:18
I don’t remember. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:43:19
Kirill Drago. Character. Yeah. In he he’s the most realistic of all Conants. That’s what Conan’s supposed to look like.
Speaker: 1
01:43:27
Yeah.
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01:43:27
He didn’t look like a bodybuilder. He looked like a fucking super fit assassin. Yeah. Just sai a sword in the Mountains Of Samaria. Yeah. But the books
Speaker: 1
01:43:37
Books are awesome.
Speaker: 0
01:43:38
They’re fucking awesome.
Speaker: 1
01:43:39
It’s and it’s right up your alley. It’s about Yes. It’s about the barbarian is actually the one who’s got code
Speaker: 2
01:43:44
Yes. And
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01:43:45
who has morality. Yes. And all the bigwigs are the ones that are, like, being crooked and shit. You know? It’s just so classic. And the barbarians gone ai. Ram Texas. The ai, Robert Howard, from Texas.
Speaker: 0
01:43:55
We’re outside of Dallas.
Speaker: 1
01:43:55
That’s where I or I have a a house where I made all these movies. It’s in the land that he looked over and saw and said that’s Samaria. That’s where Conan is from. So I always felt this connection. I wanted to do Conan. So I almost did a Conan movie. I even wrote Jim Cameron into wanting to do it. Really? Meh were gonna do ai like what we did with Alita.
Speaker: 1
01:44:15
I said, dude, let’s do a Conan movie, and we’ll make it look like the paintings. Technology wasn’t there meh, and I ended up doing Sin City instead. I’d already bryden, it was gonna be three movies. So he does different occupations. It’s ai built like a James Bond series, you know, where you follow him on his different so it starts with him as a thief.
Speaker: 1
01:44:35
And the second movie is him as a buccaneer mercenary. And the third one is when he becomes king. So the actor can grow with the role. You know, the way you you know, like, you took Daniel Craig and started him Casino Royale. By the end, he’s no time to die.
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01:44:48
You gotta get an actor who who does the whole journey. So I had a whole trilogy, marked out.
Speaker: 0
01:44:54
Let’s go.
Speaker: 1
01:44:54
I know. It’s Let’s let’s go. Netflix had it. I went pitched it to them, and they and they let the light rights vatsal like they had too much, sometimes it’s too much baggage for a character.
Speaker: 0
01:45:05
Dude, let me call them. Ai? Let me get on the phone with Ted Sarandos right now.
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01:45:08
Make it already. Yeah. Hey, Jay, can you pull
Speaker: 0
01:45:11
up Frazetta, Conan the Usurper?
Speaker: 1
01:45:15
It’s probably, a painting called Chain. Is that the one with the chains?
Speaker: 0
01:45:18
Or which one is
Speaker: 2
01:45:19
that? Or is
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01:45:19
it the one with
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01:45:20
Ai a bunch of the
Speaker: 1
01:45:21
He named them different than the books because of the copyright issue. So
Speaker: 0
01:45:25
Oh, I see.
Speaker: 1
01:45:26
Whatever’s on the but you’ll find the cover of it, but the painting itself might be have a different name.
Speaker: 0
01:45:30
Just if you just pull up Frazetta Conan because he did a bunch of them.
Speaker: 1
01:45:33
So you’ll love this.
Speaker: 0
01:45:34
Yeah. Here we go.
Speaker: 1
01:45:36
Chained to Barbarian That’s the one
Speaker: 0
01:45:39
with the one when he’s standing over the bodies with the sword pointed
Speaker: 1
01:45:42
to the ground. That’s called ai the barbarian.
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01:45:44
Yes. That’s the one. So it
Speaker: 1
01:45:46
sai the two Ai
Speaker: 0
01:45:46
remember seeing that when I was a kid, because I was always into graphic novels, and I was always into comic books. And I saw that when I was a kid at a comic book store. I was probably, like, 11 years old. I was, like, holy shit. That is the coolest fucking thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
Speaker: 1
01:46:02
And he still come imitate it today. He has this very triangular way of composing that tells a story. The posters still look like this.
Speaker: 0
01:46:09
That fucking
Speaker: 1
01:46:10
Look at the one with the snake. Again, if you sai the triangular design, your your head
Speaker: 2
01:46:14
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:46:14
Eyes go immediately to the snake and then down to him and Yes. It tells a whole story.
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01:46:19
I have
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01:46:19
a theory theory of why his his art is the way it is. Now, you know, I knew him. Did I tell
Speaker: 0
01:46:23
you Really?
Speaker: 1
01:46:24
Okay. So when I first, you get to Hollywood. Right? So I’m just this kid who’s an artist. You get to Ai. First thing you wanna do is work with all your heroes. So just till dawn, I ai, I wanna work with Frazetta because he used to do some movie posters like The Gauntlet with Clint Eastwood, that gauntlet when he did was ai.
Speaker: 1
01:46:39
Look up The Gauntlet, Clint Eastwood, Frazetta. And so I called him and he said, yeah. I’ll do it. In fact, when I showed him the movie, he goes, where’d you find this gal? And I said, yeah. That was Frazetta? Yeah. He did that.
Speaker: 1
01:46:54
So I wanted to get that for Dust Tyler Dawn. Right? So he said, where’d you find this Gavin? I wish I had a gal like that to paint. I want she’s based on all your paintings.
Speaker: 1
01:47:01
Ai, like, the girl that’s always in your paintings, I made Salma dressed like that because cause it’s a Frazetta come to life. He goes, oh, that’s all you need on the poster. I go, well, you gotta draw the other actors. So for you come to the house, you’ll see the painting he did. It was the year he got his first stroke.
Speaker: 1
01:47:14
So it took him by the time he I got the painting, we’d already made posters. We thought, okay. It’s not gonna come. And then it showed up at the last minute. But we gave it away at comic book stores, you know, but it’s really cool.
Speaker: 1
01:47:22
But at the bottom of the painting, there’s the some of the actors. He didn’t even paint Harvey could tell. He just, like, the other actors, Quentin. And then instead of vampires, he just did his monkey dudes. He always does. And it’s really cool. It’s really cool.
Speaker: 1
01:47:33
But I got to know him, and I and I got to go visit his studio because we ai of again, it’s that similar mindset. And I didn’t realize he had
Speaker: 0
01:47:42
There it is.
Speaker: 1
01:47:42
Yeah. Originals. Ai see a little monkey dudes on the block. Wow. He had all his originals in his next to his house in his museum. Like, all those that you were just looking at, they were all there. I didn’t realize as an illustrative artist, sometimes you don’t own your own material.
Speaker: 1
01:47:56
He made it a point to own his own originals. Sai, like, the ones you just were salivating over, those were in my house. Wow. I wish I knew you seven years ago.
Speaker: 0
01:48:06
Because his kids Oh my god.
Speaker: 1
01:48:08
His kids are so impassioned about the art. Even his granddaughter, Sarah Frizzetta. She has Frizzetta girls. This is they’re so always, you know, bringing up his legacy and
Speaker: 0
01:48:19
Yeah. They sent
Speaker: 1
01:48:19
keeping it alive. So cool. But, I really wanted to go do, like, a Conan type movie or a John Carter. I wanted to do one based on Fire and Ice, which is the only one he had actually it was an animated film. Thought, well, maybe if Conan’s been used too much, let’s do Fire and Ice as a movie because he worked on that as an animated film.
Speaker: 1
01:48:38
Let’s just make his I just want his paintings to move. Like, add Frank Miller’s art move.
Speaker: 0
01:48:41
Yeah. I want
Speaker: 1
01:48:41
Frazetta’s paintings to move because he’s he was transporting us to another world that we all recognized.
Speaker: 0
01:48:47
If you could make that that Conan with the sword
Speaker: 1
01:48:50
like that.
Speaker: 0
01:48:51
Yeah. Go go back to that photo again, Jamie. That with the sword?
Speaker: 1
01:48:55
It’s called the the barbarian.
Speaker: 0
01:48:58
You, it’s you you could say that Conan’s been done to me. No. The one with the sword? Yeah. That one.
Speaker: 1
01:49:05
Yeah. They never seen it like that.
Speaker: 0
01:49:07
Yeah. But the thing is, it’s like And
Speaker: 1
01:49:10
look, that’s not a guy that’s just, like, been in a gym. Right. He’s he looks like
Speaker: 0
01:49:13
a He’s been swinging a sword and cutting
Speaker: 1
01:49:15
off the technology. You can do that. So that’s why I’ve gotten Jim interested in this. That’s why it makes him look like that. Yeah. It’s like a made up even anatomy in a way, you know. The books were
Speaker: 0
01:49:24
so fucking good, man. Even though Conan’s been done a bunch of times, it
Speaker: 1
01:49:28
hasn’t been done ai. The right way. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:49:29
No. It hasn’t been done like the books. And there it’s so ai. Like, you
Speaker: 1
01:49:34
Because it was done that way first, like, with with with Arnold in it, people just figured, oh, we’ll just hire a bodybuilder to be, you know, barbarian type creature character from then on. But to do it really like that, he’s more like a James Bond character, you know, he goes from movie to movie. Yes.
Speaker: 1
01:49:48
He’s really when he’s really fucking smart Yes. And he’s just no. But Ai got to meet Frazetta. So you get keep that up for a second. So I went to his we talked about his paintings and how he did it, and I got a theory on how he did this.
Speaker: 1
01:50:01
But when I went and saw the originals, like, holy shit. You got all the originals. How did you make the and he really loved to live life. Like, he go play golf. He went to baseball. He’d get an ai, and he’d wait to the last minute and go and paint it.
Speaker: 1
01:50:17
So what happens when you wait to the last minute? You have to just open up the pipe and let it through. Right? Yeah. I guess, ai we all know this place, you know, we’re collectively ram you know, Jim Cameron would come over to my house, you know, Meh Toro, George Miller, John Favreau.
Speaker: 1
01:50:31
To see these originals in person, when you see them in person, it blows your mind. It feels like you’re being transported. I think because he did them at the last minute, they just came from the universe. Because that’s why people relate to them. People would just buy these paperbacks for the art.
Speaker: 0
01:50:44
Yes.
Speaker: 1
01:50:44
This this Conan was created in the thirties. Yeah. Books came out in the sixties.
Speaker: 0
01:50:48
Right.
Speaker: 1
01:50:48
They didn’t become a big hit till these books came out because of the art. Exactly.
Speaker: 2
01:50:51
And
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01:50:51
then when you read the stories, the stories were really great, but they got them for the art.
Speaker: 0
01:50:55
A %.
Speaker: 1
01:50:56
And he was showing me his his his layout of paintings, and he went two days, one day, three days Wow. Four days, two days. Ai was like, hold
Speaker: 0
01:51:06
on. Just locked in.
Speaker: 1
01:51:07
Just locked in and it’s just coming out because he had to his wife would say, yeah, his pain was still wet when I was taking it to get shah because he would have waited the last minute, But these masterpieces would come out, and I just was really inspired by him. So when he passed away, you know, his kids sai, what should we do with the art?
Speaker: 1
01:51:22
So, well, let’s make a movie based on the art because
Speaker: 0
01:51:24
Who’s got this now?
Speaker: 1
01:51:26
Sai different they’ve sold some of them, but the kids like, if you go to Ram Frank Junior
Speaker: 0
01:51:30
so much fun.
Speaker: 1
01:51:30
Frank Junior still has, the museum up there. He still has a lot of the masterworks. The kid each kid has some of the masterworks, and, and they’re all great and and keeping his legacy going. And I wanna make a movie about it just to get his name back up, you know, or below. We were all inspired by him.
Speaker: 0
01:51:46
Oh, so
Speaker: 1
01:51:46
it’s So what was so cool was
Speaker: 0
01:51:48
How did he find out about those books?
Speaker: 1
01:51:51
I think it was just an sai, and he would barely read the book. He would just be ai, ah, he would just do his own thing.
Speaker: 0
01:51:55
So they they start putting the books out more mass publishing in the nineteen sixties. Yeah. So he does these illustrations. He does the paintings.
Speaker: 1
01:52:03
They’re flying off the shelves.
Speaker: 0
01:52:04
Flying off the shah.
Speaker: 1
01:52:05
Flying off
Speaker: 0
01:52:05
the shelves. Because of the paintings.
Speaker: 1
01:52:06
Because of the paintings. Wow. And those paintings and those books, no matter even the best art book today, when you see the original, cannot they cannot capture what the original has. You’ll be blown away. You ai say I’ve got, like, 14 different Frazetta to get it come. You’re gonna That’s sai cool. Especially as an illustrator, you’re gonna freak out.
Speaker: 1
01:52:24
We have one of the all the masters.
Speaker: 0
01:52:26
We have one of the prints. Go back to those, images one. The one that we have, Jamie, with the him with the giant gorilla. Yeah. We have one of those where he’s fighting the gorilla. He’s on its back. He’s got a red cape.
Speaker: 1
01:52:37
I’m gonna yeah. That’s called, Meh Ape.
Speaker: 0
01:52:39
Man Ape. That’s right.
Speaker: 1
01:52:40
Sai over to the left, and it’s on the left ai. I saw it.
Speaker: 0
01:52:42
There it is. That’s it. We have a print of that.
Speaker: 1
01:52:45
Was in my house. Oh. Okay.
Speaker: 0
01:52:47
So The real one?
Speaker: 1
01:52:48
Real one. Okay. So here’s what I ai.
Speaker: 0
01:52:49
We have that out by
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01:52:50
pool table. The kids say
Speaker: 0
01:52:51
how fucking cool that is.
Speaker: 1
01:52:53
The kids said, can you take our paintings for us and show them to influential people? Because hurricane season’s coming. They lived in Florida, and we don’t want anything to have. They’re insured, but
Speaker: 2
01:53:02
Oh
Speaker: 1
01:53:02
my god. They could be gone.
Speaker: 0
01:53:03
We Oh my god.
Speaker: 1
01:53:04
Can you take us, like, fuck, yeah. I’ll take them to my house. So for a year and a half, I had these not the the barbarian one you were just the one with the swords there. Yeah. I had that one in my house.
Speaker: 0
01:53:14
Oh my god.
Speaker: 1
01:53:14
So I would have everyone who came to South by Southwest or was just in town, they’d come to my house and make them pizza, and we would just stare and drool over the Frizzettas. Those inspired me
Speaker: 0
01:53:24
so much as a kid to be an illustrator. Yeah. Those the the the Frizzetta paintings and some of the drawings from the the, graphic novels that people had made of these inspired me so much as a a kid.
Speaker: 1
01:53:38
It’s just it was dream imagery. It’s like Yeah. You know, it would just be it would feel like we dreamt this too and recognized it.
Speaker: 0
01:53:44
Yes. And every young kid wanna, oh, I wish I was Conan.
Speaker: 1
01:53:48
Yeah. You’re skinny little kid and you’re going like, oh, is that what I’m gonna be? And I go, no. I hate You’re 11.
Speaker: 0
01:53:53
God. I wish Ai
Speaker: 1
01:53:54
I wish I had that kind of power and strength. Yeah. Yeah. And then so I don’t know if you’ve read these books, but they were based on in his comics, they were based on the books that would just translate the books. There was a comics code. So the Conan the Barbarian comic had to follow a code, but then there’s a black and white magazine called Savage Sword of Conan.
Speaker: 1
01:54:13
Oh, I read those. They didn’t have to follow the code.
Speaker: 0
01:54:15
Right.
Speaker: 1
01:54:15
That’s why people would get killed and they would just and ai time is we just, like, take the book and put the book in several chapters.
Speaker: 0
01:54:21
Yeah. They were brutal.
Speaker: 1
01:54:22
They’re really great.
Speaker: 2
01:54:23
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:54:23
That’s what ai grew up without, drawing out of that, learning how to draw anatomy from the Conan books.
Speaker: 0
01:54:27
The Marvel comics were fun, but they were
Speaker: 1
01:54:30
This was still under Marvel, but it wasn’t under the code because it was considered a magazine.
Speaker: 0
01:54:34
That’s what I’m saying. Like, the Marvel comics were fun, but they weren’t
Speaker: 1
01:54:36
Oh, right. Right. Brutal enough. They weren’t brutal because they had a comics code
Speaker: 0
01:54:39
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:54:39
Because they’re comic sized. By doing a magazine
Speaker: 0
01:54:42
Yes.
Speaker: 1
01:54:42
They got around it.
Speaker: 0
01:54:43
See if you can find the savage
Speaker: 1
01:54:44
sort of comic. Savage sort of Conan number one. Oh. Big Boris.
Speaker: 0
01:54:47
There it is. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:54:48
That is the one where he’s where he’s nailed to the cross. That’s Boris Vallejo.
Speaker: 2
01:54:52
Yeah. Oh,
Speaker: 1
01:54:52
this is a great Frazetta story.
Speaker: 0
01:54:53
Another one. Boris Vallejo.
Speaker: 1
01:54:55
He came out he came out later in the seventies. So this is a great Frazetta story. Several of his paintings, when you see them, they’re not very big a lot of times because they were for paperbacks, so they didn’t have to be that big. But then there were some, like, in the early seventies that were big. Silver Warrior, At The Earth’s core. And I and I asked Frazetta.
Speaker: 1
01:55:13
I said, what what what was this era here? Because a lot of these were in the sixties. What’s these seven this these four bigger ones you didn’t what was that for? He goes, oh, they were saying I was washed up. That was finished.
Speaker: 1
01:55:23
It’s because Boris for the Ale was coming out, and they’re like, oh, he’s the new Frazetta. So I did one, two, three, four. Beauties, shut them all up. That’s so cool. That’s so cool.
Speaker: 0
01:55:33
Shut them
Speaker: 2
01:55:33
all up.
Speaker: 1
01:55:34
Shut them all up. Pull up
Speaker: 0
01:55:35
Boris Vallejo Conan because Boris had a different style. It was like a little more And also you could feel Sexual or something.
Speaker: 1
01:55:43
But you could, you know, I I I love his art, but you could almost feel the model in it. You could almost you could almost see that there was a model he was painting from.
Speaker: 0
01:55:50
Well, it was very cool, but it was a different feeling. Frizzetta was more raw.
Speaker: 1
01:55:54
Very raw.
Speaker: 0
01:55:55
Morris Vallejo. It was it was great.
Speaker: 1
01:55:57
But he’s doing I mean, he’s doing the Frizzetta style. I mean Yes. I mean, you know, Frazetta was the Jimmy Page of ours. Everybody wanted to ai in. So everyone couldn’t you couldn’t unsee Frazetta’s work when you were doing
Speaker: 0
01:56:07
your ai. This is man ape.
Speaker: 1
01:56:09
Yeah. He’s doing man ape because
Speaker: 0
01:56:10
He’s doing man ape in a different version of it.
Speaker: 1
01:56:12
But he did.
Speaker: 0
01:56:12
And, you know, I drew a lot of things that were like that, like a different version of Frazetta stuff. Everybody did. But, yeah, I was more of a Frazetta guy than a Boris Vallejo guy. Ai I I loved it. It was great. I was happy that he
Speaker: 1
01:56:23
was doing it. Ai, the one where he’s crucified at the cross on the bottom That’s pretty dope. That that one’s pretty dope. And the one on the far bottom left is the first issue of Savage Sword. That one was really cool because it had yeah. I thought that was cool. Yeah. But, no, it doesn’t come close to, you know No.
Speaker: 0
01:56:38
It’s just Frazetta just had a it was more
Speaker: 1
01:56:43
I think it’s because of that process. It was just the way he did them. Yes. They were just they were just meh there’s some magic to them. And I’ll show you a couple of things that’ll blow you away when you see them in person. But the in person thing will really floor you. Just how much even the best books cannot capture the art as it exists.
Speaker: 0
01:57:00
I’m sure.
Speaker: 1
01:57:01
I saw your gym. Your gym is awesome. I thought I had the best gym. You’ve got a great gym, but I got one thing you don’t got. You gotta come see. What? I don’t have mirrors up.
Speaker: 0
01:57:10
You don’t have mirrors on purpose?
Speaker: 1
01:57:11
It’s because I just have the original Drew Struzan
Speaker: 0
01:57:16
painting
Speaker: 1
01:57:18
for First Blood Stallone. Oh, wow. And because it’s got glass over it, you can kinda see yourself in it, but I just stand in front and I go, I’m not there yet. I’m not there yet. That’s ai mirror. Good for form. Just sai for form. And so I can kinda see the form, but that’s my mirror when you come.
Speaker: 1
01:57:36
It’s the it’s the Stallone painting. And that’s one that one? Sai, like, that one. Yeah. But it doesn’t it doesn’t capture it the painting at all.
Speaker: 1
01:57:43
This even this digital copy of it. Like, look at the original poster of it with it has the writing on it. Mhmm. The way they printed it was ai ass.
Speaker: 2
01:57:51
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:57:52
Look at that thing.
Speaker: 0
01:57:53
It does.
Speaker: 1
01:57:53
So when you see the original one, you’re like, oh my god. This is like fine art. Oh, that’s right. And that still doesn’t capture it, but it’s closer than the than the poster.
Speaker: 0
01:58:01
But there’s something about seeing the actual physical thing
Speaker: 2
01:58:03
that you
Speaker: 1
01:58:03
sai the real creative. So inspiring. And then when you see the physique that he has, you’re just like, okay. I’m gonna work harder. But that’s in my gym. So you
Speaker: 0
01:58:10
gotta go check that out. Because it’s I’ve got a photo of Alexander Corellin out there. That’s my photo to remind me every day what a pussy I am. Because Alexander Corellin sai, like, the greatest Olympic wrestler to ever come out of Russia. There’s a photo that show pull up the photo that we have in the gym.
Speaker: 0
01:58:23
He was a freak. They called him the ai project because his parents were, like, five foot five, and he was, like, six two, three hundred pounds, and just it was built like a panther. Look at that. That’s him.
Speaker: 1
01:58:34
Oh, jeez. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:58:35
That’s the picture. Sai that picture up in the gym. That’s my inspiration every day workout. Because he was just such a fucking physical speak, and it’s just that particular image that that intensity. If If I’m ever tired, I look at that image.
Speaker: 1
01:58:50
What’s your what’s your workout routine? How often do you get to work out?
Speaker: 0
01:58:53
I work out every day. Yep. Basically, every day.
Speaker: 1
01:58:55
First thing in
Speaker: 2
01:58:56
the morning?
Speaker: 0
01:58:56
Occasionally, I feel like I need a day off. I’ll take a day off. But, yeah, first thing in the morning.
Speaker: 1
01:59:01
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:59:01
Yeah. That’s the thing. Meh up. Get going. Meh going.
Speaker: 1
01:59:04
Wake cobwebs out of your head.
Speaker: 0
01:59:05
Well, it’s like you said, like, you decide I’m an athlete. I I I sort of decide I’m this person who gets up and gets in the cold plunge first thing in the morning. Right. Right. I’m this person that does these two and a half hour workouts then gets in the sauna. That’s what I do. I do it every day.
Speaker: 1
01:59:20
I do the thing. This might inspire some people, like so I don’t have a trainer, but I’ll go look at like, I like watching other people see what they do in their routine, so I adopt some of that. I saw Josh Brolin all freaking in shape for the Deadpool movie, and I was like, dude, text him. What is your workout? Could you tell meh?
Speaker: 1
01:59:36
Oh, I’ll send it to you. He sends me a PDF of his whole workout routine that, you know, the trainers have given me. It’s intense. It was like, okay. If I do one fourth of this, I’ll have a quarter of his results. I’m fine with that because I’m kinda out of this shit to do anyway.
Speaker: 1
01:59:50
So I would be in and out of there half hour. Hold on. You know? So you don’t have to commit all the way, you know, if you if as long as you’re doing something, you’re getting up and you’re and you’re working out and you’re doing it very strategically, if you don’t have a lot of time, there’s no excuse.
Speaker: 1
02:00:04
You can make you can make Oh, you
Speaker: 2
02:00:05
can get
Speaker: 0
02:00:05
a lot done.
Speaker: 2
02:00:06
You have
Speaker: 1
02:00:06
a lot done. Arya of time. Yeah. Reverse pyramid train or something, you got three minutes in between each one, you can meh work done during.
Speaker: 0
02:00:12
You certainly can. You try in fact, there was a study that just came out recently that showed that you get more results from one set to failure than you do with three sets.
Speaker: 1
02:00:24
Yeah. That you Sometimes Sai would then just keep holding the bar after I was done just, like, for ten more seconds.
Speaker: 0
02:00:29
Yeah. There was some some studies. See if you could find this. It was a very recent study. It was very counterintuitive because a lot of people think more work, better results.
Speaker: 1
02:00:37
Right.
Speaker: 0
02:00:38
But this in this study, they were showing that they got more strength gains and more muscle recruitment in one hard set to failure.
Speaker: 1
02:00:48
There’s a lot of counterintuitive stuff. Yeah. I like when I hear stuff like that, I try it. You know, I just roll it into the routine and give it a try.
Speaker: 0
02:00:54
Yeah. Because you don’t know
Speaker: 1
02:00:55
what’s you don’t know what’s gonna work for you. There’s no there’s no one right way to do anything. So I try to just get advice and and and adopt it. And I had this funny, Stallone once. Did you ever had Stallone on the show? No. Great interview.
Speaker: 1
02:01:06
Ai best in an interview on the director’s chair is him because it’s the most one that any layman could ai with. The guy really is Rocky. His story is unbelievable, and he’s really funny. And, I
Speaker: 0
02:01:16
meh him for before for the UFC.
Speaker: 1
02:01:18
He called me, and said if he asked if an ask actor friend of mine could be in one of the expendables. He’s ai, my actor fell through. Can we can you ask what’s his name? You know, friend was. Yeah. I’ll ask so I asked my friend. My friend goes, oh, no.
Speaker: 1
02:01:31
It’s it’s too short notice, you know, because it was a last minute replacement. I I need to get in shape. Okay. That makes sense. But but it’s not a physical role. You’re just wanting you know, I don’t know.
Speaker: 1
02:01:40
But I I wouldn’t wanna be in a Stallone movie and not be in shah, so I have to get in shape. And I don’t have enough time, you know. Just sana shoot in a week. So I go to Sly, and I say, hey, Sly, he said, you know, I figured Sly would understand. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
02:01:51
He has to get in shape. Meh in shape? Get in shape? You don’t get in shah. Sai in shape.
Speaker: 2
02:01:59
I was
Speaker: 1
02:01:59
like, yeah. That makes sense. Gotta stay in shape.
Speaker: 2
02:02:02
You know,
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02:02:03
I was a young lady.
Speaker: 0
02:02:04
Of Stallone walking around Malibu looking like he’s nine months pregnant. Have you seen that photo?
Speaker: 1
02:02:08
No. I don’t know if
Speaker: 0
02:02:09
he did that for
Speaker: 2
02:02:10
for a movie ai
Speaker: 1
02:02:10
probably for Copeland. No. It wasn’t for
Speaker: 0
02:02:12
Copeland. It was recent.
Speaker: 1
02:02:14
It was, like, within almost two years. Now. He’s freaking 70
Speaker: 0
02:02:18
No excuses.
Speaker: 1
02:02:19
No excuses. Stay in shape. Stay in shape. Yeah. That dude such a great interview because I watched the Rocky movies. You know, when was the last time you saw the Rocky movies?
Speaker: 0
02:02:27
Yeah. Here it is. Study finds higher training volume, increases size, not strength. Oh, this isn’t it. Yeah. No. This is in May of twenty twenty four. It was very recently. It was about one set. Doing one set to failure shows, strength and muscle recruitment benefits over three sets.
Speaker: 1
02:02:48
Yeah. Saloni mean, I don’t know when the last time we saw the Rocky Yeah.
Speaker: 0
02:02:51
Here it is. New research says you could build strength and muscle with single set training. No. This isn’t it either. It might be December 2024. It might be it. So just one hard set per exercise delivers impressive results.
Speaker: 2
02:03:03
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
02:03:03
So sai least try that.
Speaker: 0
02:03:05
Yeah.
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02:03:06
Meh out get in and out. They were saying
Speaker: 0
02:03:07
it actually works better. So maybe this is another ai. Ai I I read it just a couple of days ago. It doesn’t matter. We get it. It so but that is also very counterintuitive. Yeah. Because most people think, oh, it’s all about the amount of time you speak.
Speaker: 2
02:03:21
It’s how
Speaker: 0
02:03:22
many pressure it was. Yeah. What I but I do a lot of different, exercises in one I I do full body workouts almost ai. A very rare unless one day a week, I do heavy leg stuff or it’s just legs, you know, because the leg there’s so many muscles of the legs. I don’t, you know, I wanna sana make sure that I’m doing that. I just it takes too much time.
Speaker: 1
02:03:42
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
02:03:42
Because I’m doing leg curls and leg presses and lunges and Ai. Keep that muscle. Sai can’t do other stuff too. Ai I like working out by myself. Yeah. Yeah. I’m really old. Because it’s time to think.
Speaker: 1
02:03:55
Yeah. Time to really
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02:03:56
Know what the voice is.
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02:03:57
Very meditative.
Speaker: 0
02:03:58
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
02:03:59
And you work in the body and the body, you meh sai ideas, and I keep my computer there, and I Ai write down ideas.
Speaker: 0
02:04:04
Oh, nice.
Speaker: 1
02:04:04
Did you, you know, did you see the I I was watching the Rocky movies again, and I was like, we watched the first one, showed it to my lady. She loved it. So Sai said, we gotta watch the second one. Watch the second one. The next time meh watched the third one, I I finally we got to the fourth one. I was like, okay. Oh, shit. I’m gonna write Stallone.
Speaker: 1
02:04:19
I said, dude, you are consistently moving that character through the different eras, and you need to go back to directing because he’d when I worked with him, he’d done a bunch of movies in the nineties, and he was telling me why the movies didn’t work. I said, you gotta go back to directing.
Speaker: 1
02:04:34
No one was at your level Directing yourself, getting career best out of your other actors ai you’re also not just the shah, but the franchise and being in insane shape back then, which is way before anyone knew anything about training. You were probably in the gym much longer than you needed to be. And he said, very perceptive. You know?
Speaker: 1
02:04:50
Like, I was like, you probably were way overtraining because then people didn’t know. There were no science to it back then. Right. And getting all that work done. So how can you work with another director now? They’re gonna connect they have their respect. You gotta go back to directing because you can’t argue with the result.
Speaker: 1
02:05:07
And he was like, can’t go back to ai. Well, we did this movie together. It was his biggest opening ever with Ai Kids three d. Two years later or a year later, he goes, I’m bryden another Rocky. And that was that new Rocky. He he hadn’t directed in twenty two years. Woah.
Speaker: 1
02:05:24
He went back to directing and ai. Did another Rocky, another Rambo, and then a whole new franchise, Expendables. Crazy, like, for your career to come back like that.
Speaker: 0
02:05:34
Did stunts and Expendables and broke
Speaker: 1
02:05:36
his fucking match. Easy. But because he went back and and that’s ai, you know, that’s the key to success. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
02:05:42
Vatsal late sixties.
Speaker: 1
02:05:43
And I sai, yeah. It’s
Speaker: 0
02:05:44
hard. His own stunts.
Speaker: 1
02:05:45
It’s harder to go do it all yourself. But look, you can’t argue with the results. Look at the results you got back then. I’m so glad he went back to it because it ai me all over you. So it’s a great you know, I’m sure you’ve done vatsal. Someone that really inspired you, and I wanna know who your heroes that you got to inspire back in some way. And then you’re just like, oh my god.
Speaker: 1
02:06:02
It’s they inspired me so that I could be here for them when they needed to hear that to go on. It was ai all part of the universe of that creativity. You know? You’re you’re the one who goes whispers in their ear. Another one with him, because he inspired me, you know, so many times sai I started working with my kids more. It’s very counterintuitive.
Speaker: 1
02:06:18
Like, I don’t know if you work with your kids or whatever plan to work with your kids, but I would say to anybody, if you have an opportunity to work with your kids, take it. Because when I was, like, when I turned 50, I thought, I guess I could keep making movies. It’s been good to me. I guess I could just make more.
Speaker: 1
02:06:32
I mean, I was way into it, you know, when I was younger, and my it’s been good to me. But I said, I I bet there might be another job I can take that with the knowledge I have, I could probably make just as much money or something. I don’t even know what jobs exist. I got this job when I was 21. So I I got jobs for dummies.
Speaker: 1
02:06:48
And I started looking at all the other jobs were, oh, I want that job. I want that job. And then I get to filmmaker. It has a little icon of a guy that has hands up like this, and it says, this is the best job. Just make movies with your friends.
Speaker: 1
02:07:01
You sit back, watch the money roll in, but 99% of film students can’t get this job, so give it up. So I went I actually got the best job, so I speak with it. But it still wasn’t enough desire until I made that $7,000 movie with my ai, and they got so into it. And I realized that’s my next ten years.
Speaker: 1
02:07:19
I’m gonna work with my kids. I’m gonna make them all work on movies because I it’s not about making movies, about life lessons. It’s huge Yeah. Huge project that you have to you don’t know how you’re gonna get through even the day, much less the project. But that’s life.
Speaker: 1
02:07:33
It’s like, I felt so good afterwards saying, you know the process now. If I get hit by a bus, you guys are gonna be fine. Because it’s just like the movies. The story of life is just like the stories we make up. You go get your plan together, which is kinda like your script.
Speaker: 1
02:07:46
You attack it, try to make it as bulletproof as possible. Go for your goal, whether it’s building a comedy club or whatever. Watch it all fucking fall apart. And then that’s when you roll up your sleeves, turn chicken shit to chicken salad. The finished results way better than your original vision. Wash, rinse, speak. That’s life.
Speaker: 1
02:08:03
It’s a microcosm of how life works. So I made them work on the movies. And I did this manifesting thing. My son said, well, I’d like to do a VR movie. So let’s make a company together. We’ll call it double r. You all have double r names.
Speaker: 1
02:08:15
Double r company. Watch. I’m gonna show you this how this works because I did this with ram knuckle films, which is creating a label. Double odd. LBR logo.
Speaker: 1
02:08:23
And I made t shirts and little notepads and they got way into it. Because now that we have a company, you have to do stuff to fill the company. So we’ll call a VR company and say, y’all need to sell headsets. Give us some money to make a movie and we’ll make you a movie. We did one with Michelle Rodriguez and Norman Reedus called The Limit. That had the they made us a big double r logo in the front.
Speaker: 1
02:08:41
That was, like, in March. Later that year, we made that $7,000 movie. That also had the double r logo. Then I went to Netflix, and they said, could you make us a Ai Kids type thing vatsal always does well? So I thought, okay.
Speaker: 1
02:08:52
I kinda came up within the room. I thought, little kid superheroes who have to save their superhero parents. That’s We Can Be Heroes, another double r movie. My kids wrote it with me. It’s the most watched and rewatched movie in Netflix history. Nothing can touch it.
Speaker: 1
02:09:05
Kids cannot stop watching it because as little kid superheroes, no one’s ever done that before. And my kids are like, dad, it really works this thing. And I was like, shah. Better than I thought. I was just I was just making an example, but that’s that’s how it happens. Right?
Speaker: 1
02:09:20
Like, it feels predestined, but also you’re ai, let me just show you how it works.
Speaker: 2
02:09:24
And you
Speaker: 1
02:09:24
go to show someone an example and that becomes your bread and butter. Yeah. And so I just tell people, if you have an opportunity to work with your kids, you’re mentoring them. They’re mentoring you because they’re the age I was when I was making mariachi and desperado. They got so many great ai.
Speaker: 1
02:09:38
And you’re taking on this big project that’s teaching them about life. And because you’re both in the same boat, you both know what it’s gonna take. And it’s family time. So you’re like checking all the boxes, and I was telling this to Sly. I was so excited back in, you know, 2019, and his ai, Jennifer, was like, you don’t work with your daughters. She hits him. You don’t work with your daughters.
Speaker: 1
02:10:00
And he’s like, oh. And I was like, oh, shit. Maybe I should dial this story back. I think I I was so evangelical about it, but Ai get people in trouble, but they couldn’t then hear it. In the next year, the daughters went on pot started a podcast. He would show up every once in a while to, like, get brains up.
Speaker: 1
02:10:15
Now they have a TV shah, second season. Family’s still alone. They’re all working together. They’re all living the best life. So I tyler anybody who listens because it’s something I stumbled upon because it’s very counterintuitive because you would think, oh, if I work my my kids, doesn’t that look like ai or whatever.
Speaker: 1
02:10:29
So I’ll tell you this. What happens when we die? Don’t you just give everything that you’ve created over your life to your kids because they have your last name? They weren’t a part of it. If you have a chance to work with them and build it with you, you have that next level mentorship relationship.
Speaker: 1
02:10:45
Don’t just parent because after a while, once they’re in the teens, they don’t really need you to petting over them. Partner with them. Become their mentor, their OB one, and they mentor you back. It gives them such a boost in confidence when they teach you some shah, And you’ll have that next level experience.
Speaker: 1
02:11:01
That way, when you pass on, you give them the stuff to go, yeah. I made this with my dad.
Speaker: 0
02:11:04
That’s great advice.
Speaker: 1
02:11:05
So I tell people Especially
Speaker: 2
02:11:06
when you
Speaker: 0
02:11:07
do something like you do. That’s well, you know Depends
Speaker: 1
02:11:09
on what you have. Ai your version of, you know, like, not everybody can necessarily work with you. But if you have an opportunity to do it, do it.
Speaker: 0
02:11:14
But, like, this thing that you were saying about jobs for dummies, 99% of people are not gonna be able to do this. Well, that’s the thing. It’s ai, but yeah. But it’s possible.
Speaker: 1
02:11:21
It is possible.
Speaker: 0
02:11:22
Yeah. Part of the 99% not gonna do it because they don’t know anybody who’s done it. Right. That’s part of the problem.
Speaker: 1
02:11:29
And ai they Once you
Speaker: 0
02:11:30
see, like, oh, look how he did this. He just did I think I could he told me how he made El Mariachi. Yeah. I think it could be done.
Speaker: 1
02:11:37
That wasn’t taught in film schools. That was completely again, they they don’t teach you how to do one job. Right. So that you can go pull cables in someone else’s movie. My thing was like Right. Be the owner, be the creator, be everything. You cut the line and suddenly you’re at the film festival.
Speaker: 1
02:11:50
But and you know
Speaker: 0
02:11:51
and no one had really done that before.
Speaker: 1
02:11:52
Nobody had done that before. It was the first time. That’s why even when I was doing it, I was like, I kinda have the idea this can do it because I did that short film and I’m doing the math, but somebody must have done this already. Even when the studio in the book it shows.
Speaker: 1
02:12:06
Even when the studios were flying me up because they saw mariachi and wanted to do a deal with meh, I went, I’ve never heard of anyone meh in the business like this. This must happen all the time where they find some filmmaker, bryden, they wine and dine them, and then you never hear from them again because I ai I’ve never heard a story like this, and I was the first one.
Speaker: 1
02:12:22
That’s why.
Speaker: 0
02:12:23
That’s why.
Speaker: 1
02:12:24
It was really crazy. And I didn’t even want them to release it. I didn’t want them to release it because it was my my my my practice film. I just threw it away.
Speaker: 0
02:12:33
They said Wasn’t everything one take?
Speaker: 1
02:12:35
One take because I was shooting on film. And if I shot two takes of everything, Ai double my budget because most of the money went to the film. I wrote the script around everything I already had, so I wouldn’t have to buy anything. So it’s like, well, what do we have? We took stock in what we have. And this is a lesson for life. Like, if you if you think you can’t do anything, well, look around you.
Speaker: 1
02:12:53
You got a lot of resources. It’s about being resourceful. We have a turtle we found. We have a dog. We’ve got a ranch.
Speaker: 1
02:12:59
Your brother-in-law has a school line Ai mean, a bus line. We’ll bar one of the buses. When you see what we do with a bus, he crashes into it. Have some bar. Let’s ride everything around that. So we just have that. And if I shoot two takes, we double their budget.
Speaker: 1
02:13:13
How about I shoot one take of everything? I know not everything’s gonna come out because I’m doing everything myself. I’m pulling focus. I might meter it wrong. Who knows?
Speaker: 1
02:13:19
But I don’t wanna shoot a safety take or it’s gonna double the budget. We’ll go home after I finish shooting the whole movie. I’ll see what stuff didn’t come out, and I’ll go just reshoot that. Of course, you get home here. I’m not gonna fucking go back to Mexico and reshoot anything else.
Speaker: 1
02:13:32
Ai just figure out
Speaker: 2
02:13:33
a way
Speaker: 1
02:13:33
to edit around all the stuff that didn’t come out. Not everything came out. But, yeah. It was merely just following your nose and not knowing if it was gonna work. Somebody must have thought to do this already, but no one had ever done that before because it’s so counterintuitive. You’re told but that’s how meh started.
Speaker: 1
02:13:48
You know, you think back in the old days, Charlie Chaplin and the guy behind the camera doing this. They didn’t have 200 people. It turned into a business just like with comedy and it turns into a business to where you think that’s the art form. That’s not the art form. That’s the business of the art form. The original art form is you by yourself doing it. This is how by myself I was.
Speaker: 1
02:14:04
It was like you got one guy here now. Right? Because you have all these digital cameras. I had one camera, and I had the sound. And I can’t do them at the same time because this camera sounds like this. Really noisy. And it sounds like all your money is going away.
Speaker: 1
02:14:20
So I sai no slates. I would just sai, run. Ai starts running. Stop filming. Cut. You know, like Ai would just shoot my little pieces like this much.
Speaker: 1
02:14:31
After I would do a whole scene, one take, one take, one take, one take. Put the camera down. Get the microphone really close to them like that. Okay. Sai all your lines again. Pick up the glass again. Do all that stuff again. Wow. Ai it in by hand.
Speaker: 1
02:14:46
So so you cut it in
Speaker: 0
02:14:48
the audio by hand and try to sync it to the mouth?
Speaker: 1
02:14:50
So when they’re not because they’re not non actors. A lot of times, like, repeat what you just said. Wait. So you cut it by hand and it would match. Right? Yeah. And if it didn’t match, I would cut away to the dog or to the knife or the other person. That’s why it’s got a really fast cutting ai, which became my cutting ai, which is to get them back in sync because I didn’t want it to look like a low budget
Speaker: 2
02:15:08
Right.
Speaker: 1
02:15:09
Rubbery lip thing. But if you watch it, you see them in sync. Every time they’re on screen, they’re in sync. And then as they start to go out of sync, it cuts then it cuts back but this is about being resourceful but it saved me a ton of money doing it that way
Speaker: 0
02:15:23
and it made it actually interesting to watch.
Speaker: 1
02:15:25
It makes it more interesting to watch. Yeah. Oh, so anyway so ai I didn’t have any ideas. I was gonna make three of these movies before making my serious American independent film. But my first movie, I gave it to an agent in Los Angeles, and he said, I can get you worked off this right now as a writer director.
Speaker: 1
02:15:43
And I went, writer director? I’m not a writer. Well, I guess I wrote the script. I guess that makes me a writer. Again, I didn’t know how to own stuff yet. So you just gotta say you’re a writer. I still thought, well, Ai I didn’t even written the movie.
Speaker: 1
02:15:54
I didn’t consider myself a writer. Yes. That’s that’s the shit we do to ourselves. Right? So I sai, okay.
Speaker: 1
02:15:59
So he sent it around all these studios were flying me up. It’s in the book. It’s just crazy how fast it happened and they’re offering me these deals because they saw that I went and did something. That’s why you just got to go make something because people are sometimes are so impressed that you even did anything.
Speaker: 1
02:16:11
Most people never start and they went wow and I thought it’s actually a good calling card now if you if you like the cinematography I did that hire me as a cameraman. If you ai the editing Sai did that hire me as an editor but they ai me as a writer director and Ai they sai what movie do you want to do?
Speaker: 1
02:16:26
Oh, this all happened so fast. I didn’t I didn’t really have a chance to think about it. I was gonna do three of these practice films and then make a real one. So but you’d like Mariachi. Why don’t we remake that?
Speaker: 1
02:16:36
And they said, with ai Antonio Banderas. Okay. Okay. But audience might not like that the girl ai. So we’re gonna screen this version that you have now to an audience. So we screen it to an audience, and they liked it the way it was.
Speaker: 1
02:16:48
So they said, we’re gonna take this to some film festival. So I was like, no. Don’t show this movie. It’s my practice movie. Literally, no one’s supposed to see this one. They go, no. No. You got something really special. I said, no, dude. I’m telling you.
Speaker: 1
02:16:59
I can do much better than that. Give me $2,000. I’ll go reshoot half of it. Just knowing that people are gonna see it now, I would do completely differently. And they go, you got something. They’re smart at Mark Kenton there said, you got something really special here. We’re gonna take it to the festivals.
Speaker: 1
02:17:13
And we won Sundance because I made it for myself. It was a real lesson in that. Like, if I was trying to think about what all the audience was gonna wanna see, I would have changed so many things. But because I knew no one was gonna see it. It’s probably the only movie in history ever made where people were guaranteed not to see it.
Speaker: 1
02:17:29
Just by the title, I titled it that way sai nobody would see it. I didn’t want anybody to see it. I wanted to just throw it away in practice. I figured maybe the third one one might might be the better one. You know, like that advice, throw three scripts away and then do a four.
Speaker: 1
02:17:41
Well, I’m gonna throw three movies away sai that by the fourth I’m I’m so savvy, know how to film and do all these things. This first practice sai not gonna be it. That’s the one that is gonna be it. Wow. Sai commit to a body of work. Throw shit away.
Speaker: 1
02:17:53
Don’t put don’t be precious about it. Just go make it. Don’t blink when people criticize it, and just keep going. Make a body of work. That’s it.
Speaker: 1
02:18:01
That’s that’s the secret. And that’s the secret to life too. Just keep just keep trying to make it the best.
Speaker: 0
02:18:05
That is phenomenal advice. And coming from a person like you that has accomplished so much, it’s so resonant.
Speaker: 1
02:18:10
That’s why I accomplished it. By doing those things which everybody can do. It’s not because I’m I’m I’m not that smart. I’m telling you. Not that smart. Ai just follow your instincts like you’ve done. When you follow your instinct, you’re letting the universe do all the talking.
Speaker: 1
02:18:22
And it suddenly sounds wonky, but I just call it that because it is from some other place. And you’re just an instrument. You’re just a pipe. Yes. The soul that gets into your body and you realize that when you have kids. I don’t know if you had that experience.
Speaker: 1
02:18:32
Saloni as I had my first kid, I was like, this isn’t my kid. You can just tell it’s not my kid. I mean, it has physical characteristics and maybe mannerisms in my walk, but there’s another soul in here that’s from some other place. And each one is so different. I have five kids, and I have from nine siblings. They’re so they’re from different planets. Right.
Speaker: 1
02:18:53
And so you realize that the soul is on a communication level with some other thing that our human bodies are just very primitive to to do. So when we get a a voice, we can’t tell if it’s coming from the universe, if it’s for our own mind, or if it’s just because it all sounds like fucking Morse code because the brain is so primitive.
Speaker: 1
02:19:15
It’s a three pound meat computer. It’s why we can’t remember shit. It’s like we’re we’re limited by the body our soul got put into. Just like we’d be limited if we’re putting a fish because they got even smaller bryden, you know, and it’s the only go forward and backwards.
Speaker: 0
02:19:26
That’s why a lot of people say you have to learn how to get out of your own way.
Speaker: 1
02:19:30
Yeah. Because you’re you’re you think I’m so limited. Yeah. But you actually
Speaker: 0
02:19:35
Also, maybe you don’t and maybe you’re cocky, which is equally bad.
Speaker: 1
02:19:40
Yeah. Because that’s beginning your own way in a different way.
Speaker: 2
02:19:42
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
02:19:42
It’s a false it’s a false Yeah. Yeah. Where you think Ai I can do anything because I’m just so cool. What it’s like, no. You can do anything because you’re just a pipe. Be that, and then you’ll see much more flow happening.
Speaker: 2
02:19:52
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
02:19:52
You’ll see things just falling in your lap.
Speaker: 0
02:19:54
Yeah. Don’t think about you at all.
Speaker: 1
02:19:56
Yeah. Get you out of it. It’s not you have to be very humble. It’s a very humbling thing. The more humble you are, the more shit happens, not just for you, but everyone around you. Being creative and Ai figured this out, like, one year, there was a book called The One Thing, a business book called One Thing.
Speaker: 1
02:20:12
Like, do one thing and just do that well. Oh, yeah. That book’s not for me. And I was doing this talk where they introduced me and sai, Robert Rodriguez is a writer, director, editor, computer, and it’s a long list of all the jobs I do. And I went up there like, wow. That I get tired just hearing that list.
Speaker: 1
02:20:25
And I keep seeing that book, The One Thing, and I thought, at first, I thought that’s not meh, but I I realized, you know what? I don’t just do all those things. There’s one thing I really do that ties all those together. When you think about it, I do one thing, and it’s Ai live a creative life.
Speaker: 1
02:20:42
And if you commit to living a creative life, like literally applying creativity to everything you do, your workout in the morning, how you interact with your kids, the meal you cook, what you’re gonna do that night, a business call you take, be creative. I love my business meetings now the most. I make people pizza. I’m making my chocolate. We talk about creativity and they sana be in business with you.
Speaker: 1
02:21:00
It’s like so good because you’re adding creativity. It enriches your life and everyone around you. And that way anything that touches creativity whether it’s painting, drawing, sculpture, music is available to you because what 90% of that job is just being creative. And if you’re doing it all day, you’re always sana be in a flow.
Speaker: 1
02:21:17
If you don’t embrace that and you go about your daily life and you don’t apply creativity, well, when you go home that night to write your novel or something, you’re gonna be blocked because you’re not in a creative flow.
Speaker: 2
02:21:27
But
Speaker: 1
02:21:27
if you’ve just been applying creativity all day long to everything, I’m gonna do I’m gonna do this talk creatively. I’m gonna bring some cards. I’m gonna go do this. You know, you’re applying creativity. You’re always in a flow. So when you go back to go do your main job, you’re in you’ve already been doing it, and you’re living your best life because I found I was most successful, happiest, and most fulfilled when I was being creative.
Speaker: 1
02:21:47
So why not just do that twenty four seven? And it’s been a life changer. It’s been doing that, like, fifteen years with consciousness. Like consciously sai, because people don’t like to say they’re creative. Like ai I asked, like, are you creative? And Lexi is like, yeah. You know, like stumbling through.
Speaker: 1
02:22:01
It’s like, because people think being an artist means you have to have the mustache and the hat. And it’s ai, no. Artists are regular people and regular people are flawed. And that’s why you relate to something that they do because it’s flawed. If you made it perfect, they couldn’t relate to it because humans are flawed. And if you think of it that way, you go, ai can create flawed stuff?
Speaker: 1
02:22:19
I can do that all day long. And then that get gets out of your way. Because then somebody who comes to you and they go really love that part where the explosion is, oh, well, that was an accident because I didn’t get what I really wanted. And I had to make this work, and that was an accident.
Speaker: 1
02:22:30
They like those act they they respond to those accidents in a big way because they’re from another universe. They’re they’re they’re the part that’s magic. The part you didn’t know and the part you couldn’t have predicted. Right. And so if you’ve set up I I purposely make my budgets smaller and my shooting schedules shorter sai that those more of that stuff happens because that’s the stuff people will relate to and it gives you complete creative freedom.
Speaker: 1
02:22:52
Like, you have a lot of creative freedom here. Ai probably the director who’s worked with the most outcast, ostracized, or people who are considered difficult than any other filmmaker, mainly because I’m independent. And I don’t have to listen to a studio if they’re like, oh, you can’t work with that person. Oh.
Speaker: 1
02:23:10
So, like, Mel Gibson couldn’t get a job back when I hired him on I ai just always a big fan of his. Always ai a creativity first and talent first bullshit controversy. Not even distance Sai can it’s not even considered. And I get to work with these amazing people, Steven Seagal, Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan. And then people who arya considered difficult were ai Michael Parks.
Speaker: 1
02:23:31
I got this from Quentin. Michael Parks was in Dust All Dawn. He’s the sheriff at the beginning, the Texas Ranger. Quentin said, man, I love this guy, Michael Parks. He was gonna be the next James Dean. He had a show on TV in the seventies called then came Bronson.
Speaker: 1
02:23:44
But then he kinda got difficult for people to work with, and so he was relegated to these low budget grindhouse films. But check him out. He’s always really great. I sana put him in dustled on, but here he’s ai difficult to work with. Can you work with him first?
Speaker: 1
02:23:57
And if he’s if he’s great to work with, I’ll work with him. So it’s alright. Sure.
Speaker: 2
02:24:01
So I
Speaker: 1
02:24:01
work with him. It’s a dream. It’s amazing. He was really great. No no bullshit of all the people like vatsal, and then we both kept putting him in movies. Mickey Rourke was considered couldn’t work. Think you couldn’t get a job. I gave him once upon a time. But once I met him, I was like, oh my god.
Speaker: 1
02:24:16
He’s just like Mickey in the old days. You know, Quintin and I actually wanted him in Dusk Tyler Dawn. We both wanted Mickey Rourke in the lead role, but he’d retired from acting. He was just boxing. He won’t even look at the scripts. We’re like, oh, man.
Speaker: 1
02:24:28
We could hire Mickey Rourke, and there’s no Mickey Rourke now. We’re just so bummed. But then years later, I went back to him, and, no one was hiring him. And so I met with him. I said, okay. I’ll meet with him. It’s like, holy shit. He still has that charm and everything.
Speaker: 1
02:24:39
So I put him in give him a small role in Once Upon a Time ai Mexico, and I kept writing him more scenes. He was broke. I mean, Ai gave him money to go buy his own suits because he always dressed to the nines in his movies. It’s like, look, I’m all out of time costume designing this thing. I’ll give you some money. Go buy your own clothes. You you’re always gonna dress.
Speaker: 1
02:24:56
He came with these Billy Martin suits and stuff. Ai I’m gonna put a bullet hole in the back of one digitally just so you can keep because he wanted to keep the clothes so you can keep the clothes. Thanks, brother. And then I put him in Sana City, and, it ai relaunched his career.
Speaker: 1
02:25:10
But he was always a dream to work with, and I would hear from people later, oh, he’s been difficult again. I was like, really? So he come back again? No. Again. A % of the time, I’ve never had any difficulty with even the difficult ai one. So it makes you think.
Speaker: 1
02:25:24
Ai then you know that because you have anybody you want on your shah. But it it makes me wonder what environment are you putting them in
Speaker: 0
02:25:30
Right.
Speaker: 1
02:25:31
That makes them like that. Because, like, somebody would say that about, Rudgar Hauer. It was amazing. Hard to work with. Really? No. Ai it wasn’t at all. But for some people have
Speaker: 0
02:25:40
no other reputation.
Speaker: 2
02:25:41
I don’t
Speaker: 1
02:25:41
know, but somebody told me
Speaker: 0
02:25:43
loved him and stuff.
Speaker: 1
02:25:44
Loved him and stuff. Blade Runner Oh. Hitcher. Bruce Willis, people would tell tell me was difficult to work. I meh like, Bruce, I worked with him four times. Let me tell you. This is what Bruce is like when he walks in the set. Hey, Hefe. What’s going on, man? Hefe means boss.
Speaker: 1
02:25:59
Does that sound like somebody who’s difficult? That’s gonna be somebody who’s just so happy. One ai, I was doing this Kobe Bryant Nike commercial. I was gonna be in with Kobe. I was directing it. And I was working out at the gym where Saloni works out, Gunnar Peterson’s, gym. And Bruce was there.
Speaker: 1
02:26:19
And I was trying to get an actor to do a cameo in this commercial. I was shooting that weekend. I was working out because I was gonna be on camera. And so then I go to Bruce and I go, hey, what do you what are you up to? And he goes, ai looking for a job. And I said, well, are you a basketball fan? So I’m shooting a Kobe Bryant commercial Saturday.
Speaker: 1
02:26:35
What why don’t you come by the set? It’s downtown. We play this role. Bring bring a couple of suits because it’s very last minute, but last minute replacement. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
02:26:43
Yeah. Sure. Love to meet him. Okay. Good. So I went back to the Nike people and sai, Bruce said he’s gonna be in it. Well, we’ll call his agent.
Speaker: 1
02:26:50
No. No. Don’t call his agent because he probably didn’t tell him. And he said he’ll come down. I think he will because he’s cool like that.
Speaker: 1
02:26:56
Oh, we think we should call him anyways. So he called the agents. The agents go, Bruce Willis is not gonna be in a Nike commercial. Well, he talked to Robert. Oh, okay. I guess he is gonna be in a Nike commercial. So then we’re down there in the set. We’re downtown LA.
Speaker: 1
02:27:06
We’re filming COVID. We’re filming everything else, and it’s, like, almost time for him to show up. And they’re ai, you sure he’s gonna come? He said meh would. He said he’d bring two suits.
Speaker: 1
02:27:14
And now now I’m thinking how ridiculous that sounds that I told him in the gym and said, come down with a couple of your suits from your own closet. Like, there’s no wardrobe. There’s no time to get a wardrobe fitting and just show up. He shows up. Shows up. Does it?
Speaker: 1
02:27:28
So I’ll film you out in an hour because he knows how we work together. Had a great time. He’s great in it. Takes off, brought his two suits.
Speaker: 0
02:27:36
That’s amazing.
Speaker: 1
02:27:37
That does not sound like somebody who’s difficult.
Speaker: 0
02:27:38
No. It’s the environment that you put these people.
Speaker: 1
02:27:41
Totally the environment you put them in. Because I was watching, like, a dog whisper, and it’s ai, if you have a pit bull, some of these guys can be alpha male pit bull. If you put them in a situation where aggression is needed. Like, if you have a chaotic set and producers are coming down going, yeah, no. You can’t wear that.
Speaker: 1
02:27:56
You can’t talk like that. Of course, you’re gonna piss these guys off. But if you put them in an environment where they know there’s somebody who’s the boss. I mean, they show up. It’s my studio. I’m operating the camera. I’m the DP. I’m there acting with them. We’re shooting it in record ai.
Speaker: 1
02:28:10
Getting them out of there fast. They’re having a ball. People just wants to follow. He doesn’t wanna he doesn’t wanna know if I can take over the show. And so everyone’s really that’s my theory on it anyway.
Speaker: 1
02:28:21
I think it’s just the environment because they always say, oh, if you have a dog that’s misbehaving, it’s the owner. It’s the owner in the environment. It’s not the dog. Yes. There’s nothing wrong with the animal. The animal is fine. The animal could be very calm and assertive and even submissive.
Speaker: 0
02:28:35
Well, it’s also these exceptional actors with these eccentric personalities. They’re ai, like, if you put them in a bad environment, you’re gonna get a fucking terrible result because it’s part of what they are is, like, a little bit of chaos.
Speaker: 1
02:28:47
Well, also just gonna have to protect themselves. Yes. They have to protect themselves of this of this environment is fucked up.
Speaker: 0
02:28:52
Think about the type of guy that told you that, like, wait wait. You filmed this and you didn’t get the right Yeah.
Speaker: 1
02:28:57
Yeah. Those those are the guys that are gonna drive you up a wall. Exactly. Yeah. Moving on ai those executives.
Speaker: 0
02:29:04
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
02:29:05
I I remember I talked to Mick because I’d heard, you know, he’d been trouble and ai sai, oh, maybe maybe his head got big. He sai trouble. So Ai said, well, what was wrong? You know, everything had to be what Mickey wanted to say, what Mickey wanted to wear, what Mickey wanted to do. So, okay.
Speaker: 1
02:29:16
Well, maybe maybe he’s gone back to some I’m about to work with him again. So he comes, no. He’s a dream again. So at the end, I go, meh. You always bring it, brother. What? You always bring it. It’s just it’s just so great to see. Yeah. Well, some people do you deserve it.
Speaker: 1
02:29:30
Most people don’t deserve it. Because he remembers I gave him his shot back. So I was ai, okay. He didn’t give me any shit. Maybe he gives other people shah.
Speaker: 0
02:29:37
That’s awesome. Listen, brother. I’ve really enjoyed this.
Speaker: 1
02:29:40
I’ve really enjoyed talking to you. I have to bring you to the studio.
Speaker: 2
02:29:43
A lot
Speaker: 0
02:29:43
of things you I wanna see the studio, but I I think a lot of things you said are really gonna help a lot of people.
Speaker: 1
02:29:47
Yeah. Hopefully hopefully. Because it’s, it’s been helpful to me to then tell people and then the feedback loop, they tell me back something Ai said, but they morphed it into something new. Ai, they’ve added their own thing to it. Yeah. And I go, that’s not what I told you. You know, oh, we’ve added to it. So no shah.
Speaker: 1
02:30:04
But now now I’m taking your advice to pay for my advice. My kids do that all the time. They go, it all comes back to what you taught us, dad. You know, what was that? What did I tell you?
Speaker: 1
02:30:13
That one time you said, you know, basically, ai, the glass is half full half empty. Okay. But I didn’t tell you all this other stuff. Where’d that come from? Oh, we added to it since I was like, well, shit. That’s the cool part. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
02:30:24
Like, my son got on a was a Japanese ai maker, you know, in his teens. He just wanted to get into Japanese. Like, this is a guy from another ai, you know, different he obviously knew this was his path. That’s when you know it’s a soul born in there. Didn’t get that from me. Making these Japanese style knives, selling them for, like, a thousand dollars a pop.
Speaker: 1
02:30:40
By the time he was 18, he got on that show forging a fire and won. And I was like, how did you you didn’t even know how to use most of the equipment they gave you. You had $10,000? How did you what was your mindset? He said, I imagined I had won already. Somehow, I had won.
Speaker: 1
02:30:57
And so when I’d come up against a challenge that I wasn’t sure how I would get by, I just had to remember what I did to get by it rather than trying to be freaked out about it. I was ai, woah. That’s some freaking samurai shit. I’m sorry. I ai that this you’ve obviously been in another life before To come in armed with that, Ai didn’t learn that ram me.
Speaker: 1
02:31:17
And it’s like, well, it’s kinda like, no. It’s nothing like that. Anything I ever told you. Wow. So you the feedback loop when you share with people I love people coming and telling me, hey. I was really inspired by your book, and you said this.
Speaker: 1
02:31:27
I’m like, I don’t remember saying that in the book. I think you added to it a lot. It it triggered something in you, and we all keep compiling our ideas.
Speaker: 0
02:31:35
Yeah. We all do.
Speaker: 1
02:31:36
Interested in everybody else’s perspective because we all have our own relationship to creativity and the universe.
Speaker: 0
02:31:41
Yeah. And the more you interact with things, the more you contribute.
Speaker: 1
02:31:46
Become being a brass knuckle film. That sounds ai right up reality. Let’s do Conan or Frazetta something. You gotta come see that.
Speaker: 0
02:31:53
Ai. I can’t wait to
Speaker: 1
02:31:54
see see your show. Because you’d be great. I can already tell you. I got a great part for you where you will knock it out. I will talk. Yeah. What’s our
Speaker: 0
02:32:00
Thank you very much.
Speaker: 1
02:32:01
Thank you, sir. It was awesome. I really appreciate it. Alright ai.
