Interview
with Robert Rodriguez
Robert Rodriguez, the
constant auteur, is back with his second film of the summer; this
time ready to entertain adult audiences with his much anticipated
third chapter of “El Mariachi.” Without giving anything
away, I have to say that Johnny Depp (plays CIA Agent Sands AKA
the Bad) makes the best chicken salad in the world. Johnny has
taken Robert’s script to an ultra cool dimension by adding
his signature whirlwind spin to his character, much like he did
in “Pirates of the Caribbean.” Last Wednesday Robert
made his press rounds to promote “Once Upon A Time In Mexico,”
and this is what he said about developing the idea, working with
Johnny Depp, the delay in releasing the movie, and his next project:
 Why
do you love Sergio Leone so much?
Robert: Something
Quentin has always said too, he said ‘the more movies he
sees the more he thinks; ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’
is the best directed movie ever.’ I said, ‘I think
I agree!’ He’s the one who put me up to this. When
we were doing ‘Desperado’ he was the one who raised
the bar up and said ‘you have to do a third one now, so
you can have a Dollars trilogy ‘cause no one’s done
this since Sergio Leone, but you gotta make the third one epic
and you gotta call it Once Upon A Time In Mexico.’ This
was nine years ago. This was in 94, and I thought, ‘that’s
interesting but let’s finish this one first ‘cause
we were filming ‘Desperado,’ and I doubt their ever
be another one.’ But years later Sony called and said ‘Desperado
has picked up a lot of cult audience on video and cable.’
And in fact when they first put out DVD’s it was the first
DVD Sony put out, was ‘Desperado.’ So I say ‘Okay,
but if we do another one it can’t be ‘Desperado II’
it’s gonna be more epic and called ‘Once Upon A Time
In Mexico,’ and they said ‘Sure. The way we should
do it.’ [Laughs] So I started writing and I thought okay,
‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ what—I think
it’s more epic I guess ‘cause there’s more characters
and Desperado would only have to be one of the main characters,
so how do you get someone as strong as the guy with the guitar
case full of guns I thought—I started doing drawings and
the man with no eyes, the man with no face, okay now we’re
getting somewhere. That makes sense, now I know what territory
we are going into to. The first scene I wrote was the three arm
scene with Johnny and I thought, okay this is going to be fun.
This is like anything can happen now.
Did you write the
part with Johnny in mind?
Robert: No.
Did Johnny change
the part?
Robert: No, he doesn’t really change it.
He just really comes in and just takes it to another level. It
was my favorite written part. It was the first part I wrote and
he already did really crazy things. He had the three arms, he
shoots the cook, he gets his eyes plucked out, he has a little
boy showing him around. He becomes a sort of very kind of cool
character by the end. But Johnny just brings, you know, the thing
about Johnny I guess this would say it all, we’d be on the
set and he’d do a scene and I would be constantly checking
the script and it’s like, ‘is that the line in the
script?’ It is the line in the script, but just the way
he would say it I didn’t recognize my own words. He would
just make everything sound like it was flowing out and then he
would paraphrase things or change a line or paraphrase it to make
it sound more like the character he was building up which he wanted
to be much whimpier sort of character. So, even though the lines
are very close to it he changes it to be like ‘This is no
time to screw the pooch. This is supposed to be the big dance
number.’ The tough talk that I had him saying, you know,
so that changes it a lot too, and his idea was to bring the different
t-shirts and bad disguises because he thought this guy if he’s
in Mexico—the idea I had was that he was a CIA agent kind
of running Mexico with a cell phone and very arrogant. And he
thought, I need to be like a constant tourist and always wearing
tourist t-shirts and bad costumes that everyone can see through,
but he thinks he’s fooling everybody. You get somebody like
Johnny to get that--those kind of contributions, ‘cause
it was already something I liked on the page, but I wanted to
see how much more we could love and he just turned it into something
so fun and it’s cool. It’s hard for people to think
‘Did he make-up this line?’ I say, ‘No he didn’t
but he did do this one.’ It’s blurred ‘cause
he does such a great job making everything feel so made up.
 How
did the cut you released end up being different from the script
you wrote and what you envisioned since it took so long for the
movie to come out?
Robert: It was
just a strange movie because there was an actors strike coming
up and I was so excited to use these new hi-definition cameras,
but there wasn’t a project to work on them with ‘cause
not enough time to make the ‘Spy Kids’ movie. So I
told the studio and Antonio who was free from strike, we can make
another Desperado real quick, but I will only be able to shoot
it. I can’t—‘cause we have a tied in McDonalds
date with our ‘Spy Kids’ movie I have to right away
go off and make that movie and make sure it comes out on time
because it’s a lot of effects. So I told them I can shoot
it now but I won’t even be able to edit it for more than
a year. But this is the only time we can shoot it ‘cause
after this I’m onto another couple of movies, this is the
only chance we have to make this. So they let me shoot it and
then, I didn’t even edit it for a year and a half later.
How could you let
it sit like that?
Robert: It was
wild. What was so cool about it though was that—I’m
going to do that from now on ‘cause it’s so cool.
It gives you a lot of distance from it, and you came back and
the first thing I remembered is ‘When did we shoot all this
stuff?’ I don’t remember we shot it in seven weeks.
Johnny Depp was on the set eight days that’s how fast we
shot this movie. It was eight days. That’s why by the end
he was like ‘Is there anything else I can do?’ He
says, ‘Who’s playing the priest?’ I said, ‘Nobody
right now.’ [Johnny] ‘How about if I do a Brando voice
and change of costume, can I play the priest?’ [Robert]
‘Yeah!’ We shot the priest on the last day, ‘cause
he’d never shot a movie that fast and was just warming up
and it was so, such creative fun…So when I went to edit
it, it was much easier to edit it ‘cause you can go, ‘Oh,
I just need this, I just need that.’ You had a lot of distance
and I cut it very quickly. I cut it almost real time ‘cause
I couldn’t remember what happened next. ‘Cause we
changed the script so much on the set. I had to edit to see what
was going to happen next. How does this scene end? I don’t
remember, let me keep editing. I’d use that as a way to
get it cut quicker and then I scored it and then I had to go start
‘Spy Kids 3,’ and then I took a break from ‘Spy
Kids 3’ to mix it. So I kept hopping back and forth and
I didn’t change it much at all from what it originally supposed
to be. In fact, the first cut I did ‘cause I had shot this
and written it before 9-11, I took out some of the more patriotic
sort of things in the very first cut, and then I realized, you
know let me just cut the movie I shot. I went back and put some
stuff back in, which made it play much better. So, I’m glad
I left that stuff back in.
Like the Mexican flag
at the end?
Robert: The flag
at the end, and the sons of Mexico. There’s just stuff that
seemed like I was doing it as a reaction to, when it wasn’t.
It was way before, but because of the time and when it was going
to come out. So they-we just kept pushing the date. It was going
to come out in March and then they thought ‘let’s
just wait until after the summer. ‘Cause Eva will have Fast
and the Furious out. Johnny will be out in Pirates. It will be
like fine wine…’ And sure enough it was a much better
way to go, to wait for it to come out.
You’re such a one man band; you’re doing the writing,
directing, producing, scoring, editing, is it a delegation issue
for you or do you feel more comfortable doing everything?
Robert: I hate
to delegate. [Laughs] No, I started that way. I mean, kids coming
up today are going to be very similar ‘cause they’re
all using digital video cameras and they’re editing on software
that comes with their computer and they’re going to be looking
at them, probably are right now saying, ‘Wow. This almost
looks like a real movie.’ And it is, that’s how I
started I was very surprised that you can make a movie at home
and when I got into filmmaking, in ‘El Mariachi’ we
didn’t have any money, so I had to be the whole—I
was the whole crew, but I found was so fun to shoot that way and
the more, the bigger the movies got the less fun they were getting
so thought, ‘I want to go back to that.’ So, when
I got to do Mariachi 3 basically, I used that as an excuse to
really go back and do production design again, and the photography
again, and the score. There’s something different about
that, it’s actually easier everyone on the crew does multiple
jobs. He actors love it. They don’t want to leave. They
come and no is sitting in a trailer, it’s almost, making
a movie is like running a marathon and to have it get over blown
is like being five hundred pounds and expecting to finish the
race, and you’re just, can barely crawl across the finish
line. This way it’s much leaner and meaner and you’re
just moving and it’s all about the creativity. Everything
else gets pushed away and by simplifying that process it’s
actually fun again. I have a lot of director’s call and
say, ‘You seem like you’re having fun. I want to have
fun again. I’m not having fun.’ A lot of it has to
do with just how cumbersome, look how much movies cost today and
how long they take and you see the movie and you go, ‘Wow.
They had all that money and all that talent and that’s it?’
It’s ‘cause the process is just gotten very very cumbersome
and very heavy and very weighty and hard to maneuver. So it becomes
less about the actual fun creative part and more about just trying
to make this horrible bureaucracy to work. The energy just gets
focused on the wrong area.
 What’s
your next project? [Had to ask this three times before I got this
answer!]
Robert: We’re
working on a CG movie.
Why an animation movie?
[Not my question, some stupid journalist cut him off before he
finished answering.]
Robert: I was
a cartoonist—we still need actors for the voices, but I
used to be a cartoonist and I always wanted to do an animated
movie, but now CG ‘cause that’s more—you have
more freedom and do more, more things.
You already have an
idea?
Robert: Yeah.
We’re already doing shots for it and testing the look and
stuff like that.
In Austin?
Robert: Yeah.
It’s the guys that were actually busy on ‘Spy Kids
3.’ So we had to wait until we were done with that before
we could get started.
What’s the name
of the project?
Robert: I can’t
talk about.
Should we call it
“The Untitled Robert Rodriguez Animation Project?”
Robert: Okay,
that sounds good.
If you have any questions, or
comments, you can write me at jax@latinoreview.com.
ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO
OPENS SEPT 12
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