The Man Who Made Sin City

So here comes Sin City, which coincidentally I read right after watching Robert Rodriguez' El Mariachi as I worked at a video store and a comic book store at the time. I got paid in comics.

How fucking cool is Robert Rodriguez? I fucking love that guy. He had the best personal ad campaign ever with that $8,000 movie and before Hollywood had a chance to say he couldn't make REAL movies he made Desperado. Which makes him smarter than the average new entry into Hollywood, ALWAYS have your next idea ready and if you have no next idea, tell them you do and pitch a thinly veiled remake of your previous work (Evil Dead, Desperado). It'll keep your career going while you do work on that next idea. Rodriguez v. 2.0 got stuck in director-for-hire mode and seemed to lose some of his independence with Dusk Til Dawn and that Post-Scream Josh Hartnett School Movie who's name is (clearly) eluding me right now. People cried foul, "how dare the $8,000 kid make these big budget movies, sell out, sell out" People, who, of course, have never made a movie or had a film career to maintain themselves, but it always seems like celelbrities owe something to nobodies (this is a great rant that Katie Watson has, I won't steal her thunder here). and Rodriguez failed to make headlines the way he had with El Mariachi. It seemed like he was all ready to slip into obscurity like so many indie darlings and go down in film history as "that $8,000 movie guy." But then it all turned around for some very exciting reasons. It all started with Spy Kids, which, at the time, sounded like a death knell. Oh great, now Mr. Desperado has dropped his John Woo firefights for Wendy's Kids meal? And I know in the film industry they give shit to whatever kids film is only able to secure the Wendy's Promotional Tie-in. "Hey, Ice Age, yeah, it's me Mulan *snicker*, where you guys at?" "Guys, for the last time, I'm at Wendy's stop calling me." I thought Rodriguez was going to go be the next Christopher Columbus (Mrs, Doubtfire, That Robin Williams Robot movie which had the the kiss of death for any movie, Robin Williams riding that heartfelt/ funny line, ew, just got the shivers, Robin, be funny, or be serious, don't ride the line you funny doctor overgrown kid syndrome holocaust victim). The only bright side to Spy Kids was that this was a project he had written, which he hadn't done in a while. Also when the film turned out to be really good, that didn't hurt. Nor did it hurt him in the industry because the movie made a shitload of money and definitely revitalized his career in the eyes of the studios.

But my modern love affair with Rodriguez came with Spy Kids 2, which should've had the opposite effect because if you thought Rodriguez had sold out with SK1 like I (kinda) did, then your eyes rolled so hard they hurt at seeing that McDonald's had picked up the licensing rights to the sequel. But he once again made a trademark Rodriguez Headline by refusing the doubled budget for the sequel, instead choosing to make the movie for the SAME budget as the first one (which was the skeptical studio budget given to a movie that they felt would bomb). But i was sold when I took a look at the extra features on the SK2 DVD and listened to the commentary track (best commentary track I've ever heard, commentary track fans, TRUST me on this one). I was surprised to see that most of this huge looking film was shot in his backyard in Austin, TX, that he had edited and scored in a studio he had built in his garage and a greenscreen just down the street! That it had been shot digitally and he was giving up on film, that he'd written the film in a couple weeks and took on the role of Composer and Production Designer because he had no idea how to to the jobs, but wanted to learn! THIS IS THE $8,000 kid, big budget style! What a leap forward for Rodriguez.

Now I was SO excitied to see what he'd do next. It would be something more exciting in it's conception than it was as a movie. After Desperado the studios kept asking him for a third sequel, Quentin Tarantino even told him on the set of Desperado that he had to make a third movie as an homage to Sergio Leone's dollar's trilogy and that it had to be called Once Upon a Time in Mexico, yes Quentin named the movie in 1995. But Rodriguez had no desire to make it, but they asked him every year to make another one. RR had used the digital camera once on Spy Kids 1 as a test and loved the result, but he wanted to give the Camera a full test, THAT's when he decdided to make Once Upon a Time. He immediatly called the head of Columbia and told her he had a script for Desperado 2 and that he'd send it to her at the end of the week, HE HADN'T WRITTEN A WORD. But he wrote it that quickly, In fact the script was so thin when he handed it over to her that he stuffed thirty pages of another script in the middle to pad it out. The studios first note to him "drop the dentist subplot". It was greenlit and RR shot the whole film in one month and played even MORE roles on the set of this film ALL TO TEST OUT THE CAMERA! Now here's the cool thing, he pulled the trigger on Once Upon A Time so quickly that the shoot barely fit in between the shoots on Spy Kids 1 & 2. That's right, Once Upon a Time was shot before Spy Kids 2 and was edited after SK2 was in theatres. And this is the reason I love the New Rodriguez, he throws caution to the wind and rides on pure creativity, he tells everyone that this result will happen on this date and then he figures out how to get it done by riding on pure creativity, he takes on roles he's never played in production and figures out how to do them and succeeds brilliantly in a high profile positions with millions of dollars on the line, the time when everyone else in the industry get conservative and looks for the next John Grisham adaptation so their next movies a guaranteed hit (which has the opposite effect, Gingerbread Man anyone? It's an Altman film? It's got Kenneth Branagh? No? No takers? Did I mention John Grisham? What's that? No, he's the other guy, Michael Creighton, he wrote Timeline, you can tell the difference because there's no lawyers in it?).

Constantly challenging ourselves, putting it all on the line and trusting in our talents to achieve the impossible and unprecedented. It's a lesson we all could use.

And this is the man who made Sin City.

Hopefully anyone who reads this will enjoy Robert Rodriguez as much they enjoy the movie itself when they see it tonight. I know I will.