I’m reading Robert Rodriguez’s Rebel Without A Crew, his book on how he made El Mariachi for $7,000 as a 23-year old. It’s pretty interesting. He works so fast.
It takes the form of a journal, I’m not sure if he wrote it as he was working on the production or if he did it in hindsight. It seems like he logged it while he was working, but I’m not too sure.
Developing the script, filming, and post-production take a matter of months. He works very spontaneously. The idea to make a movie is formulated in March of 1991 and he’s done editing it in November… so nine months for an entire feature. An action picture at that, not just some mumbly sad thing, it’s a genre story.
He writes the script in June while living in a hospital as a test-subject and they shoot it in August for twenty days. He edits it over the next three months.
I just want to know how they were able to do all of this within such a short time period.
He mentions that he is using this movie as a stepping stone. His expectations are fairly low, he just wants to sell it straight to video so that he can make another one. This doesn’t mean that he puts less effort into it, it’s just a lot less personal.
He knows what kind of movie he wants to make, specifically one that fits within the guidelines of what is usually purchased inside of the genre. He understands the audience, the market, and how to make a better film than his competitors.
Steven Soderbergh recently gave this quote on genre in the wake of his ghost-story Presence and his spy-thriller The Black Bag:
“I just feel everybody wins if you’re respectful of the pillars of what that genre is. You can load this thing up with anything you’re interested in.”
I love to hear about filmmakers who really understand a specific genre and really make it work for them. People like David Cronenberg, John Carpenter, Patricia Highsmith, Dashiell Hammett, Phillip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin… people who know how to “respect the pillars” while also loading their stories up with something more.
Rodriguez’s book is very good. It makes it seem accessible, but more importantly is emphasizes some of the elements of filmmaking that are necessary in order to get a job done.
If you don’t make a movie, you don’t make a movie.