Latest / Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast / IFH 717: From $7K Film Red 11 to Making SPY KIDS: ARMAGEDDON for Netflix with Racer Max & Rebel Rodriguez

Transcript

IFH 717: From $7K Film Red 11 to Making SPY KIDS: ARMAGEDDON for Netflix with Racer Max & Rebel Rodriguez · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

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  You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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  podcasts, just go to IFH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Indie
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  Film Hustle Podcast, Episode number seven seventeen. Don't be told something is impossible.
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  There's always away. Robert Rodriguez broadcasting from the back alley in Hollywood.
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  It's the Indie Film Hustle Podcast, where we show you how to survive and
• 0:31
  thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles of the film biz. And here's
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  your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Indie
• 0:40
  Film Hustle Podcast. I am your humble host, Alex Ferrari. Today's show
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  is sponsored by Rise of the Film Entrepreneur How to turn your independent film into
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  a profitable business. It's harder today than ever before for independent filmmakers to make
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  money with their films from predatory film distributors ripping them off to huckster film aggregators
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  In Rise of the Film Entrepreneur, I break down how to actually make
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  the Film Entrepreneur method will set you up for success. The book is
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  available in paperback, ebook, and of course audiobook. If you want to
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  order it, just head over to www dot film bizbook dot com. That's
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  film Bizbook dot com. Well, guys, today we have a very special
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  episode on the show. Today we have Racer, Max and le Rodriguez and
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  yes they are the sons of the legendary filmmaker Robert Rodriguez and film producer Elizabeth
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  Avalon. Now, Racer and Rebel and I had a I mean amazing conversation
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  about what it was like being raised by two master filmmakers, what it was
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  like to be on sets, but also what they've learned along the way,
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  what they are doing differently than their predecessors have, and the amazing work that
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  they're doing on big projects like Hypnotic, We Are Heroes, and the latest
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  in the Spy Kids franchise, Spy Kids Are mcgeddon. If you are a
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  filmmaker or a screenwriter, you need to listen to this episode. It is
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  two hours of just gold nuggets all over the place. So sit back,
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  relax, and enjoy the show. I'd like to welcome to the show Racer
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  Max and Rebel Rodrie. Guess how are you guys doing? Hey are doing
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  great. Thanks for that's really excited. Thank you so much for coming on
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  the show. Guys, I am as I was telling you before. Obviously
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  a lot of people who ever watched the show knows I'm a huge fan of
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  your dad, but I'm also a fan of what you guys have been doing
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  with him and seeing you grow literally literally seeing you grow as as filmmakers,
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  as actors, as composers, as producers, as writers, it has been
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  It's been fascinating to see your guys's journey as well. So I have to
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  ask you my first question is because everybody listens gonna want to know, what
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  is it like growing up on movie sets like, I mean the first movie
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  said I walked on too when I was in college, and that's not really
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  a movie set. I mean you were walking around with movie stars, you
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  know who you were Like, Oh, that's just that person. What was
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  it like for you too? Kind of growing up in this kind of environment.
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  And I kind of protect an environment as well, because you know,
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  Elizabeth, your your mom has been on the show as well, and I
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  know I'll protect that she's been with, you know, to protect you from
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  the less the less nice people in the industry. For sure. For sure.
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  Yeah, she was definitely the mama curator and guardian named Mama Air.
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  The yeah that made it all allowed us to have just a wonderful experience growing
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  up. To be honest, it's a lot like growing up normally, as
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  if your parents would do any other kind of job, but you don't realize
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  until later that you're in an industry that's so different and wild and crazy to
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  you know, as us as kids, you're just running around playing hide and
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  seek, and you're running past some crazy costume people as you're hiding under the
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  producer's desk or the accountant's desk, and they're helping you hide while they're trying
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  to manage an entire crazy army show that's going on. Uh, it's it's
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  pretty much that. And and uh with the cat. You know, you
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  you meet these famous who you recognize is that famous when you grow up?
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  But when you're a kid, that's just oh that's just Uncle Bruce. Oh,
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  there's a there's a uncle Manicio. You can just call him Uncle Benny
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  and all of this. So you just kind of get a normal childhood,
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  especially with someone like our mother who's who was very protective of us and helped
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  ensure that it was just a wonderful experience. So yeah, that's that's what
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  it was like growing up. So when you guys were and and and I'll
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  let you talk to him a second, Rube, when what was it like
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  when you discovered, oh, oh this isn't normal. Uh like, oh
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  oh that alcol Benicio just won an oscar? Yeah, well when you had
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  that realization, what was that like for both of you? Like when I
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  hit because I'm assuming that it at a certain point when you got older.
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  Yeah, yep, Goble definitely. Yeah, it was definitely all the props.
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  So you know you kind of see as you're running past them as a
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  kid, people like remarking on them, like, oh wow, that's this
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  and that, And as we started to see some of the movies or Dad
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  made I mean, obviously we didn't see him for a long time other than
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  like Spike Kids and Shocked by Lava Girl and stuff for good reason. When
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  you start to hear people like remark on it, and it's like, oh,
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  it's like a thing. People, really, this is like a huge
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  thing for them, kind of like how for us Spike Kids, vehicles are
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  like a big thing. And so you know, they had the electric chair
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  from Since City. We never quite knew what it was, but it was
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  like, you know, that's kind of a huge deal. Yeah. Yeah,
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  Like there's like a great wax figure of of Bruce willis there as hard
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  again and it always freaked us out as kids, like you just st of
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  staring at you. But now you know, you see the posters adults and
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  were like, dude, that's just so iconic and cool, and you know,
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  it was just as impressionable as a kid, even if you didn't fully
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  understand what it was. But no, I mean, definitely Since City when
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  you watch when you watch The City for the first time, when that first
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  came out. People don't get it. There's nothing in film history that have
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  ever been shot like that, nothing like that. Every yeah, ever,
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  it was. It was insane, man, it's insane. So then when
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  you guys first see you know, you're growing up uncle, Bruce, uncle,
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  and you see all these kind of guys. At a starting point,
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  you're able to watch some of your dad's early work. So what was it
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  like watching Ed Mariacci for the very first time? Oh? Man, it
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  was really really impressive. And what's funny is we held it off for so
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  long. It wasn't until we were, you know, getting a little late
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  teens, kind of at the end of high school, and from then on
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  out, you're out of school and you've got to figure out what it is
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  that you want to do. And we had an inkling that we wanted to
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  create and be in the creative space, whether that was filmmaking or anything else.
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  But watching that for the first time, it was just mind blowing to
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  see how much you could step out and accomplish. And to see that it's
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  our dad and we've known our whole wives and we love him. He's super
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  he's funny, great father. But to see like, wow, how smart
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  and how little he had then yet how smart he was, and just how
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  perseverant he was that with absolutely nothing you can go and create something incredible that
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  sets off not only a lifetime career but at the same time an entire wave
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  that inspires so many people across the world for decades. And yeah, yeah,
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  definitely it was really just an impressive moment and really inspiring of like,
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  oh, we're at his age, we two can go off and do something
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  like this, and we two can conquer and accomplish just like he did.
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  So that's really what it was the first time. How about, Yeah,
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  it was cool. It's you know, we grew up with a lot of
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  the wisdom that he kind of injected in the way he worked and also in
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  like his books, like you know, reb without a Crew, So we
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  had always kind of heard, you know, when you're making something work with
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  what you have, not with what you need, and all that kind of
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  stuff. But then when we've watched it, it was cool to see like
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  everything he's kind of told us through the years that we thought was just like
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  dad wisdom was like, you know, how he kind of did it,
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  and it was incredible to see it in action and see the results you get
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  from it. It was really really inspiring and cool. So did you did
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  you? Either of you ever? Just go the old man just doesn't know
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  what he's talking about, Like he I know better, let me look what
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  I mean I did. I mean, every every sun does that to their
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  dad at what point, Like that's the old way of doing it, Dad,
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  You don't really. We were nineteen. We know life, we know
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  it's absolutely already had. Yeah, and you know it's kind of more sobering
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  when you think that for a second. I'm like, oh, yeah,
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  I'm gonna say that. But then you walk past post or after poster after
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  poster, I'm like, maybe floating man, anyone else. He taught me
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  to be humble and look at other people's point of views. I think it
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  would have channeled that a little bit. So there's been a few, very
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  few moments. Yeah, any thoughts. There very few money thoughts exactly.
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  That's the way to put it. We'll be right back after a word from
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  our our sponsor, and now back to the show. How about you?
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  How about you rebels? Same thing? Yeah, pretty much, pretty much.
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  I mean it was also another thing is we grew up right at the
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  like the era of the Game Boy Advance and like the DS and like all
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  the video game kind of stuff. So we're always like, man, but
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  our video games were different. This is our kind of stuff we're into and
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  all that, and but Spike kids still always kind of captured out in a
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  way to where we were, Like, I mean, we never thought it
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  weird that movies could so well capture what kids were into in that era until
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  you see some other things. That's like, right, it just really didn't
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  have that that whole thing, but you stall that feeling of like, I
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  don't know, we have this in our thing and you don't even realize all
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  of it's inspired by well guess who you know him and many other filmmakers.
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  That's like, you know, you know, you know, it's fascinating because
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  when when Mariachi came out, I was I'm only probably about five or six
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  years younger than your dad. So I was in high school. I was
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  working at a video store. And that's the behind me. That's the video
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  store poster that I can't all these years. Mariachis a Mariachi poster. I
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  have two, by the way, I stole two from my story. But
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  he was the only he was the only Latino filmmaker that I could even there
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  were no Latino I mean there were, but there were no real out there
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  Latino filmmakers like he was. And and for people, can you explain to
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  people from your point of view? You know, from my point of view,
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  Mariachi is that movie that you said it started? It launched an independent
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  film revolution. People still talk about it like a myth, like there was
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  this once there was this dude who made a seven thousand dollars movie and then
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  he'd be any then he got to Holly, like it's a it's a mythical
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  story that they tell in the corners of film schools around the world to this
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  to this to this day. And I always tell people because this is something
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  I have a This is one of the things that I brought the show up.
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  I started the show up was because I wanted to tell people how to
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  avoid pitfalls in the industry. And you know, Robert and your mom both
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  fell into a lot of those pitfalls along with the way, and they were
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  kind of thrust into a world that this did. You know, Robert wasn't
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  even thinking this is gonna go to the Latino Mexican film video market. It
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  was not supposed to be the thing, but a lot of people were like,
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  oh, you know, I'm gonna make a seven thousand dollars a movie.
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  I'm like, that's great. It's two thousand and twenty three. It's
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  a little different now. The market's a little different, the world's a little
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  different than it was before. And I've been trying to sell it out again
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  and again, like, this is not nineteen ninety one anymore. It's not
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  nineteen ninety nine anymore. It's not two thousand and nine anymore. It's twenty
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  twenty three. From your point of view, how do you think the legacy
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  of Mariachi has kind of continued? And do you guys agree with me that
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  a lot of filmmakers listening, they're like, oh, I'm gonna go and
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  make it, Go make it, you know, But understand, Robert's path
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  was no people tried to redo that path, like you know Quinn's path or
• 13:01
  Kevin Smith's staff or Richard leak glitterspath. It's insane. So from your point,
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  what do you guys think? Absolute? First off, absolutely agree and
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  love that about you and your work that you've kind of taken that eat those
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  and have always updated it for people now of like how to take that drive
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  that that movie couldn't that Smith inspires in people to go create and helping them
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  adapt it to the current age, current era, and to avoid, as
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  he said, avoid pitfalls that now we have the knowledge and foresight to be
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  able to avoid. So I've always really liked that about about your work.
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  Uh but yeah, what it so agree on that first off, but then
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  totally, But what I've always saw from it is that he got a very
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  specific path through what you know, It's so many things that happened and came
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  together all at the same time for that passion and drive and what he went
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  through to equate to what it led to. But I always see that the
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  thing that inspires people the most is kind of the timeless aspects of it,
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  the idea of perseverance and creativity under restriction, intense restriction, and the attitude
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  that put that drive in passion, intocent, whatever it is that you love,
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  and you can create something that will turnheads, that will get attention,
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  that people will like and want to follow you for, and that can inspire
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  people you've never even met. So that's why I always love when people outside
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  of the film industry that read the book or heard the myth and went off
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  to go do things that have nothing to do with film, but just whether
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  it's business or even account you've heard accounting before as well, like so many
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  different fields that were inspired by that idea. So that's what's really cool to
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  me is that there's something you can adapt to it the modern times. But
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  yet there's the timeless aspects almost of that myth. Yeah, there's that time
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  almost timeless aspect of that. What it really captured was that it doesn't take
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  a budget of that huge assize to create great quality work and great quality story.
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  And especially if you write and you work with what you have and work
• 15:13
  with limitations you do have, rather than try to do something that's going to
• 15:15
  be outside of your scope or possibility at the moment financially, you can create
• 15:20
  something that turns heads and is really like you know, Blockbuster, remarkable level
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  work with very little and that will that you know can do a lot,
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  and usually quality like that doesn't go unnoticed for very long. So it starts
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  to it starts to make the rounds and make make waves and stuff. So
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  very's really important part of it. Now, Rebel, you did a little
• 15:41
  movie years ago when you were five called to Shark the admagees of Shark Boy
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  and Bubble Gray. And I mean, I know how you were cast,
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  but how did you even like want to do it? Were you even thinking
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  of acting at that point? You know? You know, how did that
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  even because one thing is to jump around the set and play around and like
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  oh uncle builders and all that stuff. But to be in front of the
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  camera, be there, even for the small part that you played. I
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  saw that. I was like, man, that kid's got some call,
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  and I sim he's up there with with the with the with the things on
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  the scales on the side. Oh yeah, yeah, it's really interesting.
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  So you have to look back a bit too. Spike HiT's one, Spike
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  It's two. I was the This is where it really started, was Spike
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  Hits one. I was the baby on the front of the magazine. Uh,
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  Carly Ugina's reading and when she's in the airport to a Spice fell in
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  Love story, that's me on there. That's where it started. Spike It's
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  two. When like the Magnumn attack at the banquet, the oss bank went
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  and they were fighting the bad guys. One of the kids takes down one
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  of the guys and that's my oldest brother Rocket. The next one comes along
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  and grabs him too. That's Racer. So the next one down the line,
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  and then I come running out. I kicked the guy in the side,
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  and that's me and I don't know. Dad's always been a filmmaker,
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  even outside of film. He loves taking home videos of us and stuff.
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  We have like whole archives. That's he just loved filming us too. He
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  thought it was just so interesting, you know, kind of brings back the
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  BedHead kind of days of that that short film of it. So we've always
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  just kind of been used to the idea that there's a camera like right here
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  sometimes for whatever reason, and so it didn't feel like that big of a
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  transition to just be like, well, it's just the other camera here at
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  the place and there's a bunch of people looking at you while you do something,
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  you know, since they tell you everyone quiet on set, which you've
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  heard a lot if you're running around there, and uh, yeah, it
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  was pretty natural. It was just I liked the story he made, and
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  I was like, I want to be into two, you know, because
• 17:38
  that's how kids are. Your brother's got it, you wanted to so obviously
• 17:45
  obviously see coming that they would put me up on wires and stuff to simulate
• 17:48
  the swimming parts and things and spray me with water and all that. Once
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  I learned how hard it was and I was freezing up there and I was
• 17:55
  doing my own stunts. I was actually even a funny moment where but They've
• 17:59
  got up there on the wires and I'm They're yelling, well, how come
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  I have to do my own stones? I mean it's like, yeah,
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  so very quickly learned. Is not not quite as easy as it seems,
• 18:11
  but I mean it was very natural to us, considering we just always kind
• 18:15
  of had a camera in front of us all the time. So it's like,
• 18:17
  oh, well, you know, they just throw you in the movie
• 18:18
  and that's how it goes. And it's like, okay, so you're telling
• 18:22
  me that that filming issue is not glamorous? Is that is that? It's
• 18:26
  it's don't you guys all just eat lobster at lunch all day? That the
• 18:32
  way it works. It was surprising to a five and seven year old,
• 18:34
  but it wasn't glamorous. Yeah, so we quickly found Yeah, and so
• 18:40
  it sounds like your pasts are pretty much programming us his birth to like subtly
• 18:45
  hip hypnotically. Looking back at it, I mean a little bit to some
• 18:51
  extent, but it's like that wasn't even the attention either, right, No,
• 18:53
  subtle. They're very smart, both of them. It was very subtle.
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  They never wanted to pressure us into doing anything, which was pretty cool.
• 19:07
  But so if there was hypnotism, it was very subtle. It was
• 19:10
  very subtle. It was more than anything. They were excited to show us
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  what they do. And I think that's really special. You know that,
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  of course, And of course, like any parent would be wanting to show
• 19:18
  like, hey, look what I do. I just happen to make cool
• 19:21
  movies, you know, and have cool things happening around you. That's awesome.
• 19:26
  Now, I wanted to talk to you both about Red eleven because when
• 19:29
  I heard about Red eleven, and for people who don't know, please explain
• 19:33
  to what Red eleven is. But when I heard about Red eleven, I
• 19:34
  was so excited. It was like, oh, the Goat is going back.
• 19:38
  He's going to go back to do it, to do another seven thousand
• 19:41
  dollars movie, and he's bringing the boys with him. So so you tell
• 19:47
  people what Red eleven was. Absolutely Red eleven is one of our favorite projects.
• 19:51
  So this myth we keep talking about a Mariachi made for seven thousand dollars
• 19:55
  in the nineties. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
• 20:03
  And now back to the show. For twenty fifth anniversary of that movie,
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  Robert wanted to go back and make a film for seven thousand dollars again,
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  no crew or one other crew member, no money. Tried to do it
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  all in one location and shoot it all in fourteen days, just like he
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  did on the original of Mariacci. And so he thought, oh, my
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  one crew member, I'm going to bring him, my son into this because
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  I had just started working with him, apprenticing under him at the time for
• 20:33
  a lead of Battle Angel. And so he said, you want to come
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  on and be my one other crew member so we can do this whole thing
• 20:40
  together, and while we're making it, let's make an entire documentary about how
• 20:45
  to make a film with no money. And it was super such a blastom
• 20:51
  and experience. We quickly brought on Rebel to both starr in it so that
• 20:53
  he hul to be there on set to help us out because the only crew
• 20:56
  members we had were the cast. When they weren't on camera. They were
• 21:00
  behind camera, moving whites, moving props, closing doors for sounds, just
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  like being a flag light. Just like that's really real, real, bare
• 21:11
  bones film production. And so we cast Rebel and put him in wrote,
• 21:15
  I wrote him into almost every scene so that it could always be there to
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  help us. And then Rebel went owned in the score for it as well.
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  And that's the premise of Red eleven. I'll tell you it is.
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  To this day, it's still my favorite film project we ever did, because
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  it's so creative when you have nothing, all you have is your mind,
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  and you have to be creative every single day is everything's falling apart, even
• 21:37
  when you've limited so much. Every single day things are falling apart, and
• 21:41
  you have to come up with creative solutions, laughing at it, laughing about
• 21:45
  it with your dad and your brother and the cast, but you've quickly become
• 21:48
  friends with because they're all in the same trench together. It's really really a
• 21:52
  sublime experience, and the most the coolest part about it was you know what
• 21:57
  you see your parents and says, He's figures that have like lived so much
• 22:00
  life and you don't feel like you could ever be putting this force in the
• 22:04
  same situation together and see how each other act. But I thought he would
• 22:07
  be my dad, would be my mentor on this, and not, Oh,
• 22:11
  he's he knows exactly how to do all this. He's paved the way
• 22:12
  before. But it was really humbling and inspiring to him look at me and
• 22:18
  go, I don't know how we're going to do it either. Let's figure
• 22:19
  it out here. You and I were gonna sit here, We're gonna figure
• 22:22
  it out. We're gonna move this, do that. So to really see
• 22:25
  him put into the same pressure, putting the same experience, that was mind
• 22:27
  blowing and it's one of my favorites. He doesn't have all the answers all
• 22:32
  the time, he finds them and that's what he's really really good at.
• 22:34
  So he knows how to finance there's not a dimeuth that and creates a really
• 22:37
  great stuff out of it. So, I mean, it was just cool
• 22:40
  to finally see it. It's like, how does he work when he's put
• 22:41
  into this pressure. It's like, oh, it's just like all of us
• 22:45
  too, but he's just that. But he's learned that much more about how
• 22:48
  to do it and stuff. So it's it's a skilled people can develop and
• 22:49
  learn. So yeah, it's it's like like a call a call. I
• 22:53
  tell my daughters I have old man strength, and that's a thing. By
• 22:57
  the way, old man strength is a thing. I had a trainer who
• 23:00
  was talking, I'm lifting up more than he is. It's like, how
• 23:03
  are you doing that? You're out of shape. I'm like, I have
• 23:04
  old man strength now in the same zone. Robert has not old man strength,
• 23:11
  but you know, he's got experience, He's got a wealth of you
• 23:15
  know, you just pick up these things and you know, when you're on
• 23:17
  set, you've just been there before. So even though I might not know
• 23:19
  how to do it right now, oh yeah this, yeah over here,
• 23:25
  moved that over there. It's it's pretty remarkable. It's pretty remarkable to see.
• 23:30
  It's cool how it fundamentally starts. You all start out on the same
• 23:32
  spot. We don't know how we're going to do it, and then it's
• 23:34
  just like that's what you're developing is a little learning of how you're going to
• 23:37
  do it. So did you cool? Did you guys just run and gun?
• 23:41
  I mean you had some plant obviously you had a script, but did
• 23:44
  you kind of show up on the day and just go all right, let's
• 23:47
  set up the scene or where there's a lot of storyboards things like that.
• 23:49
  No, man, it was pretty running gun because it's funny. The one.
• 23:53
  Uh, we were kind of restricted it a little, even a little
• 23:56
  more than Mariacci because now he had all the money to make a movie with
• 24:00
  a budget, but we cut out the money. Now we had all the
• 24:03
  crew when people we know who could do it, but we cut out the
• 24:07
  crew, and then it's like, well, I guess all we have left
• 24:08
  this time, but fourteen days. But Robert didn't even have that at this
• 24:11
  point because we were busy made doing visual effects for a Lead to Battle Angel
• 24:17
  and writing other projects. So we would just we would just pick days that
• 24:22
  we could get a few hours in and tally it up to fourteen to fourteen
• 24:26
  days. And so over the course of a month month and a half,
• 24:29
  we just squeezed in some hours there, squeezed in some hours here. So
• 24:32
  that leads to very much you're you're texting the cast like an hour before you
• 24:34
  get there. Hey, we're gonna film the day. We got like four
• 24:37
  hours. Let's go knock out this scene while we can, so people just
• 24:40
  show up I'm like, oh gosh, we don't know how we're gonna do
• 24:41
  this. Well, let's figure it out right now because we've only got what
• 24:45
  time is it? All right, let's keep going. We gotta side.
• 24:48
  So it's the side hustle. It was a side hustle. It was a
• 24:49
  side. It was a side hustle film yep. Side. It was still
• 24:52
  phrasing. I mean, I wasn't on the writing side of it, but
• 24:56
  whole scenes where we're written, because you get on set and go, well,
• 24:59
  we don't have this, this and that. Okay, well let's just
• 25:00
  change it up to make it work with this, And it was just like
• 25:03
  NonStop. I mean, it's writing, writing it right there as everyone's showing
• 25:07
  up, so then you can do the scene right away. I mean,
• 25:08
  it's really it. Yeah, it's remarkable. And that's such a lesson for
• 25:12
  filmmakers listening, because so many filmmakers, you know, they think they should
• 25:18
  study like Hitchcock or Scorsese or you know, kuber Can. You know,
• 25:22
  they like, oh happy, that has to be exactly the way I have
• 25:25
  it in my mind, because I'm a genius, and you know, we're
• 25:26
  all geniuses, I mean all of us obviously Our genius is filmmaking geniuses.
• 25:30
  Uh and soon, Holly Foold, we'll see our genius. And that's how
• 25:33
  we think because we're all nuts. We're all absolutely insane the filmmaker, we're
• 25:37
  all absolutely so. I've seen on set where I've visited other other filmmakers system
• 25:42
  they just break down if something's not exactly the way they planned it, and
• 25:48
  and that's and I'm like, that guy's not gonna make it. He because
• 25:52
  filmmaking isn't that. Filmmaking is even even the biggest guys who have had an
• 25:56
  opportunity to talk to many of them, some of the fay most famous scenes
• 26:00
  in the history. I've talked to these I've talked to some of these filmmakers
• 26:02
  and they're just like, yeah, it's on the day, for sure,
• 26:07
  everything's planned out. Half of it falls apart, which is pretty much how
• 26:11
  it goes. You plan it all so that way, as much of what
• 26:12
  was planned will stay, there's possible the rest is gonna fall apart and you
• 26:15
  gotta figure it out from there. But it's yeah, you kind of accept
• 26:19
  it, and you gotta learn to roll with the punches as much as you
• 26:22
  do figure things out ahead of time. So in recent when you started writing
• 26:26
  Rebel eleven with your dad, you guys kind of I think the first time
• 26:32
  I had ever heard I'm sure it happened somewhere else and sent them history.
• 26:34
  But when Mariachi was written, he was just writing around the things he had
• 26:38
  already, which was such a revolutionary idea as opposed to like I need to
• 26:44
  buy, I need to have a portion this scene I need to like do
• 26:47
  you have a portion? No, it's gonna cost you for you have a
• 26:49
  vold Swagen, Just choose the Volswagon. He wrote around the elements literally like
• 26:55
  a dog, a turtle, an, a Mexican town, and a couple
• 26:57
  of guns. And that's what I had and that's what I made my Can
• 27:00
  you explain the power of that in the Red eleven experience of just writing around
• 27:06
  things that you know you have access to? But this it does free you
• 27:08
  a lot lessons, distress a bit on a stressful situation already. Yeah.
• 27:15
  Absolutely, Yeah. We wanted to implement the exact same writing process for Right
• 27:19
  eleven, and so we said, let's only take what we got and go
• 27:23
  from there. So we filmed the entire film, all of it on our
• 27:30
  trouble Winker Studios. So our studios here at Austin, which is two airport
• 27:33
  airport hangers and then a bunch of hallways and offices, and we thought,
• 27:37
  we will write a story that works for this location, and that's all we're
• 27:42
  going to use. And so location we just used all that we had.
• 27:47
  Now what Robert's got kind of in his back pocket now is a little more
• 27:49
  than a turtle and a bus. Now we have the whole storage that because
• 27:55
  we're kind of hoarders, we keep all of our props and anything we've ever
• 27:57
  used in a movie before. So we have all the guns, all the
• 28:02
  gadgets, all the things locked up somewhere. So we pulled from there as
• 28:06
  all their props of But still we only wrote around what we could get out
• 28:08
  of that storage room, out of that walker. A lot of people getting
• 28:11
  in more than that from Goodwill nowadays, but so we're out of their dat's
• 28:17
  closet, really, So we came at it from the same approach, and
• 28:22
  it is really freeing because it unlocks creativity and a way you can't imagine.
• 28:26
  Suddenly when you have just the one thing you're going to use in a scene,
• 28:30
  in the one room you're gonna have to use. You come up with
• 28:33
  five or six more ideas, and you would just kind of thinking what you
• 28:37
  would want, going with what you have versus what you want. It's really
• 28:40
  powerful. Anybody I talk to nowaday and they want to make a whole feature
• 28:45
  film, they've done shorts and whatnot, and they've done it in a traditional
• 28:48
  setting. I tell them, Okay, write a feature and just go off
• 28:51
  of what you've got. Just trust me, it's powerful. What you want
• 28:55
  is the rep of doing the entire film from beginning to end. You don't
• 28:59
  want to have to add more pressure of having to get things to land,
• 29:02
  to be there on time, or people or places or objects like. That's
• 29:06
  really free. And to this pretty much on every project you'll find yourself using
• 29:11
  that same method going downward. Yeah for sure. Yeah, it's really What
• 29:17
  it does is when you're just there thinking about I could make anything, What
• 29:19
  am I going to make? I mean, there's like a trillion different options.
• 29:22
  That's infinite amount of auditions. Really, it's just you'll end up with
• 29:25
  something that's got too many elements, too much, this, too much that
• 29:27
  by just using what you have, it's streamlines at all in an instant and
• 29:32
  it's like you've got three things. Okay, well, now I got to
• 29:33
  write a whole story about these three things. It's just it really does.
• 29:37
  Probably one of the most important things is really streamlining what kind of an idea
• 29:42
  you have, and from there a lot generates because you go, well,
• 29:45
  I only have this, this and that. How do you make a story
• 29:45
  with this, this and that? So, and I'll tell you go ahead,
• 29:49
  go ahead, owners, oh no, no, yeah, And the
• 29:52
  procesage just gets a little funny on Red eleven. Part of why it's so
• 29:55
  special because you go, Okay, this scene only has to have a syringe
• 29:57
  this office, We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And
• 30:07
  now back to the show and the jackhammer, the George Cooney used and Dustl
• 30:11
  don how we're gonna do it. So so it's a little unique and that
• 30:15
  does not make sense. It's just yeah, it goes from there. It's
• 30:18
  like a crazy mad libs. It's like filmmaking. Yeah, well, I'll
• 30:25
  tell you. I mean I got inspired going down the road of Mariachi and
• 30:29
  read eleven by last feature, I shot exactly the same way. I said,
• 30:33
  you know what I'm gonna I'm gonna shoot an entire movie at Sundance,
• 30:37
  while the movie while the festivals going on, and still still the entire movie.
• 30:41
  I have three actors I had never met before meet me there. I
• 30:45
  had an apartment on Main Street and cameraman, myself and the sound guy and
• 30:51
  we just stole the whole thing in three days and shot an entire movie in
• 30:53
  three days, and we sold it and it made money and I don't fear
• 30:57
  about that. And yeah, it was so much because I need Sunday and
• 31:03
  I'm like and it's like it was kind of like the Mexican talent because you
• 31:06
  could get a thousand locations in a couple of blocks. So I think,
• 31:11
  think, think, think think. Everyone's like, how did you how did
• 31:12
  you did you get permission? I'm like, no, I shot in sunday
• 31:17
  It's headquarters. I went into Sunday's headquarters and shot like people in my seeing
• 31:22
  like can you move upshooting? Can you please? That is amazing? Like
• 31:26
  my baby is like, dude, we don't have permission to be I'm like,
• 31:30
  I'm sorry. The director, the director and me, it's like you're
• 31:32
  running my shock and you know, pas move sir. That's so funny.
• 31:37
  That is amazing. Okay, I'm writing down to watch that later. But
• 31:41
  let you guys see you know what it's all, send it to you.
• 31:42
  It was. It was so much fun to do. But you know,
• 31:47
  and I've shot other things and you know, with bigger budgets and stuff,
• 31:49
  but that was so much fun. It was an experimental just like, I
• 31:53
  don't care what happens with us three grand let's just go and have some fun.
• 31:57
  And the actors to the actress that I sold the actress, I go,
• 32:01
  you know, I don't know what's gonna I truly when I was on
• 32:04
  the trip back to LA at the time, I didn't know if I had
• 32:07
  a movie. Did I get enough coverage? I don't know, because you
• 32:10
  have time to see dailies. You were just like moving, go go,
• 32:14
  go, go, go go. So then I told him, like,
• 32:15
  look, at least you're gonna have an insane story to tell somebody in twenty
• 32:20
  years that the one time you you went to sundance. You shot him like,
• 32:22
  that's gonna make you have still I'll give you stories because I can't pay
• 32:25
  you a lot, so it give you stories and it worked. That's right.
• 32:30
  That is amazing. That's incredible. Oh god, that that is the
• 32:38
  best extrapolation of my actually filmmaking ever heard. So alright, so on read
• 32:47
  eleven, What was the biggest challenge for you guys? You know, just
• 32:52
  because there's challenges every day, every second, every day, but what was
• 32:55
  the time that you were just like, how are we gonna get out of
• 33:00
  this? Yeah? Oh man, it felt like there wasn It felt like
• 33:07
  each day I had an existential threat like that, oh man, like,
• 33:10
  oh, we might not be able to finish this project. Ever, I
• 33:15
  felt like every day I had something like that. It's weird. I can't
• 33:17
  really pinpoint one problem, but rather that the very first time that we had
• 33:25
  our plan, we had our script and we got to set and it was
• 33:30
  a scene with gosh, we want to say, like twenty actors in it,
• 33:35
  and so much had to ride on what we had written. But then
• 33:37
  none of it could because the set was off and then a part of the
• 33:43
  studio broke down so we couldn't use it as some of the cast main cast
• 33:46
  can be there, and we thought, oh my gosh, and I was
• 33:49
  just thinking, how the heck are we're going to fix this again? Running
• 33:52
  into that moment of having to be creative. The biggest problem was right after
• 33:58
  or if my dad tells me, oh, well, I guess we're just
• 34:00
  gonna figure it out, like what ran through my mind beyond that After that,
• 34:06
  that was definitely the biggest problem. But then realizing that every single problem
• 34:09
  after that, no matter what it was, whether it was the hanger we
• 34:14
  were in, was not soundproof. So it decided to Texas Rainstorm on our
• 34:17
  finale scene that I included a lot of dialogue all over that hangar. So
• 34:22
  none of the dialogues usable. Whether it was that or missing cast members or
• 34:27
  just completely losing an entire vehicle that we had set up, none of that,
• 34:32
  like, none of that is bigger or all of that is just an
• 34:35
  extension of the same problem of we're going to figure it out. We're gonna
• 34:38
  get everybody in a room in the quietest room, and we're gonna rerecord all
• 34:42
  the lines we just did, hoping that they match up to what we just
• 34:45
  filmed over there the rainy hanger, and it does like magic. So that's
• 34:50
  so that's funny that That is what I would say is the biggest problem is
• 34:53
  the recurring one that did learn to go with the flow with and by the
• 34:57
  end of the production, you're laugh the most of those, and you're like,
• 35:00
  were the most fun really when we were all put in the same corner
• 35:02
  and had to punch our way out that those are the most fun. Those
• 35:06
  are the stories, as you said, those become the stories. Don't forget
• 35:08
  that stuff. So that's remark. That's remarkable. I mean, And one
• 35:13
  thing I noticed about Red eleven is that you guys used a lot of practical
• 35:16
  effects because you just didn't have the budget to do anything else. Really,
• 35:22
  so can you talk a little bit about the power of practical effects? Just
• 35:25
  just the phone, the telekinetic phone on the little on the little table,
• 35:30
  which is such an easy practic I mean, when because I saw the behind
• 35:35
  the scenes by the way, everyone listening have to watch Rebel without a crew
• 35:37
  the show, but also the behind the scenes of Red eleven because it is
• 35:42
  a film school, and then some but the phone moving with the magnet like
• 35:46
  it's so when you when you show it to you, it's super simple.
• 35:50
  But if not, you're like using wires and stuff. It was such a
• 35:53
  beautiful way. Can you talk about the power of practical effects where so many
• 35:58
  filmmakers just want to lean on the computer or effects, where practical effects,
• 36:01
  I mean, look a Nolan, he's done okay, you know he's doing
• 36:04
  okay. The practical effect, you know, absolutely yeah that the Red eleven
• 36:12
  was really coming right off of the lead a Battle Angel, where most visual
• 36:16
  effects we've ever used, we didn't have entire characters that didn't exist until we
• 36:20
  put them in digitally later. Coming off of that, it was a shell
• 36:24
  shock. We got the bends definitely on Red eleven, but it's so much
• 36:30
  more fun and so much more immediately gratifying on camera when you get a practical
• 36:35
  effect working and you see it, you go, oh my gosh, I
• 36:37
  can't believe we're getting away with this. Look Look how dumb this looks when
• 36:40
  you look two feet this way, but in the lens it looks incredible.
• 36:45
  Look at that. I'm totally fooled. Practical effects I've really come to appreciate
• 36:50
  and go, that's the magic most timeless aspects of filmmaking. You know,
• 36:54
  when we when we see the Predator and we see, oh my gosh,
• 36:59
  look how much that suit and that face and that creature still holds up this
• 37:01
  day, where it still feels just as real, just as like slimy and
• 37:07
  tactile as it did when it released in what eighty four, eighty seven whatever,
• 37:10
  was like, that's to me, practical effects are the most timeless aspects
• 37:16
  of film, and I want to incorporate a lot more into live action filmmaking
• 37:21
  and see a lot more of it because it's, as I say, that's
• 37:24
  the real movie magic right there. No, but the most I added,
• 37:28
  the most important thing of practical effects is that you can write, is that
• 37:31
  you can make it mean a lot more than what it is, the simple
• 37:36
  two dollar trick it is because you can write a story around it, you
• 37:38
  can make it meaningful through the story, you can bring it back multiple times,
• 37:43
  so you can make the same trick mean something and just then must stick
• 37:47
  with the audience. So that's really what I see the power practical effects.
• 37:52
  How about you? Yeah, again, if you work with what you have,
• 37:55
  that phone trick is actually a very important story moment. It's like that's
• 38:00
  really dragging a phone on a stringer with a magnet is an important story thing.
• 38:02
  And it's like, that's how you have to approach writing and approach creating
• 38:06
  as well, because you just get you get a lot more mileage out of
• 38:08
  what little you have, and it's really really cool. Well, I mean
• 38:13
  when I when I saw I think it was once upon a time in Mexico
• 38:16
  was the introduction of the wacomole gun. For me, I remember the WACAMOLEI
• 38:21
  gun for the first time. If you guys have not heard about the wacomole
• 38:23
  gun, I have an entire tutorial on it on YouTube of how I built
• 38:27
  my wacomolie gun back in the day because my friend and I were making our
• 38:30
  first short film and we're like, we need to blow this girl's head off,
• 38:34
  Like how are we going to blow this girl's head off? And we
• 38:37
  built a we just cobbled together air kit. What is the air compressor gun
• 38:44
  and the PVC pipe. We did multiple Like at first it was like someone
• 38:47
  was peeing on you. It's not enough pressure and like we gotta put it.
• 38:51
  What's brain matter? Like it was so much fun, but that's a
• 38:55
  practical We use a ton of practical effects. And one of those first films
• 38:59
  I made because it was cheap and we had a lot of visual effects too,
• 39:02
  but the practical effects sell so much easier and it's done no rendering,
• 39:08
  absolutely, the crashes, no nothing. But if the wacamly gun man,
• 39:14
  that's yeah. The way it looks when you film it is how it's going
• 39:19
  to look in the final movie. It's like it just you got it.
• 39:22
  You got it. There's no well, let's hope we have enough money to
• 39:24
  make it look good. It's like, well, if it looks great here,
• 39:27
  you're gonna be fine, honestly. And I'm a big proponent of combining
• 39:30
  practical and visual because if you have a base of practical, like in that
• 39:35
  that headshot that we did in that movie, I had my VFS guy just
• 39:37
  throw a couple of more splatters out off of it. But if it would
• 39:40
  have been just the vffs, you wouldn't have sold it. It just we
• 39:45
  didn't have the technology thousand and four Wow hit to really make blood hits that
• 39:52
  really sung, so ad those look or fire if you do fire like fire
• 39:58
  still is rough. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 40:06
  and now back to the show. Yeah, it's still difficult. It's it's
• 40:13
  hard to fake fake out the human eye. Well, I mean if you
• 40:15
  remember the rock, remember the move the rock, yea that there was an
• 40:20
  explosion of the the cart cart. Yeah, yeah, the table cart that
• 40:25
  blows up. You can see the visual effect. Flame that they kind of
• 40:29
  wrapped around it as it bloke while the bottom was all real. And I'm
• 40:32
  like, man, God, that's only trained eyes can say that. Yeah,
• 40:38
  only if cenophiles will notice that for sure, for sure. But it
• 40:43
  has a subtle effect too, even to people who don't catch It's a subconscious
• 40:45
  effect of like, this isn't entirely reveal and it loses gravity as a result.
• 40:51
  So oh no, my wife, I mean, she was not in
• 40:53
  the film shot whatsoever. And when she still you know, went together for
• 40:58
  nearly twenty years. Now, we'll watch a movie. She's like that green
• 41:00
  screen composit was really bad. And I'm like really, She's like, yeah,
• 41:06
  just the compositing wasn't really good. I mean, didn't they have this
• 41:07
  a Marvel movie. Didn't that have the money to clean that up a little
• 41:12
  bit. I'm like, wow, wow, but just for kids, so
• 41:20
  many kids? Really, kids are bad. I didn't like it, But
• 41:25
  wow, that's something because now, as opposed to when Madiachi came out,
• 41:30
  there was no information. There was just no information. Trust me, I
• 41:35
  looked other than the Raiders of the Lost Dark stunt spectacular vhs behind the scenes,
• 41:40
  by the scenes of Star Wars, there really wasn't a lot of behind
• 41:44
  the scenes, so it was still kind of a mystery. And that's when
• 41:46
  all these DVDs that Robert put out with really practical team, you know stuff
• 41:52
  was he started. That was the beginning. I think of that kind of
• 41:55
  behind the scenes access and then show the youtubes. Now everybody, you know,
• 42:01
  could do anything, but back then for people that listen who don't understand
• 42:06
  or of a certain age, they don't they don't understand how difficult it was
• 42:09
  back then too. So even begin to do what they did on Mariachi or
• 42:14
  or Desperado or from Bustle Down or any of the films that he did during
• 42:16
  that era, but it was a yeah for sure, Yeah, yeah,
• 42:25
  I forget to think about that point. But yeah, and it was almost
• 42:30
  CG and all that was movie magic back then because nobody knew how it worked,
• 42:34
  but now it was. There was a show called Magic. There was
• 42:37
  a show called movie Magic, and you would watch it was a thirty minute
• 42:39
  like behind the scenes, a terminator too, you know those kind of things,
• 42:44
  and you were just like, that's great. I don't have Jane's camera
• 42:45
  money, so it's nice. But that's why when when you know, Desperado
• 42:52
  and from Dustle Don's documentary and behind the scenes in Mariachi. It was the
• 42:54
  first time You're like, I think I could build a WAKAMOI gun I think,
• 43:00
  yeah, I think I can. I can do that. So it's
• 43:01
  this inspirational way of looking at filmmaking. It's so with with red Elevin Rebel.
• 43:10
  What was it like composing with it? I mean, because again that's
• 43:14
  another thing that your dad did. He's like, you know what, I'm
• 43:15
  gonna just start writing music for the hell of it. Like remember that.
• 43:21
  I'm like, wow, But dude, calmed down, Robert calm that held
• 43:25
  out what's right? Thought static cam Craft service, I mean, Stunt's like,
• 43:30
  come on, dude. Yeah, it's just he would just be like,
• 43:34
  yeah, you know, I think I want to try that. Yeah,
• 43:36
  I want the music to be like this, I'll just do it.
• 43:37
  And it's like wow, okay, I mean it's you forget how revolutionary that
• 43:43
  is, Like the right no director, which director was writing and editing,
• 43:46
  then which director was writing, editing and doing music and then also doing cinematography
• 43:50
  and all that stuff. It's really Carpenter is the only one that I know
• 43:53
  of that did music for his own movies, but he still didn't do everything
• 43:57
  else. You know, it's crazy. So it's it's really special. But
• 44:02
  there's a thing he always that's always been the way he's like wanted to teach
• 44:07
  us is if, okay, if you want to get into movies and stuff,
• 44:09
  I'm just gonna throw you in onto something you don't know how to do
• 44:12
  all entirely, and you're gonna learn while you're doing it. Pretty much.
• 44:15
  So Racer was his only other crewmate. He had to do all the sound.
• 44:19
  He had never done sound before, and so I know the feeling brother,
• 44:25
  even though I could afford it, like, you know what scored,
• 44:27
  I'm gonna do it, and I'm like, I'm never doing sound again again.
• 44:32
  I'm sure you learned real quick though, what a good sound, what
• 44:37
  a good sound guy is, and why he's valuable. She's valuable on sets.
• 44:40
  Yeah, my next film, my next film, I had a sound.
• 44:43
  I'm like, oh god, everything's so good, thank you, thank
• 44:45
  you. Yeah, I know it's getting a budget next time. Absolutely,
• 44:50
  Oh my god. Yeah, So it was. I mean, I was
• 44:54
  writing a little bit of music at home. I was always been playing pianist
• 44:58
  since I was a kid. And I stopped HI school, stop taking piano
• 45:00
  lessons, and I was like, I want to do something with music.
• 45:01
  And somehow all those years I had never quite dawned to me, oh right,
• 45:05
  my dad makes movies. I could write music for movies, right,
• 45:07
  they have stories and you can write some music. I mean, like it
• 45:10
  took me that long, by the way, but I was like, you
• 45:13
  know, that would be cool. So I'd been writing a little bit on
• 45:15
  throughout the year before and I wrote like fifteen minutes of music for a VR
• 45:20
  short Robert and Racer did called The Limit that was like my first scoring project.
• 45:25
  And then from there he was like, well, now you just write
• 45:28
  a whole feature. You know, it's just just a little extra. You
• 45:30
  just gotta write longer and more stuff. And I was like okay, And
• 45:34
  I was on my laptop on logic, just logic, yeah, facing stuff.
• 45:39
  Yeah. It was like after writing after writing on garage band for most
• 45:43
  of the time, and I started just like with nothing and it is like
• 45:45
  a little keyboard and I was like, all right, well, we gotta
• 45:47
  figure this out. It was probably one of the most stressful experiences effort,
• 45:52
  but it was really really fun and special to start looking at the movie and
• 45:57
  go right. I guess this is when you would do a character theme and
• 46:00
  off like here, you can play a theme for a character and build that
• 46:01
  up across and you start getting understanding even if your tools are really small.
• 46:06
  You start learning the thinking and the methodology behind it a little bit more so
• 46:09
  and appreciate like when something times up well and all that. So it taught
• 46:14
  me a sense of pacing, at least I kind of learned. When I
• 46:15
  wrote a scene, I was like, that's in't pace that I wasn't paced
• 46:19
  wall to the scene. It felt weird, and then when it actually did
• 46:22
  work or not. But can we just say, can we say something publicly
• 46:25
  here that your father's insane? Let's just throw that out there. I mean,
• 46:30
  as a general statement, he the insanity of trying to make Mariachi.
• 46:35
  It's insane at a time that nobody, and that insanity has kept going throughout
• 46:39
  his career. He's been insane in the most beautiful, wonderful way, insane
• 46:45
  to like, hey, rebel, you've never done it. Just come over
• 46:47
  here, yeah, figure it out. Like that's pretty much you know on
• 46:52
  like you know small budget films first, but then you know then you're like
• 46:55
  throwing it to the deep end of the water with some bigger budget stuff that
• 47:00
  He's like, it's like you want to learn yeah, yeah, He's like,
• 47:02
  you want to learn how to swim. I'm gonna throw you down to
• 47:05
  the ocean and once you're like coughing up along the water, I'll fish you
• 47:07
  back out. That's how you're gonna learn. It's like, that's why I
• 47:09
  shoy shark boy. Get after show. You're gonna do your own stunts.
• 47:14
  Get out there. I mean, it's yeah, it's pretty much always been
• 47:15
  that, and yeah, start swimming exactly. But we all have to.
• 47:21
  But we all have to be kind of insane to even be in this business.
• 47:23
  This is insane. We're like, this is carny. We're all carnies,
• 47:29
  and this is the service. I mean, on a carnival. We're
• 47:30
  all carnies. We all smell of cabbage and that's sall. I'm not sure.
• 47:36
  Yeah, but it's true. It's true. It's true. It's true,
• 47:39
  and I think one of the most important lessons it's taught us every time.
• 47:44
  It's happy you had to do it where you're like I have no clue
• 47:45
  what I'm doing, you know, you just feel like and in this one,
• 47:49
  even though the budget was small, I had seen all the work we
• 47:52
  had done, and I was like, I'm gonna score all that work,
• 47:54
  and if it sucks, I like, you know, drop the ball right
• 47:59
  after everyone else put in all this effort. So it is a lot,
• 48:01
  But the most important thing it taught me is you're really not ever going to
• 48:06
  be reading it. It's like you have to You're not always You're never going
• 48:09
  to be fully comfortable I can do this and then dive into it. You're
• 48:12
  always going to have that I don't know if I can do this. I'm
• 48:15
  almost there, but I don't know. That's when you got to start.
• 48:17
  Is you'll become ready as you're doing it, and you learn a lot more
• 48:22
  actually doing it. You know, when you actually have to when the boat
• 48:24
  has to actually hold water, you'll learn a lot more of what actually works
• 48:28
  what doesn't work. So you do have to be ready, you know,
• 48:30
  put yourself out there and actually be willing to fail sometimes, you know,
• 48:34
  don't write, don't make your first movie feature when you know you can do
• 48:37
  it. It's like you're not going to feel like you know you're ready at
• 48:38
  all. You know, maybe you've done some shorts maybe done some of this.
• 48:43
  You just got to dive in there and do it basically. So would
• 48:45
  you agree that the one of the biggest the biggest skill sets any filmmaker at
• 48:51
  any level, any crew person, I think, is the ability to understand
• 48:53
  and accept failure as far as part of the process and not to like that
• 48:59
  let derail you. You just have to kind of keep going because that is
• 49:01
  a skill set that most people don't have, let alone filmmakers don't have that
• 49:07
  ability to fail. And it seems like you know what your father and your
• 49:13
  mother have taught you throughout your career is failures. Okay, you know,
• 49:16
  hey, everyone has, Everyone goes up and down and exact. Sometimes you
• 49:21
  have a good movie, sometimes you have I like the movie, but that
• 49:22
  obviously don't like the movie, didn't do well in the box office, didn't
• 49:25
  do this or that, or oh my god, how the hell did that
• 49:28
  happen? Like all of it, all of it, but failures a big
• 49:31
  deals. Can you talk a little bit about that from your experience? Yes,
• 49:35
  yeah, no, that is totally it. I mean, he says
• 49:37
  you learned so much more from your failures than your successes, and I mean
• 49:39
  he's shown it all throughout his career. You know, four Rooms was didn't
• 49:43
  do all that great, but right what he saw was, hey, it's
• 49:45
  actually pretty funny. Do you have these two little kids here who like get
• 49:50
  into all this trouble. They barely even tie their own shooting their shoes,
• 49:53
  and they're like doing all this stuff. How about like their spies or something.
• 49:55
  And that's where I came from. So you know, we'll be right
• 50:00
  back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
• 50:07
  From his failure came Spy Kids, which ended up being a humongous thing.
• 50:12
  So he's always been excited to just jump in and trip and fail because he
• 50:16
  knows you'll, you know, when you stumble, when you go down that
• 50:19
  path that no one's ever gone, where you you're not comfortable with, you'll
• 50:22
  stumble, but you'll also stumble upon new things. You'll stumble upon great new
• 50:25
  ideas for stuff. And yeah, it's I don't think they're ever going to
• 50:30
  fully appreciate that you have more to learn unless you've seen you have things to
• 50:34
  work on, basically, so it's almost like you're guaranteed. It's not like
• 50:37
  it was. It's not like it was a home run making the Red eleven
• 50:40
  score. I had things that I was like that really didn't work out.
• 50:44
  This wasn't that. But instantly from there I was like, that's when I
• 50:45
  need to get better at that's what's you know, this is really important.
• 50:49
  I never would have probably realized that unless I actually scored a movie and seeing
• 50:52
  this works, this doesn't work that all that. So it's really yeah,
• 50:58
  it teaches you to accept fail pretty quickly. Absolutely agree. It's one of
• 51:04
  the most important skill sets that anyone can have. And I can point a
• 51:09
  lot to what makes you averse to failure because we felt it. You know,
• 51:15
  whether you're the son of anybody important or whether you're just comparing yourself to
• 51:19
  somebody that you're not like any of the other great filmmakers. Because we watch
• 51:22
  all these great movies. You want to be like them, but the most
• 51:25
  important and you're gonna see only your failures and you're not going to look at
• 51:30
  any of theirs, and you're gonna renart what or what what they consider their
• 51:36
  failure, you consider their greatest work. Because so you know, you're blind
• 51:38
  to other people's failures and you know you can compare yourself to like ah Man,
• 51:45
  I'm d H he made Mariach and he did all that by himself,
• 51:47
  and like, I haven't done anything. I haven't made a film all by
• 51:51
  myself like that too. And it's like this is and he's made such a
• 51:53
  big splash, but like, I haven't made anything like that. But you
• 51:58
  know, comparing to others makes you so verse to failure, because that's one
• 52:02
  of the biggest drivers drivers of why you don't want to fail. But you
• 52:07
  just gotta fail. You just gotta go at it and fail and compare yourself
• 52:09
  only with yourself really go as Rebel just said, you know, okay,
• 52:14
  wasn't a score, wasn't a slam dunk. But I know where I can
• 52:16
  do better next time. So right, I'm gonna try it. I know
• 52:19
  I'm gonna make that better for myself and for the audience next time. That's
• 52:22
  what I want to do. So you know it's and when you're saying that,
• 52:25
  the first thing that came into my mind is, as filmmakers of my
• 52:28
  generation, first thing you think of when you hit twenty three, you go
• 52:32
  or s Wells mean Citizen came at twenty three. Yes, I haven't done
• 52:36
  crap, And you're like, but it's okay, it's okay. Then it
• 52:38
  hit twenty seven. You're like Stielberg made Jaws at twenty seven. Oh god.
• 52:43
  So then you keep moving. He's like, I couldn't make Reservoir like
• 52:45
  I at thirty or something like good, and you keep pushing, you keep
• 52:50
  out a terminator thirty like and then Ridley Scott didn't make his first film until
• 52:53
  forty. Yeah, just keep trying to make itself feel better. You're like,
• 53:00
  sort, by the way, that's when I'm in my first feature at
• 53:02
  forty. I that's a whole other store why I didn't do it before.
• 53:08
  But I did a lot of other directing and other things like that. But
• 53:12
  you start going, You're like, okay, but if you do compare yourself
• 53:15
  to these quote unquote gods. And that's another thing that a lot of filmmakers
• 53:19
  do. They put these filmmakers up on pedestals. I mean, look,
• 53:21
  I have a kid as Stanley Kubrick autographed book behind me that I got Hitchcock
• 53:25
  right next to it, you know, I mean all that, I have
• 53:30
  books from all my favorite filmmakers behind me. You know, you do put
• 53:32
  them up on a pedestal. But one of the great honors and privileges of
• 53:37
  my life doing the show is I get to talk to some of these sometimes
• 53:40
  these guys, these gods, and then I start to realize I realized a
• 53:45
  long time ago when I did this first shows. I was like, they
• 53:47
  all have the same issues. They all have. They don't have enough money,
• 53:53
  they don't have enough time, they all I always tell people, you're
• 53:58
  gonna no matter who you are in this business, you're gonna get punched in
• 54:01
  the face at everything. Spielberg still gets punched in the face, not as
• 54:07
  much as he used to. You know, Robert, I'm sure still gets
• 54:10
  punched in the face, sideswiped like, oh I did see that coming,
• 54:14
  you know, from the business or something like that. The difference is that
• 54:17
  nowadays, you get older, you start to learn how to duck a little
• 54:21
  bit. You know. Sometimes it just grazes you. And sometimes you're not
• 54:24
  even there when the punch is thrown because you've been around a little bit longer.
• 54:28
  But no, but no matter who you are, you're gonna go through
• 54:30
  the It is the great equalizer filmmaking. No matter who you are, no
• 54:37
  matter how much money you have. You could have look at Cameron, Jesus,
• 54:40
  look at you. Look what James is doing, you know, I
• 54:43
  mean he has all the money in the world. To me, he's the
• 54:45
  only filmmaker who does that. By the way, it's people like, who
• 54:50
  do you live in the mid Abazon? Only James Gameron. No, they're
• 54:53
  not giving they're not giving that to Spielberg, to Nolan, to Fincher,
• 54:57
  to Robert to no no one else. It's getting half a billion dollars to
• 55:01
  like, hey, I might make a movie in a few years. It's
• 55:06
  just it's insane, right, it's insane, but it but no matter how
• 55:10
  much money you have, there's every day there's a problem because it's part of
• 55:14
  the the artistic process. So so you were you brought up four rooms.
• 55:17
  By the way, I favored for rooms. Obviously it's Roberts because it was
• 55:21
  the most fun. And that was that was the moment that you started to
• 55:23
  see the shift into the family stuff, because before that it was stuff that
• 55:27
  you guys could watch. And that's Spout Kids came out. And I want
• 55:30
  to impress on people what Spy Kids means to so many people around the world,
• 55:37
  as by Kids is one of those franchises. In the first film,
• 55:40
  there had never been anything like that. Again, Robert Nothing that everything made
• 55:45
  like that with Latino Latino people. I always said this because I'm Latino,
• 55:51
  I'm of Cuban descent, and I've never seen myself portrayed in a movie like
• 55:57
  that before. But anytime I do, it was always like, Hi,
• 56:00
  I'm Latino, let me eat my taco, and I'm like, we're got
• 56:02
  pain. Like it was so on the nose where it was never mentioned in
• 56:07
  Spike Kids. It was just there's just people having an adventure. And I
• 56:10
  think that was another one of those points that inspired other filmmakers to bring in
• 56:16
  other cultures and not point out like there's the black guy, there's the guy
• 56:22
  there's It's like, no, let's just it's a story, and it opened
• 56:25
  up a Spike Kids was one of the first times I saw that in the
• 56:29
  Latino culture. And you know, when I when my kids were old enough,
• 56:32
  I showed them Spy Kids and they just like gobbled up the first floor
• 56:37
  like they were just because it's like kids will always watch a movie or story
• 56:43
  that gives kids power. It's it's a give any time there's kids in power
• 56:49
  making adults look like idiots done, it's him. It's him, very right.
• 56:57
  The mottos make kids feel power, will make kids feel cool. That's
• 57:01
  right exactly, and then we are heroes and then he did that with we
• 57:05
  are Heroes as well. What was your experience when you guys first saw Spy
• 57:09
  Kids and because you were on it, you were shooting, tell me what
• 57:13
  your experience was making it? Because I know you how old would you?
• 57:15
  Guys wouldn't spike so I leg for me, but yeah, yeah, your
• 57:21
  Evil was two when it first came out, so I was it was four
• 57:23
  when the first one came out, and that was. Imagine you you're from
• 57:30
  like zero to four years old. You don't you kind of know that your
• 57:32
  parents do something that they do work this thing called job. They've got one,
• 57:36
  but you don't know what it is. You see dad go off to
• 57:37
  this office that's attached to the house and he goes, he goes off,
• 57:43
  and he disappears all day and he's doing something. And no matter how many
• 57:45
  times he comes home to tell you that he's making a movie, you don't.
• 57:47
  You don't like get it. You don't really understand until you're sitting in
• 57:52
  a you're sitting in a car service riding to this movie theater where now there's
• 57:58
  instead of a quiet who's the afternoon, there's thousands of kids and families gathered
• 58:04
  outside of this theater and you're like, oh, there's a there's a carpet.
• 58:07
  There's like wait, wait, why are we walking down this Why are
• 58:08
  we dressed on ice to go to this movie theater? And then you sit
• 58:13
  in the theater, you watch this wind blowing movie called Spike. It's one
• 58:17
  and end credits come on and both your mom and dad's names come out at
• 58:21
  the end, and you're like, what, okay, wait, and like
• 58:23
  wait, all these other crew people who I've met and I know their names
• 58:27
  too. This is crazy. Wait, you all make movies. They made
• 58:31
  this. Yeah, that's it people. Then you're like, we're easy,
• 58:37
  but yeah, it really takes. He made me pink cakes yesterday morning,
• 58:43
  Like what it Yeah, exactly, it really takes. It was showing you
• 58:47
  the props afterwards, going look here he is. Here's the jet pack,
• 58:51
  here's the buddy pack, here's the thumb thumb we made these, they're on
• 58:54
  the movie. It's like it takes that much for you to finally go,
• 58:58
  oh, okay, I get it. It's just like, yeah, my
• 59:01
  kids, my kids still don't understand what I do. They're like, you're
• 59:05
  on like, you're on YouTube, but you also make movies, and then
• 59:08
  can we watch your movies? No, you're not old enough from the movies
• 59:10
  I've made up. They're like, okay, so but you're on YouTube.
• 59:14
  You get followers, people following you, we have subscribe you. I'm like
• 59:20
  yeah, and then I got no, I got recognized a couple of times
• 59:22
  in public, which is crazy with them, and they're just like what what
• 59:30
  what? Then it's the thumb. It's like showing you the jet pack and
• 59:32
  like somebody else's it's it's it's remarkable, the the veilization and the veil that
• 59:42
  we have as kids to what our parents did. And and she's just like
• 59:45
  you need to be hit over the head for you to go, oh,
• 59:51
  they make movies. Oh because those movies and here we are making home movies.
• 59:55
  We're like, well, he just kind of like we're doing exact We'll
• 1:00:01
  be right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show.
• 1:00:12
  Though. You're like, oh, of course everyone makes movies like hit
• 1:00:15
  over the head with it, for sure, that's gonna be word. But
• 1:00:20
  yeah, it's and you know when you see it like that, and then
• 1:00:24
  you're a part of the next all the next ones. You know, it
• 1:00:28
  makes a lasting impact on YouTube. You know, we joke that our family
• 1:00:30
  is the biggest fans, the biggest geeks of Spike Kids ever. We get
• 1:00:35
  out the most over all the props and vehicles and actors and anything that's a
• 1:00:38
  buddy. Yeah. So it's it's not just the impact that on us.
• 1:00:43
  It's like not a stretch at all to see how much it's impacted people,
• 1:00:46
  you know, across the world and how muchly remember it and love it.
• 1:00:50
  And I've such fun memories of it, and and for people listening. When
• 1:00:53
  Spike Kids one came out, it was a massive hit. Like it was.
• 1:00:58
  It was a massive hit, like the biggest hit your parents ever had.
• 1:01:02
  It's crazy. Yeah, it was McDonald toys. I remember McDonald toys.
• 1:01:08
  It was. It was a thing with McDonald's. I was like,
• 1:01:14
  this was huge. It was. It was. It was huge. You're
• 1:01:17
  like, hey, maybe we should do some more of this kid stuff.
• 1:01:22
  There was pretty cool. In the kitchen. There's still a little Ralph.
• 1:01:25
  I'm there's a little Ralph toy about this big just sitting up on one of
• 1:01:29
  the ledges. No one day and I got a picture. I was like,
• 1:01:32
  man, it took that long for him to finally fall down. I
• 1:01:36
  got a picture of him. I put him right back up there, and
• 1:01:39
  I was a kid just staring at him up there, like when can I
• 1:01:43
  play with him? It's just they knew we'd lose him as a kid,
• 1:01:45
  but so he just stayed up there. It's like, not, no,
• 1:01:46
  he's spying. He's just it's crazy how pervasive it was everywhere. I mean,
• 1:01:52
  it just and it was just so impactful too. So yeah, and
• 1:01:57
  and like you said, nothing like that, I mean it's just no,
• 1:02:00
  nothing like that. And you know what was really fascinating to me too,
• 1:02:01
  is that with spy kids, your parents didn't fall into the same trap that's
• 1:02:07
  so many Hollywood filmmakers get into. Was when they have a big hit,
• 1:02:13
  the studios show up and like, here's more money, take a lot more
• 1:02:16
  money, and just double the budget and just do whatever you want. And
• 1:02:21
  they said, no, we're going to do the exact same budget and it'll
• 1:02:25
  be fine. And it's and that's such a smart move. It's such a
• 1:02:30
  brilliant move, because you get intoxicated with money being thrown the success and they
• 1:02:36
  said no, no, no, we're good. Give us the same,
• 1:02:38
  we'll make another one. And it was so brilliant because if that's not as
• 1:02:45
  big of a hit, it's okay. But if they would have taken one
• 1:02:47
  hundred thousand, they could have easily got one hundred million dollar budget for the
• 1:02:51
  next comfortably, and it would not have been a good business move. So
• 1:02:57
  that's another lesson, you know, for all of us who will eventually have
• 1:03:00
  the Spy Kids kind of fame and success. Remember, don't take the hundred
• 1:03:06
  million when they offer tea boys listening. Absolutely, you know, that's a
• 1:03:13
  really good observation. I'd never thought of h I'd never thought about that now
• 1:03:15
  once you mentioned it today, But I know I'm good completely. I really
• 1:03:20
  agree with you. Yeah, that's on just another side of their genius.
• 1:03:23
  You know, how smart they were and how boughtful about filmmaking and how much
• 1:03:29
  they can make, how much canal and it, And it is a lesson
• 1:03:32
  that can be a you know, we were joking about one hundred million dollars.
• 1:03:35
  But if you have some success anywhere, don't get intoxicated by it.
• 1:03:42
  Understand that this is a moment, it will pass and you're gonna be right
• 1:03:46
  down at the bottom again, real quick, real quick. How many filmmakers,
• 1:03:50
  how many wonderful filmmakers have we seen? Who Rose Rose? Rose got
• 1:03:54
  a little too intoxicated when a little crazy bombed, and they get thrown into
• 1:04:00
  director jail and you don't see them again, and sometimes you don't see them
• 1:04:03
  again, ever again, And it's such a shame where you know that happens,
• 1:04:09
  and again, it happens in any successes in any field, anywhere you
• 1:04:13
  go. Don't get intoxicated by it, because it was the one thing that
• 1:04:16
  people and this is the one thing I think your parents never really fell into,
• 1:04:20
  was the you're the greatest, Oh my god, you're this, You're
• 1:04:24
  that, here's more money, here's it. They just really grounded, really
• 1:04:29
  really grounded the entire the entire time they've been making movies. It has been
• 1:04:33
  you could see it in the in the filmography, you know, since city,
• 1:04:39
  huge monumental filmmakers that are legendary. We're like, how did you do
• 1:04:45
  this? You know, and yet cool, cool, very very level headed
• 1:04:51
  throughout the rest of you know, moving forward. It's it's it's pretty admirable
• 1:04:55
  to see film a filmmaker and uh, like your parents it's both the filmmakers
• 1:05:00
  stay grounded during this whole process, and they're keeping you guys grounded. I
• 1:05:05
  mean, you guys are an example of this groundness because you guys could have
• 1:05:09
  eat I mean I've I've I've met some Hollywood quote unquote Hollywood kids. Uh.
• 1:05:14
  And it's it's it's I'm sure you have to uh And it's it's a
• 1:05:19
  it's a it's a brutal business. Guys, it's a brutal business. Could
• 1:05:25
  that could eat up somebody and tear them apart and destroy them like that?
• 1:05:29
  Would you agree? I completely agree? Absolutely, Yeah. I've always appreciated
• 1:05:34
  that groundedness they applied, you know, to their careers that they applied to
• 1:05:40
  raising us and in even raising us in the same industry and bringing and now
• 1:05:45
  teaching us and training us in the same industry. So yeah, absolutely agree.
• 1:05:49
  That's uh, that's a really cool obfturbation. Thank you for that about
• 1:05:51
  them. Yeah, absolutely absolutely. So now there's this fifth and stuff because
• 1:05:56
  you guys can't stop make it spy kids read against that. I mean,
• 1:06:00
  it's just like just back to the horse we go. No, I'm joking,
• 1:06:05
  We're explained. We had other people tell us that these are like Bond
• 1:06:09
  movies like this is such a universal tale back every once in a while,
• 1:06:14
  and just new casts. We'll bring Daniel Greggan, We'll bring First crosst It.
• 1:06:17
  It'll be great. It'll be great. No, these could arguably keep
• 1:06:20
  I mean, you guys can be you know, you know, when when
• 1:06:25
  Robert and Elizabeth are both you know, completely retired from making stuff, you
• 1:06:30
  guys like working to keep going, and you could be the patrolis like Spike,
• 1:06:32
  it just keep going on. It just keeps going, and we have
• 1:06:39
  to we have to bring in some new Spike Kids. It could easily keep
• 1:06:42
  going. I mean, it's it. By the way, is Spike Kids
• 1:06:45
  arm again in the beginning of a new trilogy, then you guys are trying
• 1:06:47
  to make it that is that's the that's the ideas. We We got new
• 1:06:51
  kids that we really love, a new family and new parents that we really
• 1:06:55
  love, and we just love seeing them together and their energy. And the
• 1:06:58
  first thing everybody sees will Nave, Like any of the crew or the users,
• 1:07:01
  anybody got to see them on said, They're like, oh my gosh,
• 1:07:03
  I want to see so much more. They have so much fun and
• 1:07:05
  so much energy, so that was the idea. We just made it a
• 1:07:09
  little standalone reboot on its own. That was its kind of the vision going
• 1:07:13
  in. But seeing it on Caver, you go, oh my gosh,
• 1:07:15
  I want to keep watching this. I want to see more, just like
• 1:07:18
  with Spike Kids one, everybody want to see those kids some more, right,
• 1:07:23
  And now they're like my age, those kids, I mean they're having
• 1:07:26
  kids of their own. Yeah, having kids of their own all, you
• 1:07:30
  know. And then you see one of them in the jet that you're like,
• 1:07:31
  wow, okay, yeah, okay, all right, yeah right,
• 1:07:39
  yeah, go, it's fascinating. But so so talk to a little bit
• 1:07:45
  about Spike Kids Armaged and I know there was no Netflix finally got the rights
• 1:07:49
  to help you, you know, make the sequels, and they love what
• 1:07:54
  you guys did with I think we are heroes are we are heroes. We
• 1:07:56
  are champions, so we can be heroes. Yeah, we could be heroes.
• 1:07:58
  We could be here us, which by way, loved as well.
• 1:08:00
  Such a beautiful story, beautiful film. My kids like watched it a ton
• 1:08:04
  of times, you know, it was good. Yeah. And then a
• 1:08:08
  little behind the scenes that they made with you guys on YouTube and stuff like
• 1:08:11
  that was so much fun to watch what you guys were doing. And then
• 1:08:14
  my kids were like, I want a pen on an iPad. I'm like,
• 1:08:15
  God Jesus, oh no right now. Thanks thanks for Robert, Thanks
• 1:08:23
  Robert Elizabeth. I appreciate that ethics. So tell me a little bit of
• 1:08:29
  how how this this story came about, how you guys came at this new,
• 1:08:33
  this new installment. Yeah, it's perfect that you mentioned we can be
• 1:08:38
  heroes, because we had just just finished making that and we loved it.
• 1:08:43
  We had such a great time getting to do kids kids film again and getting
• 1:08:47
  right that was fun. Getting to make it was fun. And so Robert
• 1:08:53
  and I were just joking around, like, could you imagine what if you
• 1:08:55
  do another Spike Kids? That could be really fun? Right, Yeah,
• 1:08:57
  let's see something like that. And Robert that was what he does best.
• 1:09:00
  He starts talking to people about it immediately. And it was a sky Dance
• 1:09:04
  that was really interested and they said, we would love to do Spike Kids.
• 1:09:09
  And Robert and I were laughing from the studio that brings you wishing impossible
• 1:09:12
  comes Spike Kids. That's okay. So we laughed at the idea and we
• 1:09:20
  did a writing process that we've been doing since I was seven and we did
• 1:09:25
  Shark Woy and Love a Girl Together, is we jump in the pool and
• 1:09:29
  have a little notepad and the next to the pool and just swe around and
• 1:09:31
  talk ideas, laugh about things, make jokes to talk about it, and
• 1:09:35
  pretty much in that in that pool session became a lot of the major ideas
• 1:09:41
  of the story of the film, including the idea that then that in that
• 1:09:45
  making up or in the behind the scenes with we can hear as we mentioned
• 1:09:48
  the idea of give kids technology, like don't hold them back to what whatever
• 1:09:55
  you did when you were growing up or growing up or anything like that.
• 1:09:58
  Give them the best. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
• 1:10:06
  and now back to the show, so that they can go further than you,
• 1:10:12
  and they will go up leaps and balance. So try not to hold
• 1:10:14
  them to any restrictions you had. See what's available now, see what can
• 1:10:17
  help them, and give that to them. So we love that and we
• 1:10:20
  were just we were just talking about it in the making of and we thought,
• 1:10:24
  yeah, what if we made the whole story about that with my kids
• 1:10:27
  and Rebel ordered it greatly? Go for a rebel the idea that you ordered
• 1:10:32
  a great lady idea that giving kids technology and wow, that was a huge
• 1:10:38
  part of this one. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it was interesting.
• 1:10:41
  It kind of all came together because we loved this, you know,
• 1:10:44
  it's technology has kind of got a bad wrapped to some extent, you know,
• 1:10:45
  of like it's all bad books are better, and so we're like,
• 1:10:48
  how about we have a movie where it's the opposite and the book the book
• 1:10:51
  can be just as bad as the technology can be just as good, and
• 1:10:55
  vice versa. You know, it's less about the tool and more about the
• 1:10:58
  teaching. What are they learning, what are you learning? What values are
• 1:11:00
  kind of learning from that? But that kind of came together with an idea
• 1:11:03
  of like, you know, it'd be really cool to have a to do
• 1:11:08
  a spy kids. Where is there any way we could make the whole world
• 1:11:12
  change to where suddenly kids have like a unique advantage over adults in some way,
• 1:11:16
  like just conceptually, is there any way to do that? And we're
• 1:11:19
  like, you know, what if like the only way to access technology in
• 1:11:23
  the world was through like video games, since kids have gotten so adept at
• 1:11:27
  this and technology in general that they completely outpaced their parents and stuff, and
• 1:11:30
  that their own things, it's like and if that's like the insiding event,
• 1:11:35
  now suddenly the kids are superspies and everyone else is struggling. So it's like,
• 1:11:40
  now they're really like the only people I can save the world. So
• 1:11:44
  so that was like where the concept really started. But yeah, so kind
• 1:11:47
  of the core idea came from that. Yeah, let's have a bad guy
• 1:11:49
  who's a villain, who's video game designer, and he infects the whole world
• 1:11:54
  of the video game virus and nobody can get to their devices except the kids
• 1:11:57
  can because they're smart and they're savvy with technology, and so they go leaps
• 1:12:00
  ahead of the parents and with him the course of a few days, become
• 1:12:04
  Superspies and or now having to go save the world and take on all the
• 1:12:08
  responsibility of that. And so a lot of the core ideas really came to
• 1:12:11
  that writing session, and we have from there took off. We just started
• 1:12:15
  writing creating it over the course of twenty twenty twenty twenty one, and yeah,
• 1:12:19
  that was the birth of the New Ones Spikes ever getting I feel that
• 1:12:24
  it's gonna do well, sir. I feel that the kids are gonna really
• 1:12:30
  like my girls are like excited to see it. It's it's it's it's so
• 1:12:35
  admirable to see how you guys have continued that that franchise. And I hope
• 1:12:40
  because you know, even when I saw the trailer, I haven't seen the
• 1:12:42
  movie yet because we haven't had access to it yet. But soon soon,
• 1:12:45
  we're saying hopefully next week. But but even the trailer kind of that's why
• 1:12:50
  I asked, is this a trilogy? Like I saw it, I saw
• 1:12:54
  where this was going. I was like, Oh, this is not they're
• 1:12:56
  making another trilogy out of this. This is solid, solid, Yeah,
• 1:13:02
  it's really really special. That was kind of the intention of like, you
• 1:13:06
  know, you know, I get the feeling of like Spike Kids five,
• 1:13:11
  you know, usually when something gets to the fifth it's like I don't know
• 1:13:14
  what's going on anymore. But we really were like, we really only wanted
• 1:13:16
  to do it if there was really a story we could tell that's different from
• 1:13:19
  the old ones but has the same values and stuff. So that's where we
• 1:13:23
  kind of saw the opportunity of like, right, there's almost a modern take
• 1:13:26
  on this now that it's been twenty years since the first one, where now
• 1:13:28
  we have a very significant gap between what that one was about what this one's
• 1:13:31
  about. But they're both still about family, and they're most still about empowerment
• 1:13:34
  of kids. And this generation would really love that sort of thing, you
• 1:13:38
  know, in this new form factor. And it's really cool now, especially
• 1:13:41
  that we learned from We Can Be Heroes, is streaming services is really great
• 1:13:45
  for kids. They can watch the movie as much as they want, not
• 1:13:48
  as much as they can convince their parents to go to the movie and drive
• 1:13:51
  them there so they get to watch it that much more. So We Can
• 1:13:56
  Be Heroes are really impactful and beloved because kids could just watch it at the
• 1:13:59
  pace they like watching things. You watch it all the way through, gets
• 1:14:02
  the end credits, you just replay it and you do it again, and
• 1:14:04
  you do that a few times a day. Well, you guys might be
• 1:14:08
  you guys might be a little done to remember this, But that's exactly what
• 1:14:11
  they did in the video store days with Disney movies. I would rent out
• 1:14:15
  a Disney movie and the kids would just on loop watch the VHS again,
• 1:14:19
  rewind again. They did it with Spy Kids because Spice Kids was on VD
• 1:14:23
  JSS as well, and it would just loop again and again and again.
• 1:14:26
  But now it's instant on their phone on the car. They could just watch.
• 1:14:30
  I mean, I think my girls have seen We Could Be Heroes a
• 1:14:32
  few times, at least two or three times, and I was like,
• 1:14:35
  I'll walk into Little are you watching? Didn't you just see this like last
• 1:14:39
  week? Like yeah, they have the ability to do that. I can't
• 1:14:43
  watch again and again mine doesn't do that. You know, it's like like
• 1:14:49
  a weapon, like five times in a row, I can't really do that
• 1:14:54
  anymore. Looks that's just like different the way they enjoy their entertainment, and
• 1:14:59
  it just it was it's kind of difficult to make to make that work,
• 1:15:01
  but you know now it's easier than ever for them kind of. I mean,
• 1:15:03
  they don't really have much of problem watching it on a phone or an
• 1:15:06
  iPad. They just want to see it and like be able to watch experience
• 1:15:09
  it over and over again, see the jokes again, and you know,
• 1:15:12
  so it's cool to put something in front of them that like really empowers them
• 1:15:15
  and shows them, you know, they can go on a really cool,
• 1:15:17
  awesome adventure. They can do really incredible things. And if they work together
• 1:15:20
  with their family as well, you know, you can do you can move
• 1:15:24
  mountains, and it's it's always been about that sort of thing too. It's
• 1:15:27
  really special, so and we can be heroes if I'm not mistaken. Was
• 1:15:30
  like number one on Netflix for a while, right a little, I think
• 1:15:34
  for like a little like it was like everybody who was like, what's going
• 1:15:36
  on? Like what is well? This is a stranger things like what's going
• 1:15:41
  on? I heard them. I'm like, good man, that's awesome that
• 1:15:45
  you know it wasn't And I know the budgets because I know Robert spent four
• 1:15:50
  hundred million dollars to make that, so I was like, good that.
• 1:15:54
  You know a film like that gets that kind of attention worldwide? Yeah,
• 1:16:00
  old why Yeah, it's really it's really something that's really interesting. It's super
• 1:16:06
  fun. Yeah, and I believe that this one will probably do. I
• 1:16:10
  hope there's similar business if you will, so they can make the next two
• 1:16:15
  or three, uh, and then your kids will start making them. Yeah
• 1:16:17
  exactly, that's that's yeah, that's the hope for us. You know,
• 1:16:21
  right now, we're still waiting for lunch and we're like, oh, I
• 1:16:24
  hope I just want to make a second and the third and be on this
• 1:16:27
  so yeah, exactly, I hope kid are so next with it. Just
• 1:16:30
  as much as we can. Heroes and all that kind of stuff, because
• 1:16:31
  it's really if not, we really had a great time making it, but
• 1:16:35
  really brought the family together in a really fun way and we are excited for
• 1:16:40
  people to watch it. And what was the biggest challenge of making that film?
• 1:16:44
  Because I'm making this one? Yeah, yeah, because you guys think
• 1:16:46
  I gets a little different. You got you got some shrapnel. Now you
• 1:16:50
  got a little bit of shrapnel on you. You know, you've taken a
• 1:16:53
  couple of hits along the way. How did this big a little bit of
• 1:16:56
  bigger budget, slightly bigger budget, a little bigger than eleven figure, so
• 1:17:01
  for no producing standpoint and a composing standpoint? How did this? Like the
• 1:17:04
  biggest challenge is yet this one? Definitely the biggest challenge was dealing with a
• 1:17:12
  legacy, you know, of the originals are so beloved that and weirds love
• 1:17:16
  them so much too, that crafting something that has to capture what came before
• 1:17:25
  that that was always you know, you put on your clubs to deal with
• 1:17:29
  that every single day. Just okay, and now we're gonna carefully adjust this
• 1:17:32
  and that and make sure this this feels up. The stuff and so like
• 1:17:36
  reference of the Originals was so key and so important, and like in hindsight,
• 1:17:41
  there's still little elements that I watched now in the movie and go,
• 1:17:44
  gosh, I wish I made that more like this or more like that,
• 1:17:46
  because like, oh, I missed, totally missed that whole side of fun
• 1:17:49
  that the Originals had that ah that I only incorporated a little bit. So
• 1:17:54
  like that definitely is the biggest challenge. But we're and that Hansy throughout writing,
• 1:17:59
  throughout production, through editing, even through visual effects. It's like,
• 1:18:02
  now this actual the right shape they're composing, composing ye all throughout all of
• 1:18:09
  it. That challenged Hansu throughout all of it. But at the end,
• 1:18:13
  I'm really happy with where it, how it came together, and how I
• 1:18:16
  watch it and I see kids smile sitting next to me and go, okay,
• 1:18:21
  you know, you can beat yourself up about, like God, I
• 1:18:24
  want you did to test this and that, but it really it captures something
• 1:18:27
  that's just like the Originals and that makes us smile as kids and makes us
• 1:18:30
  smile now as big kids. I never I never thought about that, but
• 1:18:34
  you're absolutely right. You guys are the number one fans of this franchise,
• 1:18:40
  I mean, and the pressure that that puts on you guys as creators.
• 1:18:45
  It's kind of like, you know, my parents started this train. I
• 1:18:47
  better not derail it. Absolutely think it is now not at the beginning of
• 1:18:54
  the process, you let yeah do it, especially you know how many times
• 1:18:59
  this type of stuff hasn't worked out, and you're like, fawns are stacked
• 1:19:02
  against you, for sure. It's definitely any sequel, any sequel the second,
• 1:19:06
  third, or fifth always had you. You're always occasionally you get the
• 1:19:12
  Terminator two. Fictionally you get Aliens yea the case. And by the way,
• 1:19:17
  I actually like Spy Kids too more than I like Spy Kids one.
• 1:19:21
  That's just my personal I love kids, but Spy Kids too. I really
• 1:19:26
  remember liking it more. I just liked it more than the first one,
• 1:19:30
  so that was my favorite too, Right, It's like occasionally, yeah,
• 1:19:33
  but man, I can't imagine that kind of pressure because from your parents legacy,
• 1:19:38
  from the films legacy, and also your own love of being part of
• 1:19:43
  it since you were so young. Must have been Man, the hell did
• 1:19:45
  you make this movie? I'm like, I'm stressed out, and not even
• 1:19:47
  them, I think, Yeah, definitely, the stress and the weight and
• 1:19:53
  like the pressure of all that is what counterbalances a lot is the love and
• 1:19:57
  the passion we've had for the series. And it's like, you know,
• 1:20:00
  we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the
• 1:20:08
  show. We're like some of the biggest fans, so it's like we were
• 1:20:13
  there the whole time, going it's gotta have this, It's got to have
• 1:20:15
  that. It's gotta have this. You know, we need the vehicles,
• 1:20:17
  we need a little robot assistant because you can't go without that. I mean,
• 1:20:20
  that's all I wanted as a kid. It was sinking robots. I
• 1:20:23
  wanted Ralph so badly. It needs this and needs that. I mean,
• 1:20:26
  you still need Ralph. Yeah, we all told me I could buy one.
• 1:20:33
  I would probably be looking towards that, Yeah, I would. Ralph
• 1:20:38
  is a necessity. But yeah, it's definitely just as much as it was
• 1:20:44
  a huge deal and there was a lot to a lot to get done here,
• 1:20:47
  there was the passion for it was really with drove us and it was
• 1:20:51
  you know, it's what made it probably one of my favorite projects we've done,
• 1:20:55
  was that we get to do all that again and you know, be
• 1:20:58
  able to add a new twist to it and add new flavors to it,
• 1:21:00
  and we have enough under our belt that we are like, we know how
• 1:21:03
  we can approach that in the writing of this, and that you know,
• 1:21:06
  we kind of put all our heads together and can try to do as something
• 1:21:10
  new but still have that same feeling as the originals. So it's really it's
• 1:21:15
  I think it came in exactly at the right time when I didn't feel I
• 1:21:17
  was ready for it, but I had the passion to like, if I
• 1:21:20
  could do it, this is how I do it. And so so now
• 1:21:25
  moving on real quick, you guys also worked on another little film called Hypnotic
• 1:21:29
  uh recently you produced and you composed that again slightly bigger than Red eleven.
• 1:21:35
  Oh yeah, hi, uncle Ben. Uncle Ben was a star. Hickle
• 1:21:42
  Ben was a star. That's great. So I mean, and you guys,
• 1:21:48
  you guys are taking on bigger and bigger projects now, you know It's
• 1:21:53
  it's so admirable to see how you guys are taking on this kind of pressure
• 1:21:57
  because you could, I mean, you guys could easily be all all honest
• 1:22:00
  and noll bys aside. You guys could post comfortably for the rest of your
• 1:22:03
  life. Don't no joke, you can like I have to look at this,
• 1:22:05
  But you guys are challenging yourselves and pushing yourselves as creators, as filmmakers,
• 1:22:11
  and I think that is a legacy of your parents who are pushing you
• 1:22:13
  and throwing you into the deep end. Because when I saw, like because
• 1:22:15
  I'm like, oh they did that, they hear and then when I looked
• 1:22:18
  at him, like, son of it, they did hypnotic like that's that's
• 1:22:23
  a big that's that's a big that's a big boy movie. You know,
• 1:22:26
  serious movie, big boy movie, big girl movie. You know. So
• 1:22:30
  when you approached that, like how did you guys? I mean, it's
• 1:22:34
  it's a it's a bigger deal. Guys. It's not legacy. It's not
• 1:22:39
  legacy. It's not something else that you're like, Okay, we're we're now
• 1:22:43
  in the deep end with Uncle Ben. Absolutely love it's yeah, as you
• 1:22:53
  were saying that, we as you were saying, you guys are taking on
• 1:22:57
  the challenge. The little voice in my head is going, oh but I
• 1:22:59
  love the challeng lenge. And it's like, in this moment, in this
• 1:23:00
  chair, I realized, oh gosh, my parents gave me a bit of
• 1:23:03
  their insanity. Yeah, this is that insanity that programming programming I talked to
• 1:23:09
  you about earlier. Yeah, very subtle. They've flipped it around the pressure
• 1:23:16
  and challenge with nobody wants. They've made us like crave it and desire it
• 1:23:19
  and go after it as a day job. That makes me more excited.
• 1:23:24
  But it's that's really a kind of thinking that you know, I mean,
• 1:23:27
  you become unbreakable in that regard. The more challenge you get, the more
• 1:23:30
  excited you are about it. It's like that's the passion can completely outgun the
• 1:23:33
  amount of pressure you have. And really that's what generates the idea is if
• 1:23:36
  you're not passionate, for if you just feel like you're gonna get steamrolled,
• 1:23:40
  nothing's going to come to you at all. But if you're if you're if
• 1:23:43
  you got that rocky kind of mentality to it where it's like there's no way,
• 1:23:45
  you know, you just got to go to the distance and give it
• 1:23:47
  everything you've got. You start coming up with stuff, the passion kind of
• 1:23:50
  drives it, and there that's where you start to get the inspiration, the
• 1:23:53
  impetus to kind of start making something and add out and talk about a challenge
• 1:23:58
  that makes you feel unbreakable with hypnotic. It's like, yeah, this is
• 1:24:00
  a serious thriller. We have a major great actor attached to this, oh
• 1:24:05
  and also an also an Oscar winner, and it was a great director in
• 1:24:10
  his own right. In fact, that's the director, absolutely fantastic director.
• 1:24:14
  Yeah, exactly, exactly. On top of that, it was twenty twenty,
• 1:24:18
  it was twenty twenty and twenty twenty one. We made this during a
• 1:24:21
  little something called the pandemic, the glow Wow. This project fell apart because
• 1:24:34
  of COVID twice, each time shrieking the budget as it went because this film
• 1:24:42
  was pre sold. So all the budget that you have is all the budget
• 1:24:45
  you got. And twice we almost got it started, once in California,
• 1:24:48
  once in Canada, but both times it fell through, And so we finally
• 1:24:53
  found a way to bring it over to a little home called Boston and uh
• 1:24:58
  hold out, we'll believe it or not. Pulled out a lot of our
• 1:25:00
  Red eleven tricks on this One's a good amount of the movie. It's shot
• 1:25:04
  in the exact same office studio as a Red eleven. Good We're like,
• 1:25:09
  how much how can we use more of our own studio for this film,
• 1:25:13
  and just the fact that it's a gather Buerreller and it's got psychological aspects to
• 1:25:16
  it. It's literally, we kept calling it, it's like the spiritual successor
• 1:25:20
  of like Red eleven. Like Red eleven had a Desperado, it was weird,
• 1:25:24
  like Mariannesty had a despert I didn't really strange how that happened. Where
• 1:25:28
  it's so much of the same kind of DNA that made that was kind of
• 1:25:31
  had to put this out of necessity, but it made them so it feel
• 1:25:35
  almost like they're linked spiritually a little bit so, and it was it took
• 1:25:42
  all sides to do it. You know, we're like, okay, well
• 1:25:45
  this is just a normal office but Rebel, with your incredible music that you've
• 1:25:47
  just learned how to compose, we're going to make this feel great and psychological
• 1:25:54
  and epic and moving dramatic, even though he's just walking through our same boring
• 1:25:58
  gray hall that we have in our studio. No pressure at all, boys
• 1:26:02
  and no pressure at all. Yeah, So yeah, it was fun.
• 1:26:06
  It was really fun to you know, move on to something like that.
• 1:26:10
  That's as you said, big big boy, Big Girl movie, and yeah,
• 1:26:14
  dad, tackle it with all the same tool set that we've learned up
• 1:26:16
  to this point and gained new ones along the way. So I have to
• 1:26:20
  ask you guys this question. What is the biggest if you can, if
• 1:26:24
  you can bring it down to one thing, what is the biggest lesson you've
• 1:26:28
  learned from your dad, biggest lesson I've left from my dad, film,
• 1:26:30
  film or life. It's up to you. That's kind of the thing with
• 1:26:34
  him. It's almost like the kung Fu Masters. He don't realize he's teaching.
• 1:26:36
  He's teaching how to throw a punch, but he's also teaching you how
• 1:26:40
  to pay your mortgage, or how to how to have a successful relationship or
• 1:26:45
  anything like that. I always tell him this one is my favorite, and
• 1:26:49
  is He taught me one day. I think I was upset about something when
• 1:26:54
  I was five or six, and he grabbed visuals are good for parents.
• 1:26:57
  He grabbed a couple of water. Fil about halfway and it's the lesson we've
• 1:27:00
  all heard, but you know, it just sticks with you. He still
• 1:27:02
  about halfway and he said, look at this, a couple of water.
• 1:27:05
  You can look at it. You can either see it as half full or
• 1:27:08
  half empty. What is it too right now? And I said, it's
• 1:27:11
  half empty, Like there's my half water there. And he said, you
• 1:27:14
  just use a negative mindset. To me, I see a lot of potential
• 1:27:17
  in a little water that's in there, that's half full. I've got so
• 1:27:19
  much water to work with. I've got half full a couple of water.
• 1:27:23
  That's incredible. And he said that is positive thinking. With that, I
• 1:27:27
  can conquer anything with think with believing I've got so much greatness in this little
• 1:27:30
  half full cup of water. I've got so much I can do. And
• 1:27:34
  he taught me that I didn't tell him to probably like a decade later,
• 1:27:39
  seventeen, that that was the most important thing you ever taught me. And
• 1:27:41
  he went, I remember teaching you that? Really did I say that?
• 1:27:45
  I don't be pretty good? I'm pretty pretty good. I was like,
• 1:27:47
  well, teach me, what did it? What did you get from it?
• 1:27:50
  But that absolutely, you know, it's it's filmmaking, it's life,
• 1:27:57
  it's everything that kind of thinking in pressure and challenges don't turn into opportunity unless
• 1:28:04
  you can look at it in a positive way. So like all everything,
• 1:28:06
  I couldn't have learned anything I've learned native from them or from these projects that
• 1:28:11
  they've blessed us by putting us on and challenging us with unless I have that.
• 1:28:15
  So no, definitely, it's probably one of the most foundational lessons that
• 1:28:19
  everything else builds on. It's like, if you have that, a lot
• 1:28:23
  of things can fall into place. It's yeah, yeah, yeah, pretty
• 1:28:30
  much. That one's yeah, that's the one that's really It's continued to mean
• 1:28:32
  more the more I grew up. It's like, wow, this was that
• 1:28:35
  was really it. And I think the only the other one is the main
• 1:28:41
  one that you know, no matter how prepared you think you are, you're
• 1:28:44
  always going to everything's gonna fall apart. He said. As much as knowing
• 1:28:47
  is half the battle, the other half of the battle is not knowing.
• 1:28:49
  And so it's just this kind of this eternal you're never gonna have with the
• 1:28:54
  whole battle. Basically, it's just always you gotta meet meet at the rest
• 1:28:57
  of the way. But but yeah, definitely between those two, Oh,
• 1:29:01
  that's kind of been what's always driven us because it's really powerful. It allows
• 1:29:04
  you to turn a monumental amount of pressure and problems into a monumental amount of
• 1:29:10
  potential and for creativity, potential and passion is what makes it grow. So
• 1:29:15
  you're just beautiful. When you've got nothing, you at least got your mind
• 1:29:17
  and like a piece of paper and some ideas. So that takes no budget.
• 1:29:23
  But that's what the move the best movies are made out of. It's
• 1:29:26
  all throughout it is sit at fabric. So if I may be able to
• 1:29:30
  quote dumb and dumber, so you're saying there's a chance, ye pretty good,
• 1:29:41
  that's great and so and on the other side of that coin of your
• 1:29:45
  growth is your mother and in the lessons that she taught me. She's a
• 1:29:49
  remarkable producer. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and out
• 1:30:00
  back to the show. And holds the entire the entire place for you know,
• 1:30:06
  when when your parents work together and work together early in their in their
• 1:30:11
  careers, she held the space for him and for him to be insane,
• 1:30:16
  absolutely without question, right so and on spy kids on this one as well,
• 1:30:21
  she held the space so everyone could be insane. What lesson if you
• 1:30:28
  could hold down to one, what is the lesson that your mother has taught
• 1:30:30
  you from, not only in the filmmaking side, but on the life side
• 1:30:33
  as well, Because you know, I, you know, I adore your
• 1:30:36
  mom. She's she's amazing. But as a producer, I even respect her
• 1:30:44
  so much because what she does she doesn't get a lot of limelight for and
• 1:30:49
  and producers, producers, raisers, you will producers who who what who?
• 1:30:57
  About hauncle Ben and Robert it's when you when you know about them is usually
• 1:31:01
  because they were a huge problem. That's when you know about That's when you
• 1:31:04
  recognize them. Think you're like, oh, that produces her own Okay,
• 1:31:08
  a right, definitely where were in the Hollywood Hills? But uh so so
• 1:31:13
  yeah, so that that ability to hold space, to protect your creators,
• 1:31:18
  to hold a set, to build a set. What advice what lesson did
• 1:31:24
  you learn from her on that aspect? And also went life in general,
• 1:31:28
  Yeah, hurts, hurts the same thing filmmaking a life, You kind of
• 1:31:30
  learn one role that applies everything, and with her it was that you adore
• 1:31:36
  her. Everybody who's worked in their loves her. And it's everybody, everybody,
• 1:31:41
  everybody and so many uh so much that on this new Spike Kids we
• 1:31:46
  got to work together again. And so I was producing and she was producing,
• 1:31:50
  and I watched how much she's a mother on set and in production and
• 1:31:55
  in posts and seeing how much as much as we talk about at the myth
• 1:32:00
  of a guy one did it all by himself, no money, none of
• 1:32:03
  this all by himself when you got it, there are so many people in
• 1:32:05
  the background that led to something like that, And it's so important to remember
• 1:32:11
  that all of them are family too. They're just as much stewards of this
• 1:32:14
  creation as you, the lone Maverick are, and they deserve all the love
• 1:32:19
  and all their respect and all the kindness you can give them to where they
• 1:32:23
  feel safe and that they can explore, and that they can be created if
• 1:32:27
  and be insane, so that sane foundation that allows them to grow and flourish.
• 1:32:33
  That's what she taught me. I see so many like I'm studying the
• 1:32:38
  secrets of so many other films and TV shows that I love, and I
• 1:32:41
  do some digging and do some digging and find people saying, oh my gosh,
• 1:32:44
  the production was lovely because like, there was this one person who took
• 1:32:46
  care of all of us, and I go up, they had him Elizabeth
• 1:32:48
  Avian. I read another one up. They hadn't Elizabeth Avian up up.
• 1:32:51
  They hadn't Elizabeth Avian, I believe it, so that would definitely be the
• 1:32:56
  biggest way. Yeah, she always kind of mentions it all pang because she's
• 1:32:59
  you know, raise five kids and all a quick succession while also making movies.
• 1:33:03
  And she always says it took a village to raise to raise the kids.
• 1:33:06
  I mean, it takes a whole team. But you hear her always
• 1:33:10
  say that it takes a village. I always catch her saying it on set
• 1:33:13
  too, and it's like, it's true. It takes a village to make
• 1:33:15
  a movie too, and it takes everyone being there. It's a whole team,
• 1:33:18
  and it's all of us working together well and having a space where we
• 1:33:21
  can all be creative and bring our best to it. That really is what
• 1:33:25
  makes it. You know, that's kind of what she does. She sets
• 1:33:28
  the space from the magic to happen. And yeah, that's the insanity,
• 1:33:32
  the insanity, exactly exactly, the insanity. Oh don't don't get it twisted.
• 1:33:38
  Your mom's crazy too, there they all they all got different flavors,
• 1:33:45
  but there's there's an insanity to all of this. Love absolutely absolutely no guys,
• 1:33:54
  I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you a few questions. Ask all of my
• 1:33:57
  guests please, what advice would you get a filmmaker or screenwriter starting in the
• 1:34:02
  business today, trying to break into the business today. Oh, let's see
• 1:34:06
  filmmaker screener, I tried to breaking into the business today. Don't say make
• 1:34:14
  each I'll hit you. Someone asked that to Quittin at like Comic Con or
• 1:34:23
  something like you know what. He said, make reservoir dots. That's the
• 1:34:25
  only way I know how to do it. And I'm like, sign up,
• 1:34:28
  up man. I'm not only that easy man. It's like, just
• 1:34:32
  ride reservoir dogs, then fiction. I mean that's absolutely that. It just
• 1:34:43
  build full supers. For me, it would definitely be you go, there's
• 1:34:47
  the US. If you haven't if you want to make films, you haven't
• 1:34:54
  made a feature yet, absolutely make a feature. And absolutely make a feature,
• 1:34:59
  and most importantly put restrictions on it. Put time restrictions, put deadlines,
• 1:35:03
  put physical restrictions of what you can use what you've got. I'm not
• 1:35:06
  telling you to go make a Mariachi. I promise, don't hit me,
• 1:35:10
  Alex. As well as we talk about the importance of creativity and flourishing that
• 1:35:16
  and harnessing that, the dual side of that is you gotta have your pants
• 1:35:23
  on fire. A little bit. You gotta have, you gotta channel insanity,
• 1:35:25
  you gotta be a little bit crazy so that it gets done. Because
• 1:35:29
  I I say, you're not a filmmaker until someone is sitting somewhere. Can
• 1:35:34
  be a couch at your house, can be in the theater if you're luck,
• 1:35:39
  you're a screening room with some kind if you make it that far.
• 1:35:41
  But you're not a filmmaker until the end credits are rolling and people around you
• 1:35:45
  have watched a full film you've made. In that moment, you're a filmmaker.
• 1:35:50
  That's and it doesn't matter if it's good or bad, whether they're running
• 1:35:54
  out of the theaters you go grab pitchforks and come chase after you, or
• 1:35:58
  if they're laughing laughing there it's a heart of the laft Ever, doesn't matter.
• 1:36:02
  What matters is that you do that whole red once you It's like doing
• 1:36:08
  half a push up and expecting that you've done one. It's nope, you
• 1:36:11
  can't filmmaking. It takes a long time to do a single push up,
• 1:36:13
  and you gotta get all the way to that in that moment for it to
• 1:36:15
  fully count. Oh that's what I would suggest, beautifully, said Sir I
• 1:36:19
  will not be hitting it. Rebel. Now it's your turn. You're still
• 1:36:23
  on the block. Go ahead. Adding to that. Yeah, so that's
• 1:36:28
  the first thing we've learned. I've never learned more in my life than I
• 1:36:30
  have when there was a deadline. When you've got the pressure, that's when
• 1:36:33
  I don't know, I think it turns into kind of fight or flight.
• 1:36:36
  That's when you feel like, okay, we gotta move. Is something has
• 1:36:40
  to be done by now. Even if you made up the deadline, it's
• 1:36:43
  something has to be done now. But my own one is I think the
• 1:36:46
  most important thing too, is if you're you know, you want to get
• 1:36:49
  into the business, you have these ideas, you know, because again,
• 1:36:53
  like you said, we're all geniuses. We have this incredible thing in our
• 1:36:56
  head. Just start make something it does, I don't care what it is.
• 1:37:00
  Start, don't go and wait till you've got you know, terminator,
• 1:37:03
  until you've got Avatar. You've written the whole thing and you can create this
• 1:37:06
  monstrosity. Make something. It doesn't have to be very big, but make
• 1:37:11
  at least start doing it and do a whole rep, even if it's a
• 1:37:15
  little one. Do one show people. Now you've officially made a movie.
• 1:37:17
  So it's most people never even start. They're like, I want to do
• 1:37:21
  it, but I need blank, I have this, I haven't done this,
• 1:37:25
  I don't have that, And you know it's you don't need anything.
• 1:37:27
  Just start and you will pick up the pieces that you need along the way
• 1:37:31
  and at least then you've started doing it, which most people don't even get
• 1:37:35
  there. So just by showing up the first day, you've started the process.
• 1:37:41
  Now you'll get momentum. If you're standing around waiting for inspiration or momentum,
• 1:37:44
  it's not going to happen. So you gotta feel I feel like there's
• 1:37:48
  like a spirit of Robert in the room and he's like channeled through YouTube at
• 1:37:56
  the moment because it's it sounds so it sounds so beautiful in both you guys
• 1:38:00
  said it's absolutely right. And where were you guys like fifteen years ago?
• 1:38:03
  For me, because I wish I would have heard this fifteen years ago.
• 1:38:06
  All I did was throw obstacles in front of myself. And that's what a
• 1:38:10
  lot of filmmakers do. They're like, Oh, I can't do it until
• 1:38:12
  I have this camera, I can't do it until this person is there.
• 1:38:15
  I can't do it until I have this location, and it's excuses because they're
• 1:38:17
  either scared or have some trauma like I did, which is a whole other
• 1:38:21
  story, or other stuff like that that stops you from going forward until you
• 1:38:27
  finally get to the place where you're like, screw it, I'm gonna go
• 1:38:30
  to Sundays and make a movie. Right. For surely you had the time
• 1:38:35
  of your life doing it, and as oh my god, I'm sure it
• 1:38:38
  came out. I'm sure you could feel the vibrancy and it as a result
• 1:38:41
  if it, you know, with what you came out with, it's just
• 1:38:43
  gonna it's got this energy to it because you were excited, you drove it.
• 1:38:46
  It was just the fact they said, screw it, we're gonna make
• 1:38:47
  a movie. There you go. You started. You're doing something now,
• 1:38:50
  even if it's with your phone, you're going around and doing something at least,
• 1:38:54
  And that's the big difference. It's very powerful. It's really a powerful
• 1:38:58
  idea to just get go and get started. But I think the one thing
• 1:39:01
  that's missing from this this little bit is the attachment to what happens to it,
• 1:39:08
  the attachment to oh, I have to make this. That was the
• 1:39:11
  biggest thing, Like and El Mariachi is the best and the worst thing that
• 1:39:15
  ever happened to a whole generation of filmmakers, as as was clerks, as
• 1:39:18
  was slackers, all those of the at that generation is like, oh,
• 1:39:21
  when I make my first film, it has to be Reserve our dogs,
• 1:39:26
  it has to be Mariachi, it's got to be Clerks. And that pressure,
• 1:39:30
  you're just destroying yourself before you even get off the You can't walk with
• 1:39:33
  that kind of weight on you, you know exactly, And you learned early
• 1:39:38
  on that you don't have to do that because you know, I mean,
• 1:39:42
  I imagine that as filmmakers, the pressure that was on you guys. And
• 1:39:45
  when we talk a little bit about his spy kids too, but you've got
• 1:39:47
  two very large shadows. But you're like, screw it, I'm doing me
• 1:39:51
  and I'm gonna do what i'm gonna do. They did what they did.
• 1:39:54
  I'm gonna do what i'm gonna do. We'll be right back after a word
• 1:39:59
  from our spon, sir, and now back to the show. And it
• 1:40:06
  took me to just say I'm forty damn it, I kind of I mean,
• 1:40:12
  when I'm gonna wake up to more, I'm gonna be sixty. I'm
• 1:40:14
  gonna still do it this BS. I gotta make something and I've been directing
• 1:40:16
  for twenty years, but I hadn't make the feature yet, and that was
• 1:40:20
  and that was the thing. So then once I made and once you make
• 1:40:23
  the one, it's good, bad and different than matter. You're okay.
• 1:40:27
  I proved to myself I can make one great and now I can move forward.
• 1:40:30
  It doesn't have to be rest Report Dogs. There's no one's gonna make
• 1:40:33
  restre for dogs are rest Coort dialogues, Brothers, mcbolan and the boys in
• 1:40:42
  the book. No one's gonna make those movies again ever. Ever, So
• 1:40:46
  once you get that out of your head, that you freeze you to be
• 1:40:49
  the creative the creative forces that you too are now, thank you. Yeah,
• 1:40:58
  that is the missing key the triumvirate right there. I absolutely agree.
• 1:41:01
  You just go, oh, go for it. So if there was,
• 1:41:08
  if if there was a worst day you've ever been on a production, what
• 1:41:14
  was that day and how did you overcome it? Oh, that's a good
• 1:41:16
  one. Let's see. It gave the raining raining on our climax story.
• 1:41:21
  Gosh, it's another I know there's one of those vikings. Yeah, I
• 1:41:36
  assume rebel when you're when you're composing, I mean a hard, drave amount
• 1:41:40
  of crashed here and there, or or you could just or you get blocked
• 1:41:44
  from It's it's almost always mental. It's almost always mental. It's and it
• 1:41:48
  almost happens on every single one of them. I'm gonna say, and oh,
• 1:41:51
  that's another thing I'll point out on a second, but yeah, it's
• 1:41:55
  It was Heroes. This was the first time it really hit. It was
• 1:41:58
  weeknd be Heroes. I wrote that entire your score because it was like a
• 1:42:01
  blessing and a curse. I wrote the huge battle sequence where the parents fight
• 1:42:04
  the aliens and all I wrote that. That was one of the first things
• 1:42:06
  I wrote for that. That was like, after we almost a year of
• 1:42:10
  learning orchestra music. I've never written for an orchestra, so I'm spending a
• 1:42:13
  year writing pretty much garbage. I hit that and I was like, that's
• 1:42:15
  great, And Robert was like, well, good news is that's really great
• 1:42:19
  music. That's incredible. You know, I could never write at that level.
• 1:42:23
  The bad news is I can't help you in this anymore. You've got
• 1:42:26
  to do the whole movie yourself. So I'm like, I'm not gonna help
• 1:42:30
  you because you it's just not gonna sound. You have surpassed the master.
• 1:42:34
  I can't help it anymore. He's like, it's not gonna sound the same
• 1:42:38
  exactly, you know, it's just sweat that get in there, all right?
• 1:42:42
  Not so exactly. Yeah, And it was four months of music.
• 1:42:48
  I compost for four months on that one, and it's ninety it's like eighty
• 1:42:53
  five ninety minutes of music, a lot of music an hour and from music.
• 1:42:58
  Yeah, And I was halfway through. It was like two and a
• 1:43:01
  half months. I think it was actually more than halfway. Two and a
• 1:43:03
  half months in, and I had written one third of it, going as
• 1:43:08
  fast as I could go. And that's what it dawns on you. I
• 1:43:12
  don't think it make it, dude, And it's all mental. You just
• 1:43:15
  up all night just sitting there going dude, it's done for it. I'm
• 1:43:18
  gonna sink this whole movie. Oh you're start going down the rabbit hole.
• 1:43:24
  Drake Guy's circling the dry Yeah, the old movie has been made. Everyone's
• 1:43:28
  done their things. High fives. You saw everyone was so excited. What
• 1:43:30
  set was over did? It's amazing. Edit, it's all coming together.
• 1:43:33
  You're the last guy there. I mean, you're just like they're all like,
• 1:43:36
  all right, make the last leap. You know you're right there,
• 1:43:40
  and it's like, I don't think I'm gonna make it, and I don't
• 1:43:43
  know if something clicks there where you go into overdrive. It's one of these
• 1:43:46
  scariest kinds of things because the way I say it is, the more ideas
• 1:43:51
  you create, the more impetus you're going to get on the project because you're
• 1:43:54
  kind of figuring it out, like the puzzle piece of what's the style of
• 1:43:57
  it, what's this? What's that? Just keep making, don't stop.
• 1:44:00
  It doesn't matter if it's good bad, don't judge it. Just keep making
• 1:44:02
  stuff because you're gonna have more to work with. And so you start a
• 1:44:06
  movie at least a score and it's halfway through and you haven't made half.
• 1:44:11
  You've made like a third, maybe maybe less, but it almost like multiplies
• 1:44:16
  until by the end you're writing like ten times faster than you were at the
• 1:44:19
  beginning because you've just figured out more of the movie. So it always feels
• 1:44:23
  like you're down to the wire pretty much. That was the first time I
• 1:44:26
  ever experienced it, And there's always that moment where it dawn's on it.
• 1:44:28
  It's like Rocky where he's like, I can't do this. You know,
• 1:44:30
  I'm just gonna go to the distance. It's and it's one of if it
• 1:44:33
  could either break you or it can make you. Definitely, it's one of
• 1:44:36
  those moments where you either quit and say I can't do it. Man,
• 1:44:39
  You're gonna have to hire someone else, or you just drive through and you
• 1:44:42
  know it's barely make it by the skin of your teeth. It's like you
• 1:44:45
  you know, it's fascinating. It's like I've done I don't know, a
• 1:44:47
  thousand episodes at this point. I've had composers on before. I've never had
• 1:44:50
  a composer at your level that's able to do these large movies. Have the
• 1:44:56
  opportunity to these large movies, and this really race pressure because you're the last
• 1:45:00
  leg of the race and if you if you fumbled the damn baton, it's
• 1:45:10
  all over. No matter how fast the other guys were, you're done.
• 1:45:14
  That pressure is something I've never really thought about for a composer because a lot
• 1:45:17
  of the composers I've talked to it, like, you know, Oscar winners
• 1:45:19
  are big guys who've done that just a thousand times. But you're just like,
• 1:45:23
  I've never talked to him about like the beginning aspects of their careers.
• 1:45:26
  Just like I was on a seventy million dollar movie and I and I no
• 1:45:33
  one around me to help, Like I'm alone. My happens with it.
• 1:45:39
  That's it. I didn't here, I'm here today. I survived somehow.
• 1:45:45
  It's a blur, but yeah, it happens, and it's gonna happen every
• 1:45:49
  single movie. That's all I've found. I come back. You think,
• 1:45:53
  oh, you're on top of the world. That's it. No, it's
• 1:45:55
  like Rocky he comes back. He can't do it again. You gotta start
• 1:45:58
  from from scratch again. You're like, don't think I can do this one
• 1:46:00
  because this, this and that, oh this, this one's not it gets
• 1:46:02
  got up and it's gotten. You know, ben affleck on it. Shit,
• 1:46:05
  we don't have an orchestra. They carried it away. I mean,
• 1:46:08
  they do amazing work. You write this stuff, you give it to them.
• 1:46:10
  They make it sound incredible. It's all me. What comes out of
• 1:46:13
  my computer is what's gonna be on the movie. And it's like, I
• 1:46:16
  don't know if I can do this again. And it's like you just you
• 1:46:19
  get in your head and it's over. So it's yeah, every sad time
• 1:46:23
  I've hit it. It's just that's beautiful because it's like, like, you
• 1:46:26
  know, am I gonna have to go down to the bunt to the Dungeon
• 1:46:29
  of Apollo and train again? Like? Am I a man? Like It's
• 1:46:32
  like because I just can't. Obviously, mister T is too much for me.
• 1:46:38
  I think I'm gonna I don't think I'm gonna make it. I think
• 1:46:40
  I've been broken and now I have to come back. So it's it's it's
• 1:46:43
  so your mister T was like ben affleck Man, this is a big ass
• 1:46:45
  movie, and I yea, what the hell, I'm yeah doing that like
• 1:46:47
  Glass of Water better befof full Man, because the only thing you got.
• 1:46:51
  Oh my gosh, Yeah that's remarkable. Well that's that's great, man,
• 1:46:55
  Thank you for that story. That's I just never really thought about that aspect
• 1:46:59
  of compos I've been in post most of my life, so I've always been
• 1:47:01
  at the end and I always figure it out, and I always you know,
• 1:47:04
  posting and I've been post supervisor, vffcs all that kind of stuff,
• 1:47:08
  So I always just figure it out along the way, but mine is technical
• 1:47:13
  on that sense. Maybe the creative with editing and stuff, but I'm not
• 1:47:15
  I'm not alone a lot of time to have it their producer. You're out
• 1:47:19
  there in an island by yourself and there's just a phone call. I'm that
• 1:47:26
  musica. Yeah, basically, Yeah, that's amazing. That's amazing. It's
• 1:47:31
  pretty incredible. So Racer, how about you, my friend, I'll just
• 1:47:36
  tack onto what he said because it's excellent, or just it's really been Fortunately,
• 1:47:41
  we haven't had really anything bad. You know. We've had things exploded,
• 1:47:45
  sure, sick, we had everything that could be considered bad, but
• 1:47:48
  it's like it's never been really that bad because you just do what Revel said.
• 1:47:51
  There movie set standards. Shit happens all the time, and fair enough,
• 1:47:56
  whether it's oh god, the wind is kicking up so high on Earth,
• 1:48:00
  a finale that none of the actors can see because Sam is blowing in
• 1:48:02
  their eyes. So we got to close out the finale as quick as we
• 1:48:04
  can. Let's make it emotional somehow, because we're at a dry river basin
• 1:48:10
  and COVID we can't go anywhere else, or it's like, oh gosh,
• 1:48:13
  it's one hundred and five degrees outside, and our little actor's star is just
• 1:48:17
  not having this seat. He is having a horrible time and he's got to
• 1:48:21
  deliver some lines right now unless we can cut him cleverly. Right now,
• 1:48:25
  watch this, I'll do a little drawing. I'll show we can fix this.
• 1:48:28
  So, as Revel said, you start getting your head. The most
• 1:48:31
  important thing you can do is get out of your head quickly. Start making
• 1:48:34
  it tangible. Start making tangible solutions, no matter what it is, whether
• 1:48:39
  it's the boat sinking, the vehicle's gone. Actor can't make it, you
• 1:48:45
  have to rewrite the entire scene. Just start drawing, start writing, Start
• 1:48:48
  talking to everybody that's there to help you and figure it out. Get out
• 1:48:51
  of your head quickly. Beautiful, beautiful advice. Guys. Now, if
• 1:48:57
  you had a chance to go back in time and talk to little Rebel and
• 1:49:00
  little Racer, what advice would you give them? That's funny. I've actually
• 1:49:10
  have a time, is she dude? Seriously, There's a lot I can
• 1:49:15
  fix. There's a lot of stuff I need to work on. Yeah,
• 1:49:17
  yeah, yeah, I actually yeah on Spy Kids. I had this one.
• 1:49:25
  Actually we were in London and recording for the We're there for the orchestra
• 1:49:29
  to grow recorded live because the whole things I've recorded, and it was up
• 1:49:32
  there that I wrote it down, and I was telling to Race, we're
• 1:49:34
  always just talk ideas about this kind of stuff, and it's just I told
• 1:49:38
  them, I think I finally have something. I would have like gone back
• 1:49:41
  a few years and wish I told myself, like really really like, man,
• 1:49:45
  I wish I do this five years ago. Man. But it's uh,
• 1:49:49
  it's an interesting kind of trap. You you fall into because you're doing
• 1:49:53
  what you love. It's not what you really expect is We'll be right back
• 1:49:58
  after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. I
• 1:50:06
  loved making music. I mean it was like everything to me. I was
• 1:50:11
  just out of school. Now you've got all the time, you know,
• 1:50:13
  all the time you could possibly think of. You've got a part time job
• 1:50:15
  or whatever. You've got so much time as opposed to when I was in
• 1:50:16
  school, and it's like you're squeezing out what every little bit you got that
• 1:50:19
  is in school time. And I think the worst thing you can do is
• 1:50:25
  be so passionate about it that you put all of your time into it and
• 1:50:30
  are willing to put in an unbelievable amount of hours into it constantly and do
• 1:50:33
  every little, last little touch and try to make the most perfect thing you
• 1:50:36
  can make, because it's not at all how reality works. Honestly. It's
• 1:50:44
  it's almost like you need and it's like it was always weird. I make
• 1:50:45
  things that I would just get so into the details and almost lost in the
• 1:50:48
  details to where you're not really doing the broad strokes well and all that kind
• 1:50:51
  of stuff because I had so much time. It's like, oh, well,
• 1:50:54
  I can sit here and do this all day and you know, mess
• 1:50:56
  with every little note I write and all that kind of stuff. It's it's
• 1:51:00
  actually counterintuitive. It teaches you all the wrong ways to do things in a
• 1:51:03
  weird way. I'd watch my dad work and Robert just has kind of this
• 1:51:08
  thing of like, well, I've only got this many hours, let's just
• 1:51:10
  hit it and let's do it. And he just dives right in and he
• 1:51:12
  I mean, he's making broad strokes pretty much. But you see how he's
• 1:51:15
  not afraid to make mistakes. He's not afraid to make something that it doesn't
• 1:51:18
  seem like it's perfect to him. And it's almost like when he's mostly focusing
• 1:51:24
  on those broader strokes. He gets a big he gets a better result from
• 1:51:28
  it. It's almost like a bold I called it a line confidence. When
• 1:51:30
  you're an artist and you draw, if you're just trying to make every like
• 1:51:34
  line really perfect, they actually end up kind of scribbly. If you've seen
• 1:51:38
  a great artist, they're just like, like nothing. I mean, it's
• 1:51:41
  just like they're just throwing him out there. And you watch Robert, he
• 1:51:45
  does the same thing. I went up and got to work with We got
• 1:51:46
  to work with John Dubney on this again. Who did the music first Spike
• 1:51:49
  Its two. He did Yelp, Spikets one, all that kind of stuff.
• 1:51:51
  I mean, he kind of helped birth the spike Its sound. But
• 1:51:54
  I watched him compose. I like never gotten to see like a professional composer
• 1:51:58
  actually in the midst of writing, and he's just like all this stuff I
• 1:52:01
  had like put all this time and attention to detail to it. Oh I
• 1:52:04
  do this because I've all this time. He's just like glancing over it,
• 1:52:08
  like and what he's focusing on is so different than what I was focusing on
• 1:52:12
  because he doesn't have time. He doesn't put a lot of time into It's
• 1:52:15
  like, well, in one hour, I gotta get the scene done.
• 1:52:16
  Switch schwash you know does all that and versus me, I've got eight I
• 1:52:21
  could put all the time in the world. I wanted this, and you
• 1:52:23
  focus on all the wrong things. It teaches you to not look at the
• 1:52:26
  right things. If you give yourself a little time. This kind of goes
• 1:52:29
  into the deadline thing. You actually focus on what's the most important thing that
• 1:52:33
  will make the most impact, and that's where you start to make some real
• 1:52:36
  progress. So it was once I've started to do that. I really started
• 1:52:41
  after I watched him right like that. I was like, oh, that's
• 1:52:44
  how you write. All My music was I mean literally like leaps and bounds
• 1:52:47
  improved. So, I mean the old guys have a couple of tricks.
• 1:52:50
  I'm gonna say, old man strain exactly like exactly. And it's weird.
• 1:52:59
  It's like, so her do itive because you're like, I'm so passionate about
• 1:53:01
  this, How could I just now be so apathetic towards it? And it's
• 1:53:04
  like it's not apathy so much as it's like you have to learn how to
• 1:53:08
  slide of flow. You gotta have that confidence in your strokes and just you
• 1:53:11
  know, move with it and it's almost more important to put more ideas out
• 1:53:15
  there rather barely squeeze out one because you finally thought it was perfect. You
• 1:53:17
  know, get out of your head, throw down too many. It's way
• 1:53:21
  better to app too much stuff. I mean, he would just overdo it
• 1:53:25
  it, put in too much and go that was too much, and he
• 1:53:27
  back it off. At least now you found out where a ledge was.
• 1:53:29
  If you kept tiptoeing forward blindfolded, you never know what a legends and take
• 1:53:32
  it for whatever to get there exactly. So it's that was really really important.
• 1:53:38
  I'm sorry. Another good answers racer. The first stuff. I would
• 1:53:43
  take the entire recording of this podcast and just play it to a seventeen year
• 1:53:45
  old racer. You're gonna listen to this. You're gonna memorize every single word
• 1:53:49
  that is said here by all three of these people talking right now. Start
• 1:53:56
  with that. That's book one, Book two. You're going you're out of
• 1:54:00
  high school now, a little eighteen year old laser. Okay, you're gonna
• 1:54:03
  take a whole year off, You're gonna take gap year. What you're gonna
• 1:54:06
  do so, you're gonna make a feature. You have one year to do
• 1:54:09
  it. I don't care how you do it, but it's got to be
• 1:54:11
  done in one year, and I dare you to make it good. It
• 1:54:14
  can't be. You can't make it. You can't be good and go over
• 1:54:17
  time. You have to try to strive for some level of greatness and you
• 1:54:24
  have to. But you have to finish it. It has to be done
• 1:54:26
  by the end of this and put some of your time into it, as
• 1:54:30
  Rebel said, don't put all sixteen hours of your day into it. Give
• 1:54:33
  yourself a work day, eight hours, six hours, whatever you can manage.
• 1:54:39
  Then go take time to family, for friends, all of that stuff,
• 1:54:41
  because that's important too. You gotta take care of all the other sides
• 1:54:43
  of your life because now you're dealing with adult things too, and make that
• 1:54:48
  happen. That'll teach you more than anything by it. And of course the
• 1:54:51
  most important thing, make it with what you got because with one year,
• 1:54:56
  no money, you don't have time for you don't have it. There's nothing
• 1:54:59
  you can get that, So do it with what you've got. And now
• 1:55:03
  that's what I would say. And finally, the last question, and arguably
• 1:55:06
  the most difficult one I've asked this entire conversation. Each of you three of
• 1:55:11
  your favorite films of all time. Oh, actually, listen. I always
• 1:55:15
  keep my list ready. By the way, everyone who's just listening to this
• 1:55:18
  rel just grabbed this film. Was like, okay, let me just put
• 1:55:21
  them off my list. Actually just had this. I keep my top five
• 1:55:30
  on hand, so I've got Excalibur nineteen eighty one John Boorman. That's my
• 1:55:35
  top of the top favorite. Absolutely has everything I love. When you see
• 1:55:39
  the new Spike Kids, you might see some influence fair enough, but absolutely
• 1:55:45
  love it. Number two of the Incredibles, uh picks classic Pixar talk about
• 1:55:49
  VHS as you would watch on an infinite repeat. That was the first time
• 1:55:54
  where I watched the movie all the way to the end, went through the
• 1:55:56
  end credits because they're incredible with the music and everything. Michael Giacchino just killing
• 1:55:59
  it, and I watched it all and I just hit reset and I went,
• 1:56:02
  I think this is one of my favorite movies. This is the only
• 1:56:04
  one I've ever done this on. And then number three is an old boy.
• 1:56:10
  Absolutely love love the style from the early two thousands. It's got a
• 1:56:14
  style that all my favorite like video games and like TV shows had at the
• 1:56:17
  time. That's like this y two K dark futurism. Absolutely love it.
• 1:56:21
  So those are my top three great top three, And I have to I
• 1:56:25
  just tell you a geek story real quick. I was sun Dance at the
• 1:56:30
  midnight screening of Old Boy in the US premiere of He while the director was
• 1:56:35
  there. He and I met him and he was like half asleep because a
• 1:56:42
  poor guy just flown over from Dad. And I remember seeing Old Boy at
• 1:56:46
  Sundas at the at the main theater there the young Egyptian and I'm like,
• 1:56:53
  what did they just watch? Like? It was like what insanity it is?
• 1:56:58
  This I was? It was. It was one of those moments I'll
• 1:57:00
  never forget. I believe it night screening Adam, midnight screening at Sundance with
• 1:57:06
  the director just flying in from Japan like he he hadn't gotten there yet when
• 1:57:12
  the movie started. He was there at the end for Q and A and
• 1:57:14
  then I met him outside outside everyone was gone already. I'm like, so
• 1:57:16
  how are you he's and this interpreter was there and it was like that's so
• 1:57:20
  cool, that's amazing, Oh my god, that's amazing. That awful geek
• 1:57:28
  story out. I don't know stories along the way, but oh man,
• 1:57:31
  one of the more I get a lot of cool stories, that's for sure.
• 1:57:39
  Rebel, how about you, how's your top top? All? This
• 1:57:42
  three are also my favorites, but I pulled out to my strather ones as
• 1:57:44
  well. We love those, but definitely one of my top favorite favorite animated
• 1:57:48
  at the moment right now, across the Spider Verse. That was I absolutely
• 1:57:53
  love that. That was incredible. I mean, it's just it's changing the
• 1:57:56
  game of animated. We love Incredibles, but it's really cool to see something
• 1:57:59
  now that's like, shoot, that's like another incredible So some dude, you're
• 1:58:02
  like, and it's it's a whole other level. It's it's when I when
• 1:58:04
  I watched that, I was like, I mean, it is going on
• 1:58:06
  a lot. It's really impressively. I'm a Davis. That's a classic.
• 1:58:11
  I love that one a lot and now love it more because I make music.
• 1:58:15
  The more I learned, the more I appreciate it. Oh it's so
• 1:58:18
  yeah, yeah, oh my god, Like the more you learn about music,
• 1:58:24
  the more you're just like, it's crazy. They captured like the genius
• 1:58:27
  of it so well, and it's oh, it's such It's that one's just
• 1:58:30
  fantastic and then tied either Jaws. That's another classic. I always love that
• 1:58:36
  on musical. That one's great. I've always been a big fan of that.
• 1:58:40
  I've been playing it on piano since I was like, you know,
• 1:58:42
  however young I was. Our dad introduced us to the Jaws the movie.
• 1:58:45
  Didn't know what the movie was, so I was just there, done,
• 1:58:45
  done, but bun But it's just like the music in the car, and
• 1:58:49
  he was like, you'll see it someday, and it's like that was it.
• 1:58:53
  That's all I knew. But and what's up? Doc? I love
• 1:58:56
  love that comedy? Nice, that's great, great, Tomedy great, so
• 1:59:01
  so great. So I noticed your dad didn't make the list. That's fine,
• 1:59:04
  that's fine. I'm sure his eagle will be fine with that. I
• 1:59:12
  would have been like sin City, all right, guy, seriously, dude,
• 1:59:16
  seriously, I drank the cooling. So I'm glad it's godn't have put
• 1:59:20
  any of your father's films up. He's got a special list. It's like
• 1:59:25
  it almost doesn't count because like, let me tell, let me ask you
• 1:59:28
  this, what is your favorite dad film? You got first revel just to
• 1:59:31
  make sure I don't pick the same one. No, you go for it.
• 1:59:33
  Because I know we're gonna pick the same one. I'll pick it,
• 1:59:35
  okay. Top three, Top top three Robert films in your world. Number
• 1:59:41
  one road Racers his second film. Yes, of course, I think so
• 1:59:45
  great, incredible. I love the revel spirit of it, so so good.
• 1:59:49
  Then for me, next it's uh, Desperado. I just love what
• 1:59:54
  he did with Ed Mariachi and just like complete spiritual successor of that, just
• 1:59:58
  Blue even more heads in the first one. We'll be right back after a
• 2:00:02
  word from our sponsor and now back to the show. Incredible. And then
• 2:00:12
  Spike Kids too, honorable mention. My favorite, absolute favorite of the Spike
• 2:00:15
  Kids because I love the fantasy and the creatures and the fun and they have
• 2:00:18
  the best outfits in that movie. How about you? Road Racers very big
• 2:00:25
  favorite of ours. Sin City though, is another one, definitely. I
• 2:00:28
  loved watching that one. He always puts off showing us his movies. We
• 2:00:31
  just wait till he wants to show it to us. That one we watched
• 2:00:35
  like at midnight. Practically we finished it was like two am, and he
• 2:00:39
  was like, Hey, let's make the breakfast tacos from the five Minute Cookies.
• 2:00:42
  Cooltim, We mete those eight him in like three am. Well,
• 2:00:45
  just so we get time ask some questions like yeah, but that was that's
• 2:00:48
  super memorable for me. And then definitely I might gotcha as well. And
• 2:00:54
  Desperado. Those are just if I if I may throw, if I may
• 2:00:57
  throw mine into the grain, go for it. I love. Yeah.
• 2:01:00
  I think Desperado was because I was in film school and Desperado came out.
• 2:01:04
  I saw it in the theater. I saw it in the theater, and
• 2:01:08
  I saw I had that poster in my my my room, right and your
• 2:01:11
  yeah yeah with with with uncle Antonio. Uh and and that gun that was
• 2:01:16
  just amazing, that double barrel shot gun. I'm gonna say Desperado because that
• 2:01:23
  was the one that really that wouldn't really hit me, say city without questions.
• 2:01:29
  You look at this city, You're just like, I don't, I
• 2:01:31
  don't, no, man, crazy so great, and believe it or not,
• 2:01:36
  one of the other films that I really loved of his is Once Upon
• 2:01:40
  a Time in Mexico, because Once Upon a Time in Mexico for me,
• 2:01:45
  was the film that got me off my ass to make the first big short
• 2:01:49
  film that went on and did it didn't say things for me and I had
• 2:01:54
  a rap Fiebert review it and it was a whole that's great. But it
• 2:01:58
  all started with Once upon a Time in Mexico and I saw the Wacamole Gun.
• 2:02:02
  I saw the Wacamole Gun and I saw that and I was like,
• 2:02:05
  I think I could do this now. Like it was like there was so
• 2:02:09
  much, like for sure obstacles that you've put in your head. But that
• 2:02:11
  was the movie that just kind of pushed me over. So it has a
• 2:02:14
  special place in my heart for that was the movie that kind of launched my
• 2:02:16
  filmmaking side, not the commercial or music video side that I've been doing,
• 2:02:20
  but more the filmmaking filmmaking side. Was that. That was the film that
• 2:02:25
  kind of did it for me. So those those are my times. Wow,
• 2:02:28
  that's awesome, and that's great. I love those fix there's just so
• 2:02:30
  much a chase from it's just all great. Oh no again now their own
• 2:02:33
  that's their own category. You can't even Yeah, I don't know exactly,
• 2:02:38
  boys, I I truly appreciate this conversation. Man, it has been such
• 2:02:42
  a pleasure and honor talking to both of you. Your your energy is infectious.
• 2:02:45
  I want to go make a feature now. I don't know why.
• 2:02:48
  But I'm gonna go shoot something. I don't know when, but I'm gonna
• 2:02:51
  figure it out. I figure it, Just figure it out. Just go.
• 2:02:56
  No, your your energy is infectious. Uh. And in this has
• 2:03:00
  just been such a pleasure of a conversation. And I do believe I agree
• 2:03:02
  with your research. I think that filmmakers will get a whole lot out of
• 2:03:05
  this conversation. There's a lot of gems in this, and I hope it
• 2:03:09
  helps people around the world kind of maybe demystify a little bit of the myth
• 2:03:14
  and really get into the weeds of how you actually make these films and actually
• 2:03:18
  do this kind of process, the Mariachi process, if you will, without
• 2:03:23
  the myth, it's much overpanning. If you guys kind of cut through the
• 2:03:27
  myth really quickly, I'm like, nah, we don't know, and there's
• 2:03:30
  not on it. And so it's been an absolute pleasure. So thank you
• 2:03:33
  guys so much. Oh, by the way, where can people watch Spy
• 2:03:35
  Kids? Spikes will be on Netflix? Can we at the end of September?
• 2:03:40
  Very soon, very very soon. Yeah, very excited. Please if
• 2:03:43
  you're if you're a fan, if you've grown up, if you have kids,
• 2:03:47
  please plea. So it would love for you to see it. And
• 2:03:50
  even if you've never heard of Spike Kids, go check them all out there,
• 2:03:54
  all of the excellent classic classic films. And do you have do you
• 2:03:58
  guys have any parting messages for any young racer or young rebel out there who's
• 2:04:04
  thinking about getting into this insanity carnival circus, ridiculous business that we're all in.
• 2:04:11
  Any parting messages for them? Absolutely? I please jump in. Whether
• 2:04:18
  you want to do animated light action or shows or whatnot, please jump in.
• 2:04:23
  Because stories and films, stories or how one of the methods that humans
• 2:04:29
  get truth in the world. And I want to see the truths that you
• 2:04:31
  can put into the world and teach all of us about. And you're never
• 2:04:34
  gonna make Mariachi whereas our dogs or clerks or any of those. But I
• 2:04:40
  don't want to see that from you. I want to see your film.
• 2:04:43
  I want to see what you can make rebel. Now that's great, Yeah,
• 2:04:50
  definitely, Yeah, Shoot, think about the word well, why you're
• 2:04:59
  thinking about about that? I do have to say something. This is kind
• 2:05:01
  of the elephant in the room. You guys both have the greatest names ever.
• 2:05:06
  I know. I it was no, it wasn't your mom. I
• 2:05:10
  know it wasn't your mom. Your mom just allowed it. But because I'll
• 2:05:16
  be honest with you, I try. I already started. I started a
• 2:05:19
  propaganda campaign with my wife when I was gonna have kids, I'm like,
• 2:05:24
  if I have a boy, he has to be Maximus Ferrari. Max Ferrari
• 2:05:29
  has to be But yeah, I had but luckily I had girls. So
• 2:05:41
  but fight Maximum the world was spirit of a Max Ferrari, another generation Max
• 2:05:47
  Ferrari. I'm crazy. Let's sue you can't you can't pass it up or
• 2:05:55
  not a little little mom's insanity. Uh. Racer Max was chosen because my
• 2:06:00
  mom had a crush on Racer X when she swatched speed Racer. So yeah,
• 2:06:05
  so seeing she came up with the name first in or documently he they
• 2:06:11
  both thought racer would be fun after Rocket and uh and then Rebel was going
• 2:06:15
  to be my name too, but I was like, oh, it's not
• 2:06:16
  a rebel. I think this was a racer and came up with the middle
• 2:06:19
  name with with the disma about people like I said, yeah, I know
• 2:06:26
  it's settles yet all of your nuts anything you want to add race no pressure,
• 2:06:38
  Yeah, so I think definitely if you're going to dive in like Race
• 2:06:43
  said, do so. It's amazing, it's it's creative. Work is one
• 2:06:45
  of the most gratifying kinds of things ever. I mean, it's nothing opens
• 2:06:48
  your mind more like creativity. But definitely learn to love the process and all
• 2:06:53
  that it is. It's all the good, all the bad, all the
• 2:06:57
  crazy days. Learned to see it half full. Learn to enjoy all of
• 2:06:59
  it because no matter how big and famous you get or how much you stay
• 2:07:03
  right where you are, it's all going to be the same the whole time.
• 2:07:05
  It's just more money. So there's more people, and there's more problems,
• 2:07:09
  there's more of the same thing. So enjoy and love the process for
• 2:07:12
  what it is and how gratifying it can be and exciting that you know you
• 2:07:15
  don't always know what's going to come your way. So definitely learn to love
• 2:07:18
  the process. So life PDD says, more money, more problems. I
• 2:07:21
  understand that's what they got out of that guy. Again, you guys are
• 2:07:29
  amazing. Thank you so much for being on the show and continue this genera
• 2:07:32
  the next generation of rodriguezinsanity. So I appreciate you guys. Thank you much,
• 2:07:38
  so much for the time. I really appreciate it. I want to
• 2:07:42
  thank Racer and Rebels so so much for their time and coming on the show
• 2:07:46
  and sharing their knowledge and experience with all of us. If you want to
• 2:07:49
  get links to anything we spoke about in this episode, head over to the
• 2:07:54
  show notes at Indy Film Hustle dot com. Forward Slash seven one seven,
• 2:08:00
  and don't forget to check out Spy Kids Armageddon on Netflix. Thank you again
• 2:08:05
  so much for listening to guys. As always, keep that hustle going,
• 2:08:07
  keep that dream alive, Stay safe out there, and I'll talk to you
• 2:08:11
  soon. Thanks for listening to the Indie Film Hustle podcast at Indie Film Hustle
• 2:08:16
  dot com. That's I N D I E F I L M h ustl
• 2:08:22
  dot com.