Name: Joe Rogan Experience #2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Uploaded: 2025-04-24T17:00:33.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2310 - Robert Rodriguez' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-04-24. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2310 - Robert Rodriguez' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-04-24. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #2310 - Robert Rodriguez

Joe Rogan podcast check it out. The Joe Rogan experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan
podcast by night, all day.
Oh man. Very, very nice to meet you. Incredible to meet you. Fucking gigantic
fan. Man, I appreciate that.
I just love what you've done because like anybody who could start their career
off and make a movie for $7,000 is a hero.
That's just an incredible accomplishment to make a movie that people still
watch and talk about today for $7,000.
It was an experience for sure. I had a really good plan and it backfired. So I
tried to right away when it worked in a different way, I wanted to share that
experience.
I wrote a book called Rebel Without a Crew that really inspired filmmakers. You
did the audio for it too.
Just recently, I couldn't believe it. I hadn't read it since I wrote it and I
had forgotten a lot of the details.
And now I can see why it inspired so many people because it, you know, when you're
in your early 20s, six months feels like six years.
Right.
So when you read it now and go, oh my God, from Inception to making it penniless
by myself to Toast of the Town. It's like that. It was unbelievable.
I couldn't wait to shout from the rooftops to all the other filmmakers like me
who thought they couldn't get in.
How I did it exactly. I wrote a book about it. And I'd read it now and I'd go,
oh my God, this is an impossible story.
I keep laughing during the audio book going, okay, what you're reading right
now never happened before and it never happened again.
It was like lightning in a bottle. And you would see every time I thought
something wasn't going my way and I was really bummed about it, within weeks,
an upshot beyond.
And it really taught you that you just got to follow your instinct. If you have
an idea, go, even if you know no one else has ever done this before.
And you'll end up someplace different. I want to ask you about that because I
know you end up doing the same thing a lot.
Yeah, for sure.
Where it's not manifesting so much in that way. You're just kind of following
your nose. You're doing something that just sounds ridiculous.
Even when I tried to tell one of my teachers what I was going to go do that
summer, I said, I'm going to go try and make a movie.
And he goes, oh yeah, who's going to be your director of photography?
And I said, I didn't want to tell him I'm the whole crew.
I said, I'm the DP. Oh, the actors are going to hate you. You're going to be
there setting up your lights all the time.
I'm like, okay, I'm not even going to tell him I'm the rest of the crew.
It was just because I had read this advice that meant to be good advice, but it
sounded really depressing.
It was someone who had written, if you want to write screenplays, write three
full screenplays, throw them away.
Your fourth screenplay will be it.
It's okay. I've written a screenplay. It's very hard to write a screenplay. It's
hard to write.
It's like three huge meals that you're just going to dump.
Why not, okay, write the script, throw it away.
But while you're throwing it away, why not also shoot it and direct it, light
it yourself, do the sound yourself so that you're training yourself on each one.
So I thought, where can I do this where I can get paid to do that?
Like my own film school where I get paid to learn.
So I discovered that there were these straight to Spanish movies that are
action movies.
You go to the, you've seen the H-E-Bs around here.
There used to be a video section to rent movies and there was a Spanish section.
The Spanish section had movies like, they were just action movies.
They had a soap star.
They were made for 30 grand, 40 grand.
Shot on video, no action, but it had a title that looked kind of like a U.S.
title, like,
written like Lethal Weapon 2.
And you would rent it and it'd be like, just crap, people in an apartment
talking.
So I looked at the back of those and I thought, we can make a better one,
probably for like $5,000.
Because I had made a short film called Bedhead by myself with a wind-up camera.
It was eight minutes and it cost $800.
So I thought, multiply it times 10, I could do an 80-minute movie for $8,000.
But with dialogue and everything, I bet I could get it for under eight,
probably more like five or six.
Let's go shoot a movie, write it, shoot it.
I'll be the whole crew.
So I learn all the jobs and then we'll sell it to the Spanish home video market.
No one will know it's me because it's Robert Rodriguez, a bunch of Robert
Rodriguez's.
I'll make three of those because I was so young.
I was winning a lot of film festivals with short films.
But I thought, if someone sees one of my short films that's winning all these
awards,
they're not going to hire me to do a short film.
They're going to hire me to do a feature and I've never practiced that.
So I need practice.
So I'm going to practice three films, take the best scenes from them, have a
demo reel.
With the money I make from them, I don't know how much I can sell it for, so I
got to make it really cheap.
Let's just do the first one and then we'll know.
Then I'll take that money and make my first American independent film and that'll
be more serious.
Because I threw it away like that, I just thought, well, let me just make
something fun.
Action movie, I guess I could do action.
I started as a cartoonist, so it was more comedic than anything else.
I said, well, an action movie, let's make it fun.
Let's make it about a guy with a guitar case full of weapons.
Kind of like Road Warrior who goes from town to town with a guitar case full of
weapons.
But I can't afford Road Warrior on the first one.
So how about I just do a Genesis story?
So I took out these cards and I go, okay, maybe he was a guitar player.
In fact, that'll be a funny title because I have this comedic sense.
I thought, I'm going to make a movie that's got so much action and it's
actually shot on film.
But I'll call it basically the guitar player, which promises no action
whatsoever.
Put it on the shelf.
And if someone happens to be so desperate to watch it, they'll be surprised.
You know, that was like my joke to myself, but I just want to practice.
So I did this method where I just got the cards and I go, because I'm used to
making short films.
Guy with a guitar case walks into a bar looking for work.
They refuse, saying we don't hire people.
We use a synthesizer now.
He leaves.
A guy with a guitar case full of weapons walks in after.
Shoots the place up.
Says he's going after the guy who owns it because he did him wrong.
So I put those two cards down and I went, okay, that's how a short film would
start.
But shit, this is a feature.
So let me put, it's going to need like three scenes before.
This is how fast you write a script.
I wrote that script because it was, again, I'm throwing it away.
I'm just going to make something that I want to see because no one else is
going to see it.
You're getting paid to practice.
If I can sell it, I'll be paid to practice.
So I thought, okay, we got to figure out who this guy is.
Okay, how about he's a control player who's coming into town?
But wait, who's the guy that shoots the place up?
Let's start with him in jail.
I read a story about a guy in Mexico who was running his drug business from his
jail cell.
And he used it as protection.
He could walk out at any time.
If someone puts a hit on him in jail, he shoots them up, tells the bad guy, I'm
coming after you now.
I'm coming to your town.
I'm going to shoot up your town.
He passes the mariachi on the road.
The mariachi is a mariachi, the guy who just wants to be a musician.
We get to know who he is.
And then he walks in the bar.
And then the guy comes and shoots the place up.
Well, now he's got to leave and go to another place.
So now he's got to go meet the girl.
Now this is going to happen.
And because it's a movie about a guitar player, he's got to have some kind of
tragic past.
Because Road Warrior had a tragic past.
Mad Max, he lost his wife and kid.
Oh my gosh, he has to die.
Because every movie is going to be like a sad song in a songbook.
So it kind of just broke that fast.
I went and I shot it.
Did you do it like that with the index cards?
Index cards.
I do this for everything.
And you just lay it out on a table?
I do this for everything.
For everything.
I tell people, I do this talk where I, by the end of the talk, I say, I keep
these in my bag.
It always makes me smile because I know I've made a million dollars with this
before.
And that's a tiny little stack.
This is a tiny one you can carry anywhere.
I gave this to my kids when Christmas.
For people that are just listening, it's closed together with rubber bands.
With rubber bands.
I gave this in a cool little leather bag for my kids one Christmas.
I thought they would say, what's this shit?
They loved it.
I said, you can change your life with this thing.
Because a lot of times, you know, you go to therapy, not for answers.
You go for questions.
We have the answers inside us.
Usually we ask ourselves terrible questions.
The therapist asks you questions like, why did that make you feel?
Why did you do that?
And what's up?
What's going on?
If we do our own questions, like, what's next?
What goes before this?
Your mind comes up with the answer if you ask the right question.
So I've used this for, like, we usually ask unempowering questions.
You know, the words we use in ourselves are so important.
But some of the questions, like, why am I such a loser?
Well, I can give you 10 answers right now.
But if I change it to, what three things could I come up with to start this
week that would not just change my life, but everyone around me?
You don't come up with three.
You come up with, like, 15.
Just keep coming out.
And as you look at them, you go, these kind of go together and are actionable.
I can actually start this right now.
I mean, you can literally change your life.
Business ideas, movie ideas, stories, just with a deck of cards.
By the time I build up and show all the examples of it, at the end of the talk,
I hold up one of these with a rubber bands to the crowd.
And I say, who wants to change your life?
Wow.
Everybody's hands go up.
I toss one out and catch it.
In fact, I remember my nephew about seven years ago caught one.
And it's funny because he's on Broadway now.
It's just, like, lets you map out your life.
Another friend of mine, DJ Catrone, he's an actor, he caught one.
And he said, wow, that talk you gave was so empowering on how you wrote it.
I went home and I picked up an old script I hadn't picked up in a while.
And I just cut off the phone for three days and I finished it.
And I said, you finished a script in three days?
I like the feedback loop that happens when you inspire somebody.
I'm going to try that because I got a bunch of half-baked ideas that I've never
gone and done that with.
You did it in three days?
Yeah, if you shut the phone off, you can do it in three days.
And now he has, that movie's out.
It's coming out.
It's called Fight or Flight with Josh Hartnett.
Wow.
After hearing the talk, he went and picked up this old thing that he thought.
And I get this a lot when I've talked to people.
It's really inspiring to them to hear other people.
That's why I'll ask you questions about it too.
Where did you develop this approach?
Like, is this something you completely invented yourself just to map out life?
Writers will often put index cards up to just kind of block out a scene.
It's a visual way to see your story.
Like, when you lay it out and you go, oh, this works.
I'm missing a section here.
But again, like, this is asking you, what can I put there?
You'll come up with a bunch of ideas.
It almost gives you like an overview.
But I started it when I was a cartoonist.
I had a daily cartoon strip.
So I would draw on different cards, different drawings.
And every day I had to come up with a comedic idea and a drawing and a story.
And it was tough.
You'd have to draw it out.
And you would sometimes make two drawings that you really liked an