#a movie that would have happened whether competent storytellers and filmmakers got on board or not and at least they made something

[bombshellsandbluebells]

speaking as someone who really enjoyed Barbie, I just don't think Barbie is deep enough to warrant all the dramatic takes and arguments on it

[viktorbezic]

Constraints Journal: Robert Rodriguez Sold His Body To Science for $7000 To Fund His First Film That Cost Him $7000

Discipline: Filmmaking 

John Carpenter’s Escape from New York left a lasting impression on the young Robert Rodriguez. After watching it, he knew he wanted to become a filmmaker. In school, he would make pencil sketch animations of stick figures in his notebooks to impress his friends in class. This got him thinking about using claymation to create animations as a way to explore motion further. Claymation was a way of moviemaking that Rodriguez thought as within reach for him as a youngster. He could endlessly tinker and not have to rely on actors and hone his skills.

Rodriguez and his friends found the family’s Super 8 camera. They'd shoot a roll of film that cost them $5 and would subsequently pay $7 to get it developed only to come back with unimpressive results. As a 13-year-old kid, it was discouraging in addition to being expensive. In 1979 His first breakthrough came when his father purchased a four head JVC cassette recorder which he took over for his own creative use. He’d make short movies, edit entirely in camera and lay a music track on top of it once edits were complete. An impressive accomplishment pre-digital recording days. Rodriguez would shoot anything around him. Family events, goings on in the household and make mini Kung Fu movies with his friends. Using the JVC was a breakthrough in terms of cost as compared to the Super 8. He could now buy one cassette and get 2 hours of erasable content with sound. His father made the mistake of purchasing a second JVC recorder. Rodriguez would co-opt this camera too. He’d shoot the raw footage in one camera while editing in the other. The critical constraint here is that an edit would have to be completed in 5 minutes. If the JVC camera’s pause button were on for more than 5 minutes, the camera would automatically switch off and cause a glitch in the footage. This is how Rodriguez would edit movies from the age of 13 to 23 (1).

The young Rodriguez wanted to attend college UT-Austin as it was the closest college to him with a film program. Initially accepted into UT-Austin, there were additional hurdles to jump to get into the film program. Students were required to take a variety of courses unrelated to film in the sciences and maintain a high GPA. Rodriguez who couldn’t do anything but make movies found it extremely difficult to focus any of his energy on mastering subjects that didn’t involve visual storytelling. He knew how critical it was to pass the courses with high grades, but he couldn’t compete with the academic types. Denied entry into the film program due to his low grade-point average, his observation during this time was there were a lot of great academics who made it into the program that made horrible films. Around the same time Rodriguez was applying to the program he made the short film “Bedhead” and entered Austin’s Third Coast Film and Video Festival winning the 1st place prize. He showed the movie to the professor of UT-Austin's Film Production 1 course and asked he if could get in despite his grades. Since he beat out notable existing Film School candidates that were already part of the program the professor let him in (2).

Rodriguez’s most ambitious project came when he met up with his friend Carlos on a shoot for a Spanish film. Rodriguez moonlit on set shooting behind the scenes footage in Carlos' hometown of Ciudad Acuña, Mexico (3). They would frequently go to Acuna during breaks and shoot in the streets. Acuna would become the location of his next film. The idea was he'd be able to make the film without a traditional crew doing most of the work himself. Rodriguez also wanted to test script ideas. The key insight that inspired him to do this came from his former photo lab boss.  The knowledge imparted on the young Rodriguez was anyone can become technical, but not everyone can be creative. And if you’re creative and technical, you’re unstoppable. Rodriguez created a scenario where he could write and shoot at the same time to put the scripts to the test. There'd be no sense in waiting for an entire script to be finished to find out whether or not it would work on screen. To hedge his bets he'd be writing two scripts versus having to re-write and polish one script. To test the scripts, he'd create movies for the Spanish home video market to see if one film sold better than the other as a split test. He was way ahead of his time by putting content through an a/b test which is commonplace online today. No one in Hollywood would see these films so it wouldn’t matter if they flopped. Not only would he learn what worked he could also get paid for doing the tests from the sales of the direct to video market (4).

Although Rodriguez was aiming to create really low budget flicks as a student, he still needed time and some capital to produce them. There was no way he could pull this off with his current two part-time jobs. His solution? Selling his body to big pharma for drug testing with Pharmaco. Rodriguez would participate in two separate drug trials that lasted a month each. This included room and board, getting paid for participating in the tests plus provide the time to write his scripts without interruption from friends and family. He would go through two rounds of tests earning $7000 he’d use to fund his 1st film (5).

He knew he had to make the $7000 work and be careful the way he spent it. In his words, you’re more cautious with your own money than someone else’s. He found many ingenious ways to make the film not look low budget with the money he had. Rodriguez noticed lower budget films all looked like they were shot in one room or a tiny studio. Shooting in the streets outside would automatically make it look more substantial than an art school project shot in a bedroom. In Acuna, Mexico they could shoot in the street with little interference. The townspeople were used to seeing Rodriguez and his friend Carlos running around the streets with cameras, so they had no issue with it or no longer noticed. Everything they needed to shoot was within a 2-3 block radius. As this was Carlos’ hometown, they were able to co-opt locations that his family owned like his mother’s ranch. Other clever moves included talking the chief of police into letting them borrow uzis (filling them with blanks) and shooting scenes at the local police station (6). They did this 1st thing in the morning so the police could get back to work. Rodriguez's actors doubled as his film crew. And since he didn’t have a big crew, he didn’t need to storyboard every scene. Shooting and editing the film himself, he knew the shots he wanted to reduce time in edit. Rodriguez kept the camera rolling when mistakes happened as he knew exactly how he’d edit them out. They tested a lot of the stunt props in his friend's backyard before setting them up in the streets. For example, they made a makeshift a zip line with a $12 pulley they bought from a local hardware store. It would later be used in the film's escape scene. All of the scenes, stunts, and experiments would eventually become the film El Mariachi (7).

After filming was complete, Rodriguez would go on to do marathon thirteen-hour editing sessions with his JVC camcorder after he had all the raw footage transferred. While doing some of his edits at a public access station someone from the Texas Film Commission saw his work. He invited him to the 20th anniversary of the Texas Film Commission where they hosted Hollywood producers and showed demo tapes from local Texas talent. He gave him a list of names of people he should meet including the agent Robert Newman over at the talent agency ICM. The event would fall through, but he encouraged him to call Robert Newman anyway (8).

Rodriguez would drive out LA with his friend Carlos and shop the film to numerous Spanish video outlets. It was going so poorly that they thought they would have to stay in LA pitching for a few months. Low on funds, they were on the one meal a day plan. The one lousy cheeseburger a day diet. During this time he did manage to reach the agent Robert Newman, and Newman asked for a copy of the film. After seeing El Mariachi, Newman wanted to sign Rodriguez and represent him. With excitement, he told him, "I look forward to working with you Robert we are going to make a lot of money together." This is where things really took off. The tape spread like wildfire throughout ICM and Rodriguez would have meetings with Columbia, Disney, Tristar, and Paramount. They were shocked that the film was made for such a small sum. At the same time, he was shocked by the amount of traction he was getting. Rodriguez tried to keep a level head during this time. He thought if things fell through, "At least I'll be self-employed, making a little bit of money doing the things I love. That's all I ever wanted (9)."  

Columbia Pictures bought the rights to the movie alleviating the need to go to the Spanish home video market. The film, “cleaned up” by Columbia pictures for a couple hundred thousand dollars, still advertised it as a movie that was made for $7000. El Mariachi would gross $2 million off of Rodriguez initial investment of $7000. It won the Sundance Film Festival’s Audience Award and spawned two sequels: Desperado and Once A Upon in Mexico. In 1993 Rodriguez was 23 when El Mariachi was first released (10).

References 1. Rebel Without a Crew, by Robert Rodriguez, Plume, 1996, pp. 5. 2. Idem, pp. 10. 3. Idem,  pp. 7. 4. Idem, pp. 15. 5. Idem,  pp.  20. 6. Idem, pp.  42. 7. Gochicoa, Frankie. “The Making of ‘El Mariachi’ - The Robert Rodriguez Ten Minute Film School.” YouTube, YouTube, 9 Sept. 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQE9eEmu1b4. 8. Rebel Without a Crew, by Robert Rodriguez, Plume, 1996, pp. 67. 9. Idem, pp. 88. 10. “Robert Rodriguez.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 27 Nov. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Rodriguez.