I realized that everything I do is fantasy, whether it is an adult movie or a kids movie.
— Robert Rodriguez
You ask any moviemaker what their favorite movie experience was, and they'll say it was one of the first ones, where everyone had to pitch in and do everything together, and you had to struggle.
I collect a lot of art.
A movie goes from several stages, from idea to script. As you continue shooting, you will make some adjustments. You're constantly adjusting. It's like a piece of music. You're constantly trying to make it better.
The only thing I ever wanted to do is never have to work a day in my life.
Don't look at all at what other people are doing. Think of what you're doing as completely fresh because if you imitate you're dead.
When you put on the glasses in a 3-D movie they just kind of sit there and you forget about them.
I want to push technology boundaries to be more efficient.
If you do a film with a studio, agents step in, they start saying, 'My actor has to get this amount of money', and it becomes about deals.
I usually have a couple of projects going on that are different. A 'Sin City' while I'm doing a 'Spy Kids' at the same time. I need different things going on.
I kind of like working fast.
When you go off in the world and make your life, and you come back to your home town, and you find your old high-school friends driving in the same circles, doing the same things, that's what Hollywood's like. It's a little block, little town. It doesn't really grow or change.
Everything I've done has always been my own made up world with its own rules and its own made up stories.
I always wanted to be a stay-at-home dad making art, making movies.
You create superheroes to take care of problems that can't really be solved another way.
When you make an exploitation film, you always want to have a real issue. That's how they were always done.
Don't be told something is impossible. There's always a way.
I wish I could freeze time or go back in time and watch my kids grow up all over again because it is just going by too fast.
Really, children will support anything that is empowering to them.
I was a cartoonist when I was at university, but I decided to go into movie making knowing that I could still draw by doing movies, design work, story boards, and such.
I do like strong women in my movies. I have five sisters, so I've just grown up with that model.
I have 5 children of my own. They are bilingual, like most second and third generations. But they speak primarily in English and they couldn't find anything on television that represented who they are in this country.
Hollywood wants to own everything. I don't want to own anything. I don't want people just to make content, I want to empower and teach them to create content they own that they can exploit in any medium.
It's rare for the studios to find a filmmaker who wants to make a family film. To find someone that has an idea, embraces it, has kids and wants to make something exciting - well, they don't see that too often.
What could make my life better? Oh, if I could only find that magic bottle that lets you never have to sleep. I have so much stuff I wanna do, but... That six or seven hours you have to be in bed with your eyes closed. What a waste!
For me, Mexploitation seemed like something that should have existed, but didn't.
Low budgets force you to be more creative. Sometimes, with too much money, time and equipment, you can over-think. My way, you can use your gut instinct.
Creative people are notoriously the slowest to adopt new technology.
It's such a drag to make a movie.
If I'm excited about it, I'm pretty sure an audience is going to enjoy it. If I'm bored with an idea, you can bet they're going to be asleep. So I try to only do things that I'm fairly excited about.
I was the one in charge of the kids growing up.
People talk about immigration, but they won't talk about the corruption that actually exists between Mexico and the U.S.
I have so many friends who don't know how to cook.
Don't give me any money, don't give me any people, but give freedom, and I'll give you a movie that looks gigantic.
The studios don't finance anymore, they get outside funds.
I get a lot done considering I spend half my day sleeping.
I don't think anyone can be more of a predator than a human being.
I love working with great actors.
Your mind just goes to the craziest idea to lure people into the theater, and then you write your script around those elements.
Changing the game is a mindset.
I like to keep my budgets at a certain price when I work for someone else, and even more so now that I'm working for myself, and use new technologies to deliver films that look like they have high production levels.
Sometimes I feel like I'm in a dream world, because it doesn't always seem too logical how things work out.
People don't live in Austin to work, they work to live there.
If you create a good story that has a lot of story value... I think audiences like that. It's why they stick with the same TV show over and over.
Everyone applauds each other's success in Hollywood because they know how tough it is, but it really comes down fundamentally to the process.
Yeah, I was always a big fan of noir.
Usually, I'm just pleasing myself and I have very similar tastes I think to an audience, what that core audience really likes.
I was from such a large family that when I first met my wife, I told her: 'You can go work outside of the house and I'll stay home and continue making my cartoon strips. Maybe I'll make some commercials nearby, you know I'll do anything locally, but I would love to just stay at home and raise the kids like I did when I was growing up.'
Exploitation films were famous for taking an issue an exploiting it because they could move much faster than a studio could. If there was any hot topic, they would run out and make a quick movie and make a buck on it, by changing it around and using it, in some way, to give some relevance.
A lot of people who watch DVDs are people who are interested in, if not moviemaking, then creativity in general.
