Rodriguez On Digital Filmmaking & Once Upon A Time..

‘Mexico’ Director Rodriguez Claims Digital Freedom

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - It’s been 10 years since director Robert Rodriguez came out with his spare, thrilling first movie “El Mariachi,” and while he now has star power and big budgets, his latest tale about the gunslinging singer is just as quirky and independent as the first.

“Once Upon a Time in Mexico,” which opens on Friday, cost $29 million, Rodriguez told Reuters. That is a far cry from the $7,000 he spent making “El Mariachi” in 1993, but still only around one-half the cost of a major motion picture.

Of course, 10 years ago, Rodriguez was a 25-year-old Texan with only a video camera and a Hollywood dream. Now, he is a big-time filmmaker with major hits like his “Spy Kids” movies.

Still, the director chooses to remain in Texas and fill his garage with high-tech gadgetry to make his movies the way he wants — digitally. This keeps major Hollywood studios off his back and puts him in control of his projects.

“The artist’s life is something I’ve always wanted to live. Now, I’m getting to do that,” Rodriguez told Reuters.

“Once Upon a Time” is the third film based on El Mariachi, Rodriguez’s gun slinging guitar player with a conscience. The second, 1995’s “Desperado,” starred Antonio Banderas as El Mariachi and Salma Hayek as his love interest, Carolina.

The pair reprise their roles in “Once Upon a Time,” but Rodriguez said this third movie is not a sequel. Rather, it is a self-contained story that audiences will understand without having to see the first two movies.

“I liked the idea of making three separate movies that can be viewed together or watched separately,” he said.

DIGITAL REVENGE

In “Once Upon a Time,” El Mariachi has gone into a sort of self-imposed retirement until a coup engineered by a seedy CIA agent (Johnny Depp) brings him out. Audiences learn that Carolina was killed by a Mexican general involved in the coup. El Mariachi wants revenge.

Like “El Mariachi,” “Once Upon a Time” spoofs old Mexican action films and is as much comedy as it is violent action. The movie, too, is vibrant on screen with the eye-popping colors that digital filmmaking with the best equipment offers.

To be sure, the debate over making films the old school way, using real film, compared with making them digitally will not end soon. But Rodriguez has been won over.

Digital film making can reduce some costs and time, and Rodriguez said those factors free him to focus on other jobs and have greater control over the final movie. For “Once Upon a Time,” he not only wrote, directed and produced the movie, he was director of photography, production designer, editor and music composer.

“After I made ‘Mariachi,’ I thought I had almost made a real movie, but looking back, that was real movie-making. Real moviemaking began like that,” he said, referring to early filmmaking where only a few people stood behind the camera.

“El Mariachi” was a hit at 1993’s Sundance Film Festival, and Columbia Pictures scooped it up for distribution.

REBEL WITH A CAUSE

The bigger-budget “Desperado” received mixed reviews but has enjoyed a growing cult following. Seeing its renewed popularity, Columbia chief Amy Pascal phoned Rodriguez and asked him if he’d make a third.

“I said: ‘Give me $29 million, and I’ll make it for that,” Rodriguez said. “It’s so funny, they really didn’t think I was going to do it.”

That’s because in 2002, an average Hollywood movie cost $58.8 million to make and another $30.6 million to market, according to the Motion Picture Association of America.

After only seven weeks of shooting, Rodriguez said he went back to Pascal with the movie ready to edit. Jaws dropped.

“They said, ‘We thought you were out of your mind,”‘ he said. But he wasn’t. He was in his garage, in Texas.

Link: Rodriguez On Digital Filmmaking & Once Upon A Time..

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