In addition to being the director of many a franchise (SPY KIDS, EL MARIACHI, MACHETE, SIN CITY), filmmaker Robert Rodriguez is now a television mogul. Almost two years ago, Rodruguez started up the El Rey network, which combined programmed theme nights of movies (kung fu, grindhouse, cult horror) as well as original programming like a series based on Rodriguez’s FROM DUSK TILL DAWN (many episodes of which Rodriguez directs) and perhaps his greatest contribution to film history in general, the interview show “The Director’s Chair,” in which Rodriguez asks detailed and pointed questions of some the greatest directors of his and earlier generations.
Episodes of “The Director’s Chair include talks with John Carpenter, Guillermo del Toro, Francis Ford Coppola, Quentin Tarantino, George Miller, Robert Zemeckis, Michael Mann, Luis Valdez, and now his latest episode with Sylvester Stallone, the star of this week’s CREED and the first subject Rodriguez has interviewed who is an actor-director (and writer, if we’re being complete, since Stallone’s only two Oscar nominations are for lead actor and writer of ROCKY).
Rodriguez was so impressed with Stallone’s insight and honestly that he wanted to make the episode available for free to everyone. You can watch it on the show’s Facebook Page, and you should absolutely check it out; it’s fantastic and wonderfully revealing. I’ve interviewed Rodriguez many times over the years (both about own films and other special projects he had a hand in), but this series is clearly something very special to him. And after you watch this episode—or any of them—you’ll see why. Please enjoy my chat with Robert Rodriguez…
Capone: Hi, Robert. How are you?
Robert Rodruguez: Good. How are you doing, man?
Capone: Good. I think this is our first phone interview. We’ve talked in Chicago, Austin, San Diego, but never on the phone. Coincidentally last night, I watched the Stallone episode, right after the press screening of CREED, so I’m all caught up on the ROCKY story right now, which is funny, because the film doesn’t even come up in your interview with Stallone.
RR: Yeah. We thought about talking about it, but we thought well, he didn’t direct that one and he didn’t write it, so we didn’t go into that. But we actually did ask him a question anyway just in case, but that didn’t make it into the final cut. Did you see the other ROCKY movies?
Capone: Of course. I saw ROCKY BALBOA at Butt-Numb-a-Thon even. You have always been really good on your DVDs having those “10-Minute Film School” doc, and educating film watchers or would-be directors in the art of making independent film. Is this series an extension of that? These are your heroes, and this is how they do what they do. You look to these filmmakers as some people might look at you in these tutorials. Is that where the idea came from?
RR: That’s a good question. I don’t know if that’s it exactly. Whenever I discover anything, I like to demystify it for people who are like myself. Like when I found out you could make a movie for no money—or $7000—I wrote a book for everybody to know. I never even knew that was possible. But I always looked up to these much bigger filmmakers and these greater filmmakers, and was inspired by them, like everybody is.
But once I became a filmmaker and doing cutting-edge movies, I found myself, scrappily from Austin, getting to sit at the table with some of these guys. The first thing I’d do is talk their ear off and ask them questions. It was one of the weirdest times. I haven’t even mentioned it in the show yet, but a lot of these guys I talked to were at what was called a digital gathering. I got a call from George Lucas early in the 2000s saying, “I’m having a digital gathering to show people what digital filmmaking is, and you shot more movies than all of us, because you’ve done two of them. So we want you to be the head speaker. I’m going to speak, Francis is going to speak, and all these different directors are going to be there like Spielberg, Jim Cameron, Michael Bay, Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone.”
So I had to go hang out with all these filmmakers during my little part of filmmaking, and that was just a treasure trove of information and knowledge. I got to go around, as any film student would when they meet a filmmaker, and ask these guys questions. I always kick myself wishing someone was filming it or taping it because their answers were so great I knew that other film students, other film lovers would just love to hear it. So what this show ended up being was me going back and recapturing and re-staging in some way some of these conversations.
There was a time when Stallone and I in the middle of a party were acting out that scene from RAMBO on the boat, because I asked him about it. The whole party turned around and was staring at us as he was like pinning me up against the wall [laughs]. I was like, “I hope I get some of this on tape.” Then I filmed this episode, and we got it! The most exciting thing has been recreating these conversations that I’ve had over a period of 20 years with some of these guys. They kept me juiced and excited about filmmaking the way I thought anybody, even if they weren't a filmmaker, would just love hearing a person that versed talk about things that are so inspiring, because they all do it so differently that they’re going to answer the same questions differently.
So a lot of it is me as a film student is listening, but because I’m a director now, I get to ask a level of questions now that I understand but still don’t have answers for it at all, so I think that’s what makes it exciting, you’re hearing different information from these guys than you have never heard in any other interview, because usually it’s a layperson interviewing them or someone who hasn’t been speaking to them at that level so they don’t lose the audience. We don’t care if the audience gets lost. If they don’t know anything about filmmaking, they’ll stil get the essence of the conversation, which is exploring their particular approach to creativity.
Capone: When you’re immersing yourself in the filmography of your different subjects, you almost can’t help but think about your own work and how you were influenced by some of these guys. Did you notice the impact of Stallone’s films on your approach to world building and hero building?
RR: Oh, absolutely. That stuff gets cut out sometimes, but that’s usually the first thing I mention. That was one of the things I mentioned when we got to FIRST BLOOD. MACHETE was my version of FIRST BLOOD. When I saw FIRST BLOOD and thought, “He’s like a vet, but they don’t know. They think he’s just a vagrant. Butguess what? He’s highly trained. They fucked with the wrong guy.” So when I did MACHETE, it’s a complete take on that exploitation idea. What if a day laborer was a bad ass Federales? It was a mix of RAMBO and RAMBO 2. He goes after the guys that hired him. That was one of the inspirations.
When I interviewed John Carpenter, I’m like, “I’ve been paying an homage to you in every movie that I’ve done since the beginning,” because he was the first guy that inspired me. But that was really interesting. John was the first subject, and the way this series even came about was I got my own network, so I was showing four Carpenter movies in one weekend early on in our cycle. I thought, “Shit, I know John. Why don’t I go interview him and get him togive me little sound bites about each of these movies, and we’ll cut it in before we show the movie so we have a little bit of original content, before THE THING and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK—that would be cool.”
Then I thought, “Well, shit. If I go through the trouble of grabbing John, sitting him down, and lighting that with a camera on him and a camera on me, I might as well just make more out of it. Let me just shoot a pilot for this fake TV show called ‘Director’s Chair.’ If I’m going to go around to talk to other filmmakers, we can just shoot something else while I’m there.” But I knew John. He kind of talks down on his material a little bit, like “Oh, that’s nothing. Anybody can do it.” But he was so professorial and so open that I realized, “Oh my god. This show is going to be really different.” Even Greg Nicotero called me and said, “I’ve never seen John talk that way and I’ve known him 20 years.”
I think maybe the idea of a director asking another director really opens up something different. Right around that time, I was talking about ROCKY 2, and my wife said, “I’ve never seen it.” “You haven’t seen ROCKY 2? We’ve got to watch ROCKY 2. Oh, shit. I guess you’ve got to watch ROCKY first. It’s from the mid-’70s. I don’t know if you’ll like it as much as I did as a kid. But we’ve got to start with that.” I put it on. I didn’t know how she would react. It’s slower and it’s from the ’70s. I put it on. She went bonkers. I went, “Tomorrow night, we’re going to watch ROCKY 2.” Put on ROCKY 2, she flips out. It’s like I’m watching it for the first time, watching it with my loved one reacting. “Tomorrow we’re watching ROCKY 3.” Put ROCKY 3 on, she flipped the fuck out. So now we’ve got to keep going. “We’re going to watch ROCKY 4.”
So I’m like “I’m going to call Stallone.” So I emailed Stallone and told him “Man, these movies are still so relevant. They work so well. To see how they work in an audience and to see what you did as a filmmaker from this perspective that I’m at now, I want to do a ‘Director’s Chair’ with you, because I don’t think anyone appreciates the fact that you write them, direct them, edit them. You’re in front of the camera and peak condition.” Nobody does that. It makes any director go, “Holy fuck. It’s hard enough just to get up every morning, go to the set, and not pass out from the donuts in your hand.” And this guy, having to put all that shit together, you never look at it that way, because he’s been around so long, we just took him for granted.
I think that’s the best thing about this show: even die-hard fans of his will be amazed at what all he does, because they’ve probably never really thought about it or forgot. Usually people lump him in with Schwarzenegger and Willis. You forget, he creates these myths, very enduring myths. If you see the CREED movie, that movie works really well using the template of the myth he created way back on his own as a struggling actor. I found it to be a very inspiring and moving episode. It came out so great that we decided we wanted to give it out for free and get as many people to watch it as possible, because it inspires people, not necessarily to be a filmmaker; it could be anything.
Capone: Back to what you said before, he is the first actor-director you’ve interviewed for this series, and you really do dwell on that. It’s exhausting enough just being a director that to also have to act and stay in peak physical condition—the man is super human. There’s no other explanation.
RR: But as a director on top of that, I got lost in the conversation. I kept digging around because I knew I mentioned it, but it wasn’t mentioned in the best way. One of the things I would say too is he's also getting career-best performances from the other actors. It’s not like it’s all about you. Burgess Meredith has never been better, Burt Young has never been better, Clubber Lang [Mr. T], all of those guys. You’re never seen Carl Weathers like that. He’s not just doing it for himself. He’s bringing everybody along and paying very close attention to them as a director while doing that other stuff, so that’s huge too.
Capone: I knew he wrote ROCKY, and he had done some other writing, but he has 21 writing credits—21 original screenplays to his credit, and people forget that, including me. That’s a huge part of his career. He created a lot of these characters that he’s best known for, and I’m glad you dug into that a little bit, because he hasn’t directed that many films, but he’s written so many.
RR: That’s a big thing. Quentin and I took him out to dinner once, because Quentin knew that I knew him, and he said, “Could you introduce me to Stallone?” And I said, “Yeah, sure. Let’s grab dinner with him.” He wanted to just fall all over him about all the writing that he’d done, because Quentin puts a big emphasis on that. Quentin has always said, “A lot of directors bum me out. When they get older, they stop writing. That’s what got them there. They used to be writer-directors, and then the writer goes away, and they start loosing their voice.” He always told me, “Don’t ever loose your voice. You’ve got to keep always writing.” Stallone is one of those guys. He’s constantly writing. When you call him and ask him what he’s working on, he’s writing. He’s always writing.
Capone: Do you wish he had directed more? You bring up the point that there was he didn’t direct for 21 years. Or do you think he needed to step away from it for awhile to rediscover his passion for it?
RR: My personal thing is, I think it drained him. It’s so hard to keep that up, but on ROCKY 5 he thought, “Well let me bring in the original ROCKY director to give myself a break,” and that didn’t do so well, so then he just went into acting. To do all those jobs, it’s got to be something you’re really passionate about, and you’ve got a real vision for, and I think he went through he ’90s just letting other directors do it with mixed results. Some stuff would be good, some stuff would not. When I talked to him when he came in to work with me, the first thing he’s saying is how all the other movies haven't been working, defending his career. I’m like, “No, no. Forget it. It’s going to be a mixed bag. You should go back to directing.” I told him that, and he gave me a hand signal and a face like, “That ain’t never going to fucking happen. I’m never going to go back to that.” I was a little bummed that he didn’t want to go back. It was probably too much work.
Then three years later, he started a run of three in a row [ROCKY BALBOA, RAMBO, THE EXPENDABLES]. I'd like to think he couldn’t un-hear that, and he thought, “Shit, the only way I’m going to get this together is I got to go back in, and I’ve got to go back in hard, which means I’ve got to do all the jobs.” It’s hard, but those movies do the best for him. It’s because they’re hard that they come out so good. Imagine: If he’s used to working at that peak state, getting the best performance out of them, working in physical condition, writing and directing, how can he then go into another movie where a guy is sitting down behind a monitor and saying, “Okay, everybody. Now, action.” He’s like, “Man. That’s not how you train. You got to lift 80 lbs. in each hand to get into this kind of shape.” They’re not going to be at his level of excellence. He’s at a completely different level of excellence.
Capone: It was really interesting to me to find out how much he learned from his failures. He goes into talking about PARADISE ALLEY and why that didn’t work. He actually isn’t as embarrassed by something like that as maybe some other directors might be. He analyzed what went wrong and corrected it. That was kind of a fascinating part of the conversation.
RR: I bring that up with pretty much everybody. At first, Guillermo doesn’t want to talk about MIMIC at all, then by the middle of the episode and by the end, now he’s quoting it and realizing how much he learned from it. I usually go to the failures and talk about the perceived failures, because failures are judged many ways. What’s a failure? It didn’t do well at the box office and no one saw it. Okay, by box office standards, maybe that was the wrong movie. But no, it was completely the right movie. He could not have made ROCKY 2, 3, 4, if he hadn’t had that experience. That’s why I asked him, “What did you learn from that?” Because you get something out of this. Your instinct tells you to do it for a reason.
I always try to hit upon that, because the most interesting films and the most crucial films in a filmmakers career are the ones that seemingly look like the ones they would never want to talk about because they’re missteps, yet they’re a step in the right direction that takes them somewhere else completely. I always like to zero in on those, because it’s not just the trajectory of a career. Stallone is Rocky. He’ll win some fights, he’ll lose some fights, and he’s always going to stand back up. He’s underestimated, under appreciated. That’s the character of Rocky, and yet somehow he’ll stand up and surprise people again.
Michael Mann is very much that. He says in his interview, “I’m best when I’m on the edge of something and driven.” Those are his characters. Stallone is very much Rocky. I went and visited Peter Jackson. He walks around barefoot, and I went, “He’s a Hobbit!” People take on the characteristics. Francis Coppola is definitely THE GODFATHER. He’s like those characters. You definitely end up becoming a lot like your characters. So you watch a Stallone episode, and it’s like you’re watching a ROCKY movie. His story feels like a ROCKY story.
Capone: You mentioned Peter Jackson. Is he one of your next subjects?
RR: I was meeting with him about something else once, but I do want to interview him at some point. He’d be fantastic. I have some other people in mind. When I actually nail down—I don’t have anybody nailed down yet—we’ll announce them either just before they air or right when we close a deal with them. But yeah, there’s a lot of people I’d like to talk to, but this is one of my favorites, because I just followed his career so heavily, then got to work with him and know him as a friend and still had all these questions, and he delivered these fantastic answers that I think a lot of people will be inspired by. Even people who are his fans are going to look at him differently after they see this episode.
Capone: You’re coming up on two years with the Network, so congratulations on that.
RR: Thanks!
Capone: I love the way you program the theme nights. Where do you go from here? What ways are you looking to expand things or change things up?
RR: Yeah, franchises. Our audiences love franchises. They’ll show up Monday night, because they know there’s Brass Knuckle Mondays. They’ll show up more on Creature Feature Fridays. They'll show up more knowing there’s Kung Fu Thursdays. Charting audience attendance, in a way, is really an interesting part of the job, and then just rejiggering the schedule sometimes. You could be showing the same movie you’ve already got a deal on. So just as the next years go on, we’re just going to expand our programing bring in movies that aren’t available at all this year that are available next year. It’s a real exciting year. So we’ll just keep plugging away at that, and then creating our originals, like this.
Capone: Robert, thanks a lot. It was great to talk to you again.
RR: Thanks, I really appreciate it. Talk to you later.
