THIS MONTH'S INTERVIEW

Robert Rodriguez
ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO

"The man is a myth, a legend... and if he's still living, he's the one you want," Belini (Cheech Marin) in ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO.

By now everyone knows the legend of EL MARIACHI. Texas filmmaker Robert Rodriguez had been making short films for several years and wanted to tackle a feature. So he became a guinea pig in a medical research experiment - using the time to write a script and the money to finance the film. The result was a $7,000 action film for the Mexican home video market about a traveling guitar player who wanders into a crime infested Mexican border town looking for work and is mistaken for a notorious assassin who carries his weapons in a guitar case. Because $7,000 barely covered film cost, Robert was a one man crew - directing, operating the camera, setting up the lights, recording the (non-sync) sound, and later editing the film. The script was written to take advantage of props, locations and vehicles that he had access to. The original plan was to make three films for Mexican home video as practice before tackling Hollywood. "I thought this would be a great learning experience," Robert Rodriguez says. "If I make the movie cheap enough I can sell it to the Spanish market and get all of my money back and maybe make a couple of thousand profit. Back then, twenty-one years old, that was the dream - make a couple of grand doing what I love and learning."

But a video copy of EL MARIACHI ended up at Columbia Pictures, and the plan changed. They hired Robert to do an English language remake of EL MARIACHI and sent the original film out to festivals... where it received so much positive response from audiences that they changed the plan again. EL MARIACHI would get a theatrical release and Robert's new script would be a sequel rather than a remake. "Only sort of a sequel," he laughs. "Can't do a straight sequel because a lot of people hadn't seen EL MARIACHI and probably never will." So the story was devised to stand on its own with a quick flashback of the pivotal scene where the Mariachi's girlfriend is murdered and his hand injured to bring the audience up to speed.

The budget for DESPERADO was only $7 million, enough to make a small film like EL MARIACHI using Hollywood methods. But Robert decided to use the same creative methods he had used on EL MARIACHI and write a much bigger screenplay. The result was a film that looked as if it cost $30 million and contains some of the most imaginative action sequences ever put on film. The flamenco bar shoot out where the Mariachi (Banderas) dances down the bar, rhythmically shooting at heavily armed bad guys until his guns run dry... which leads to a funny sequence where the Mariachi and the last bad guy frantically move from one fallen gunman to the next searching for a weapon that still has ammunition in the magazine. As each scrambles for a gun and aims it at the other - click - they have to dive for the next gun. Instead of massive explosions or expensive car stunts, the scene uses an inventive and amusing idea. A little creativity in the script stage saves a lot of money in the filming stage.

Now we come to the final chapter in the EL MARIACHI trilogy. The first film (1993) serves to introduce the character, ending with his guitar-hand permanently injured, his girlfriend dead, and the Mariachi leaving town with a guitar case full of weapons. A wandering minstrel becomes a wandering vigilante. In DESPERADO (1995) he tracks the drug kingpin responsible for the murder of his girlfriend to a town where everyone is on the cartel's payroll and learns that revenge has a price. In ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO the legendary guitar-and-gun slinger gets caught in the middle of a battle between the head of the drug cartel (Willem Dafoe) and a renegade CIA Agent (Johnny Depp) in a plot to overthrow the government of Mexico.

TRINITY IS MY NAME

Very few screenwriters have created an original character that has spawned a series of successful sequels. Shane Black's LETHAL WEAPON series, Adam Hertz's AMERICAN PIE stories and John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN films are the only ones that come to mind. DIE HARD began as a novel, LARA CROFT started life in a video game, and BATMAN was a comic book first. Creating an original franchise that clicks with an audience is tough to do... but how many screenwriters have created two popular franchises? Only George Lucas with STAR WARS and INDIANA JONES and Robert Rodriguez with SPY KIDS and the EL MARIACHI trilogy come to mind. Back in July SPY KIDS 3D - GAME OVER opened at #1 with over $33 million, beating major studio new releases LARA CROFT AND THE CRADLE OF LIFE and SEABISCUIT.

"I conceived this trilogy of movies based on a guitar player with a case full of guns. It's a ridiculous concept for an action movie, but I wanted to do something a little more comedic and goofy." Robert had only a vague idea of what the other two films might be, and all of that changed when EL MARIACHI became a theatrical release. "Quentin (Tarantino) came down to the set of DESPERADO to shoot his bit and said, 'This is great! This is your DOLLARS Trilogy. You have to do part three, now.' 'What do you mean part three?' 'MARIACHI was FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, DESPERADO will be FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE, and next you have to do THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY'. And I said to Quentin, "Let's just finish this movie and I'll think about it." Robert filed away the idea and went on to make other movies. "Then DESPERADO made back triple what it cost and became one of Sony's biggest sellers on DVD. Sony kept calling and saying they wanted a sequel." Robert told them, "It would have to be an epic, and it would have to be called ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO." Sony agreed, and Robert began working on the script.

FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE

"I work for the CIA, and Mexico's my beat, and I'm walking it," Agent Sands (Johnny Depp).

Robert began brainstorming ideas and characters for the new film. "Over the years I started creating these characters. My favorite is the one Johnny Depp plays, a really corrupt CIA Agent." Agent Sands thinks of Mexico has his country to do what he wants with. He's always pulling strings, setting up situations that will get him the results he wants. Whenever he goes into a restaurant, he always orders the same dish. It's his favorite. In one restaurant he orders the dish, and it tastes so much better than any of the other restaurants, Sands decides to kill the chef to maintain balance. After his meal he pays the bill and goes into the kitchen. Bang! "The script is a combination of many different stories I heard from my uncle who was in the FBI," Robert says. "Some are true, others have been twisted into fiction. Ruben Blades basically plays my uncle in the movie. I used some of the stories he told me to connect all of the characters together."

With Depp as the "Bad" character, Robert began thinking of the other characters he'd need to tell his story. "I made Antonio one of the main characters ("Good"). There are four or five main characters in the movie with intersecting story lines. Over the years I started building up those ideas." Once he had the characters and story ideas, he began outlining the story that would bring all of the characters together, using the Mariachi character as the hub. When he was happy with the outline he went to script.

Even though the story was conceived as an epic, Robert planned on making this film EL MARIACHI style on a limited budget. "I told them I would make it for under $30 million and we just squeaked by at $29 million. You can use something other than money to make a film look big, you can use creativity."

One of the ways Robert saved money on EL MARIACHI and DESPERADO was through planning the movie before he got on set. As a former cartoonist, he likes to do storyboards or conceptual drawings for major scenes. Having a plan for the script also allowed him to be creative. "ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO is more than just the third segment of the El Mariachi story, it also contains flashback elements for the audience. It's almost as if this is part four of the story - only part three doesn't really exist. As we flashback to the 'phantom movie', it influences this film and adds elements that give the movie a more epic feel." Flashbacks to the "phantom movie" reveal how the Mariachi (Antonio Banderas) and Carolina (Salma Hayek) fell in love, married, and had a child. "The flashbacks also bring the audience up to date so that even if they've never seen the other movies, the know what El Mariachi and Carolina are like together and that they are a force to be reckoned with," Robert says.

JOHNNY GUITAR

          EL MARIACHI
     I'm here for my guitar.

          FIDEO
     I never thought you'd come back
     for this thing.

          EL MARIACHI
     Neither did I.

Guitars play a major role in all three films. In EL MARIACHI the protagonist lives to play the guitar, music is his passion in life. But the world is changing and most night clubs don't have live music anymore or they hire a guy with a synthesizer that can replicate a whole band. There are two identical guitar cases in the story - one contains a guitar and the other contains an entire arsenal. When the Mariachi picks up the assassin's guitar case by mistake the trouble really begins.

In DESPERADO guitars have come to symbolize the murder of the Mariachi's girlfriend, the end of his career and the death of his dreams. When he tries to show a little boy how to play the guitar, he only manages a few notes before the pain overwhelms him. The guitar, which was once the Mariachi's source of joy has become his source of pain. A reminder of the life he left behind. Now his guitar case is filled with weapons, and his heart is filled with rage and a need for vengeance.

Guitars are used by the drug kingpin Bucho (Joaquim de Almeida) to transport drugs. The little boy's father used to play the guitar, but now he just sits at home and watches TV when he's not swapping guitars filled with drugs for guitars filled with cash for Bucho.

When the Mariachi finds a new love Carolina (Selma Hayek) she gives him a guitar as a gift. She is a new source of hope, giving him his old life back. By the end of the film, the Mariachi and Carolina drive out of town to find a new life, and the Mariachi throws his guitar case of weapons as far as he can, releasing his pain and rage.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO opens with the Mariachi and Carolina living in a town that manufactures guitars. We get to see each step in the creation of a guitar, ending with the Mariachi testing the instrument. This is his version of heaven. When we look inside his guitar case now we find a beautiful guitar that he seldom plays. No weapons. The violence of his past is far behind him.

THE BIG GUNDOWN

          AGENT SANDS
     I need you to kill a man. He's 
     being paid to kill the President.

          EL MARIACHI
     So why me?

          AGENT SANDS
     Well, frankly, because you have 
     nothing to live for.

Without a massive summer movie budget, Robert had to create action scenes that used creativity instead of cash. A good example is what he calls "The best shoot out you've never heard". It was actually a scene he came up with for DESPERADO but they never filmed. "This big gunfight in a church where all of the bad guy's guns have silencers. You see people being shot, but without a sound," Robert explains. The scene begins with a chase where the Mariachi is trying to escape the bad guys, careful not to lose his guitar. Finally he's cornered and smashes the guitar over a bad guy's head... exposing the gun inside. The only weapon left from his past life. But his gun doesn't have a silencer, and if he fires it in the church everyone will hear it. This adds a new dimension to the shoot out, using creativity to up the ante. "At the end when El Mariachi fires his gun, which doesn't have a silencer, the sound reverberates through the church," Robert says.

This is more than just an action scene, it's a character scene as well. The Mariachi is forced to choose between his peaceful life (the guitar) and his violent past (the gun within the guitar). He can't live both lives - he must destroy the guitar to get to the gun.

Because the budget on EL MARIACHI was only $7,000 Robert couldn't afford sync sound and the dialogue was in Spanish (a language Robert didn't speak at the time), so he had to rely on visual storytelling methods. Scenes that showed character through actions rather than dialogue. Throughout EL MARIACHI the evil Moco (Peter Marquart) lights matches off the unshaven face of his henchmen. This shows that Moco keeps his men in line through brutal intimidation. At the end of the film, as Moco lays dying, the henchman leans over a lights a match on his face. Without a word of dialogue we know exactly how the character feels.

That sense of visual storytelling has carried over into the other two films in the trilogy. The Mariachi is not only a man with no name (he is called "El" in the script, "The"), he is also a man of few words. When they began shooting Antonio Banderas was a little concerned because he had almost no dialogue. Johnny Depp's Agent Sands had pages of dialogue... but his character uses words as his tools, as his weapons. After a few days of shooting, Robert says that Antonio was cutting his own dialogue. Asking if he could use a look or an action to convey that information. Antonio explains, "The character of El Mariachi comes to life through action and movement rather than dialogue. He is basically a classic hero in that sense. He speaks very little and moves like a bullfighter or a flamenco dancer. When he shoots a gun it's like he's playing a guitar. They are the same thing to him." Robert wrote scenes that showed the character through actions like smashing the guitar to retrieve the gun from his violent past.

THE GOOD, THE BAD & MICKEY ROURKE

"Then I guess I have no choice but to kill you all," El Mariachi (Antonio Banderas).

One of the highlights of Robert's movies are his characters. When Navajas (Danny Trejo) steps onto screen in DESPERADO wearing that vest of throwing knives you instantly know who the character is. One of Bucho's henchmen in DESPERADO is known as "Shrug" - all he ever does is shrug. He has no opinions of his own and shrugs off responsibilities. He's Bucho's yes man, and we know exactly who his character is even though he never says a word in the film. "I like to go for these big iconic characters. Very visual and very modern Spaghetti Western. Not only do we have the Man With No Name, we have the Man With No Face and The Man With No Eyes," Robert says. There's also a Man With Three Arms and several other characters that capture our interest the moment they step onto screen.

In Agent Sands Robert wanted to create a CIA Agent we haven't seen before, a man who is stationed in Mexico but doesn't like the country very much. A man who thinks of people as chess pieces he can move from square to square. A man who has no regard for human life. "Johnny's character is very edgy, and you have to find an actor who's willing to embrace that, because so many actors don't want to be unlikeable," Robert says. "But Johnny didn't care. He not only wanted the part, he took it even further, and that's what was fun about working with him. Sands is the character who orchestrates the entire assassination plan in the story, and has to watch as it slowly falls apart."

Robert likes to find a certain archetypical behavior for each character that serves the story but is still personal and emotional enough to add texture to the character. "Mickey Rourke plays an American fugitive working for the drug cartel." When Robert first met Rourke he had his little Chihuahua, he takes it everywhere with him. He was wearing a coat with big, puffy, sleeves and the dog kept crawling into his sleeve. Robert told him he was going to write a part for the actor in ONCE UPON A TIME, and to make sure he brings his dog with him. The character of Billy (Rourke) is an American criminal living in Mexico - his only friend is his little dog. He works for the head of the drug cartel (Willem Dafoe) who hates dogs. So Billy is constantly hiding his little dog in his sleeve - caught between his job and his only friend.

Dafoe plays the Mexican Drug Lord, the villain of the film. Though he's ruthless, Robert tempers the character by giving him a love of music (like the Mariachi) and an accomplished piano player. "In great SCARFACE tradition I cast a non-Latin actor to play a Latin character. I remember that Willem called me and said 'You really want me to play a Mexican drug lord? I don't speak Spanish and I don't play the piano.' I said, 'Don't worry about it, I'll show you a couple of tricks.' Sure enough, the second day on the set Willem was playing the piano and speaking Spanish."

When creating characters and action scenes Robert looked at dozens of Spaghetti Westerns from the 1960s and 1970s, not to copy ideas but to figure out what he needed to do to top the ideas in existing films. To make the ultimate Spaghetti Western. One of the characters actually loses his face in the film, and becomes The Man Without A Face - another iconic figure.

As the story progresses, one of the key characters loses their eyes and becomes a blind gunfighter. He knows he has little chance of survival but feels compelled to fight the opposing forces anyway. He puts his fate in the hands of a kid, a seeing eye kid. Robert thinks of the boy as the same kid in all three movies, they are even dressed the same. In DESPERADO the boy is shot in the crossfire of the big gun battle and the Mariachi risks his life to save the kid. It's the boy's injury that makes him decide to throw away his guitar case full of guns. In ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO the Blind Gunfighter and the boy have to depend on each other to survive. The Blind Gunfighter needs the boy's eyes and the boy needs the gunfighter's protection. Of course, the relationship is not without humor, as in the shootout when the boy yells to the Blind Gunfighter that a bad guy is coming from the right and the Blind Gunfighter asks, "Your right or my right?"

"I couldn't believe I killed off some of my best characters in DESPERADO like Cheech Marin and Danny Trejo, but I brought them back in the Sergio Leone tradition as different characters," Robert says.

A FISTFUL OF IMAGINATION

ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO is the last film in the EL MARIACHI trilogy, and SPY KIDS 3D: GAME OVER was the last film in that series. So what's next for Robert? "I just started a new project today, a CG animated movie I've been writing for the past couple of years. That's something I can work on at home, it's all virtual sets. It's going to be a lot of fun, something that my boys and I can work on. A fun family project. I've also been working on a thriller and a huge science fiction script which might be the next live action thing I shoot," Robert says. Whether his next film is science fiction, thriller, or an animated kids film; it's sure to be filled with larger than life characters and imaginative scenes... and made for a fraction of the price of a big studio film.

"Can you dig it?" Agent Sands (Johnny Depp).

FADE OUT