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Shadowing practice: The “Fear-Forward” Way of Life — Filmmaker Robert Rodriguez

The Tim Ferriss Show
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Well, I want to make something, but I just don't have the time.0:00
It's like, there's no time.0:02
If you're waiting for time to have, it's not going to have.0:04
All the time is gone.0:05
There's no time.0:06
But we can make time.0:08
We can make time for anything that we put our mind to.0:10
So don't give me that shit.0:12
That's like taking a hatchet and chopping off your left leg before the race.0:13
You literally did this to yourself.0:18
Yeah.0:20
You just hobbled yourself for no reason with these beliefs.0:21

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And it's all you.0:24
You're your own worst enemy.0:25
You're like the one in the audience in your way.0:26
The person, the biggest obstacle in your life is you always.0:28
Dr.0:33
Rodriguez, here we are again.0:34
Yes.0:37
It has been almost 10 years.0:37
You believe it?0:39
10 years.0:40
And I can't believe it's been almost 10 years.0:40
Number one, my decision to go bald early was helpful and making me look somewhat similar to the way I was then.0:43
And I always wear a black shirt.0:48
And some people may not know also when I first moved to Austin, which is coming up on eight years, also nuts.0:50
I did not have any plates or silverware at my house.0:56
And I invited you over for dinner, not even thinking of this.1:01
And you're kind enough to bring over and still have it, this red plate.1:05
And a couple of your like dungeon forks and knives.1:10
So thank you for that.1:13
Sure.1:14
Texas Housewarming Gift.1:16
Yeah.1:17
A lot has happened in the last 10 years.1:17
And we've continued to hang out and talk.1:19
And you have a whole new bag of tricks.1:22
Our first conversation was a barn burner of an episode.1:25
Yeah.1:28
People were super excited by it.1:28
There's a lot of tactical advice.1:30
And you have explored a lot.1:33
You have found a lot.1:36
You've fine tuned a lot in the last decade.1:37
You stumble upon new things.1:39
You stumble upon them, literally.1:40
You know, so yeah, we doped them and I've storm away so I can tell you about them.1:42
Look at this.1:46
And I've stored 10 years worth of stuff.1:47
So we opened the vault.1:50
And here we are.1:52
Let's just start with a very broad question.1:53
I mean, what are some of the things that come to mind that have happened since we last spoke?1:56
Well, what's wild is just like a month ago, we just put out an audio book for the first time, for Rebel Without a Crew, the book that kind of2:00
started it all.2:08
And when was that published?2:09
It was in the 90s.2:11
It was in the 95s.2:12
Because I remember you know, Desperado, Dustill Don, Four Rooms, and that book all came out within four months.2:14
And my son, at first four.2:20
Five things.2:22
So the packed year.2:22
Four months, I'll never forget.2:23
But it was full of stories and my diary on how I did mariachi.2:24
And it really, to this day, people come up and say, not only did it help them start becoming a filmmaker, but it helped them start their own business.2:29
You know, it just applied to so many things, as you know, the idea of just taking on a big challenge, betting on yourself, going where no one else is.2:36
That's very entrepreneurial stuff.2:43
And that, what's wild though is I hadn't read it since I wrote it.2:45
So when I had to suddenly do an audiobook for it a couple months ago, I was astounded.2:50
I'd forgotten so much of the details.2:55
And then I was like, now I see why it was so inspirational.2:57
It blows your mind.3:02
Because you know, when you're younger, six months feels like six years.3:03
But now when you hear the dates, because the dates of my journal, how quickly I go from clearly clueless and penniless filmmaker, making a movie, having the idea, having3:07
a movie, doing it by myself, trying to sell it to Spanish Home Video, to instantly being the toast of the town.3:19
It's just unbelievable.3:26
You could see why people would read the book and just drop it and go, I got to go make something.3:27
Because the only reason that happened is because he took action.3:32
He got up and made that movie.3:35
What do you hear most from that book from readers?3:37
Because one that pops up a lot from our episode, because we talked about it a bit, and also stuck with me in the book was, and I'm sure you3:42
have a better way to phrase this, but basically making a list of assets, right?3:51
Not focusing on what you don't have.3:56
Yeah, focus on what you do have.3:58
Right.3:59
So if you got a turtle, you have a pit bull, and you got a friend who's a school bus driver, it's like, all right, we're going to figure out3:59
how to work that into the script.4:05
And it's all point of view, right?4:06
It's like you can really concentrate on what you don't have in life.4:08
And that becomes your focus, and then that becomes your life.4:12
All the things you don't have, I'd never get.4:15
But when you leverage what you do have, it's all about leveraging what you do have, it's also a thing I call freedom of limitations.4:17
Like if we had to make a movie right now with this room, that's it.4:24
It's kind of very freeing.4:28
It's like, okay, this is all we have to work with.4:29
You can come up with a million ideas.4:31
When you can do anything, remember we're trying to make a short film.4:33
Oh, I know.4:36
When you've got unlimited, it's harder.4:37
Is it not?4:40
I have to say, that is one of my great embarrassments.4:40
No, we're going to talk about it.4:45
It's very, we are going to talk about it because it's exactly what we're talking about.4:46
Because you can do anything.4:48
Right.4:51
And a lot of times when you can do anything, you can't do anything.4:52
The canvas is too wide.4:55
Because it's too wide.4:55
So the smaller aperture, the fact that I had very little things was a blessing.4:57
And people took that lesson, applied it to business, applied it to.5:01
And the whole time I'm reading this, you can hear I'm laughing.5:04
I stopped several times.5:08
Many times during the book to update, I go, by the way, what you just heard never happened before this and never happened against it.5:10
It's very rare.5:18
This is lightning in a bottle.5:19
And it's like a movie.5:21
You see incredible setup, pay off, setup, payoff, where a setup, a huge setup falls in my lap.5:22
Don't even know what to do with it.5:29
It pays off in a huge way two weeks later.5:30
And then three weeks later, then four weeks later.5:33
And then you also see why, like I was really bummed I couldn't sell the movie to Spanish Home Video.5:35
I was going to sell it for $20 ,000 before Christmas and the contracts weren't through.5:40
I went home a failure.5:45
It said, Merry Christmas.5:46
I didn't sell the movie.5:47
I was really bummed.5:48
And then you see, because it's so a journal, one month later, I had an agent suddenly because of the movie.5:50
Good thing I didn't sell it.5:57
I was chasing those guys down for the contract.5:59
They could have had it for $20 ,000.6:01
Two months later, I sell it for 10 times that.6:03
Yeah, incredible.6:06
And I'm the toast of the town and getting my first movie deal.6:07
I mean, it's unbelievable.6:10
When I was reading it, I was like, now I see why.6:11
Because when you're living it, you don't know how special it is.6:14
You don't notice it as it's fast -by.6:16
30 years later, it still is an unbelievable story.6:17
And I think it will still inspire people today.6:20
And in that example too, it makes me think of advice I got from a mentor of mine at one point.6:22
And he said, sometimes you need life to save you from what you want.6:28
Yes.6:32
Yes.6:33
In that instance.6:33
That's what I really wanted that.6:34
And when something doesn't work out, we think we made a mistake.6:35
Like that's one of my favorite stories.6:38
You know, the keys to your next success is in your failure because you followed your instinct.6:40
You got to dig in deep and look.6:44
And I show you that I made a movie called Four Rooms.6:46
It bombed.6:49
But I took it on instinct.6:50
Not because I thought it would make money.6:52
If I just be upset about it and be bummed about it, like, wow, I must have made a wrong choice.6:54
I haven't learned anything.6:59
But if I go sift through it, the ashes of that failure, I find I got the idea for spy kids from that because I saw Antonio and his Asian7:00
wives look like a cool international spy couple because they're dressed in tuxedos.7:07
And I thought, what are these two kids have to say the bird?7:11
There's five of those movies now.7:13
And then also it's an anthology and it didn't work.7:14
But I thought instead of four stories, maybe three stories, one director, not multiple directors, I'm going to try it again.7:17
Even those anthologies never work.7:24
Why would I do that?7:26
Because I just did it and I saw what I could do better.7:26
And that was Sin City.7:29
Two of my biggest movies came directly from a movie that you would consider a failure.7:30
So you only know that by journaling, by keeping track of the things that you thought were a mistake and you realize, oh, with time, that was the right instinct.7:35
But sometimes the only way across the river is to slip on the first two rocks.7:44
It's the only way to get there.7:48
And if you don't do it, you don't get there.7:49
Yeah, I'm sure we'll talk about this more when I talk to people and they say, yeah, I journal, right?7:51
I'm like, you do.7:56
But you should see what Robert does.7:59
And I'm sure we'll talk more about journaling because it makes me think of one of my friends, mother's very sweet older lady.8:01
She was on a chairlift skiing.8:07
She's still very active.8:10
She lives in Idaho.8:11
And she was chatting up the woman next to her on the ski lift.8:13
She's like, oh, what do you do?8:16
And the woman's like, oh, I'm a swimmer.8:17
And she goes, oh, me too.8:18
I'm a swimmer.8:19
It was Dara Torres, the Olympian, right?8:19
So it's kind of like if there's journaling and then there's capital J, Marquis Light's journaling, which we'll get to.8:21
But I want to ask you first because I just experienced this.8:27
Was it yesterday?8:32
I'm time traveling because there's a whole warp with South by Southwest.8:32
But I got to see you on stage with your daughter, Rianna.8:35
And I thought to myself, holy shit, she's really good, right?8:42
Like I was going to clap anyway, no matter what, obviously.8:47
But I thought to myself, wow, she's really good.8:50
I wonder how many performances she's done.8:54
And the answer was?8:57
I know.8:59
I waited until the end because I wouldn't tell anybody.8:59
I want to make sure it went right.9:01
She never ever performed before on stage or to a crowd.9:03
But we'll get to this thing later because I want everybody to hear this.9:07
It's so inspiring.9:11
And I've stumbled upon it.9:13
It's counterintuitive parenting.9:14
The kids step up.9:17
We'll get to that because it's a big thing.9:19
Yeah, because it comes back to like parenting and also modeling and coaching.9:21
And creating the space in the footage.9:27
How do you view that creative, not just capability but confidence into other people?9:27
So yeah, I stumbled upon it.9:34
I'll tell you where it started.9:36
It started on spy kids.9:37
My kids were much younger than my two actors.9:38
My two actors were eight and 11, Alexa and Daryl.9:41
And my kids were younger.9:45
And when you're learning how to raise kids, you tend to go a little easier on your kid, not to the spy kids.9:46
Because they're actors.9:54
I'm treating them like performers.9:54
There's no kid stuntmen.9:56
They're having to do their own stunts.9:58
They're having to do the daily, daily challenges, mind bending challenges for these little kids to be action stars.9:59
They're like mini Tom Cruise's that you're just throwing them.10:05
There's no training for that.10:07
And at the end of it, I would just see them become so confident and super human.10:09
They're even today, the actors.10:14
And I would tell myself, I need to make sure I challenge my own kids like this.10:17
Because I saw them go from just regular kids into super kids over the course of those three films.10:20
So I started putting my kids making movies with us.10:27
Like one of them came up with Shark Boy Lover Girl.10:30
I put him in his actors as stunt kids.10:32
And I kept thinking, I wonder if they're going to really resent me later for putting them to work at a young age because it wasn't their passion.10:34
These two kids that were in the movie, they wanted to be actors.10:40
That's a different that they chose.10:43
But I tried it anyway.10:45
It was an experiment because I thought maybe they'll give them a comment.10:47
And boy, it has just opened up a whole world.10:49
All right.10:52
We'll get to it.10:52
So we're going to come back to that.10:53
Yeah, it is big.10:55
And I'm going to tell you some famous people that it's inspired.10:56
And you'll go like, oh, it was directly because of something I told them.10:58
All right.11:02
We're going to get to that.11:02
Now, right next to Rhiannon, there was a huge, huge screen.11:03
And there were other things that were being launched slash announced.11:09
So what else?11:14
Oh, yeah.11:14
We had a the reason we had a big party at my studio on the back lot of my studio, which still has that huge 90 ,000 square foot Alita11:15
set because I'm resourceful enough to put it in a corner of my studio where I could keep it.11:24
Since 2016, we built it with steel support beams so we could have rare it's the largest standing set in the country.11:29
If not the world.11:35
No kidding.11:35
Well, because they mow them down after each movie because the next movie is coming in.11:36
But I put it in a corner of my big section of my studio so we can have it to film from Mexico for other cities.11:38
You know, we've used it on every movie since then.11:45
So we had our party back there to announce this new movie company that I'm doing because I realized I have so many resources there.11:47
You've seen my studio.11:54
I've got that huge set.11:55
I've got all the vehicles, every prop we've ever made, every costume.11:57
And usually that savings gets passed on to studios, but they just piss it away because, you know, they just like they got so much overhead.12:00
So I thought, let's make a slate of action films.12:07
It's called brass knuckle films.12:10
Just action.12:12
Action.12:12
There's an international appetite always.12:13
In fact, if we were to ask Netflix right now what they need, they would say, action, action, action.12:15
We don't have enough action.12:19
So let's make something that everyone needs in once.12:20
Slate of four pictures.12:23
Only that fans who are usually in afterthought, like right now people are showing their movies as self by self with to get the fans to get their friends to12:24
go spend money on their movies.12:32
For the privilege of seeing the movies.12:34
What if they made money on those movies?12:35
So you, for the cost of a badge, can invest into my brass knuckle films for a slate of films.12:37
That means you got four bites of the apple.12:43
One of those is going to make money and sequels and you sharing all that because you're at the ground floor of development.12:46
And that's the revolution that we're doing.12:52
And people come up to me all the time with movie ideas saying, I got an idea for you.12:54
And they tell me and they're ready to give it to me.12:58
It's like, no, you get to come be a co -creator because one of the movies in that slate is going to be picked from one of the fan investors.13:00
And even at the lowest level, everyone gets to pitch us their action movie idea.13:06
The top 20 gets to pitch it directly to me.13:11
So you can be a co -creator and fan.13:12
But there's other perks.13:14
The perks alone would get you great, but it's not crowdsourcing.13:15
It's not Kickstarter.13:18
You're actually an investor using Republic, which can use even unaccredited investors can come invest in this.13:19
And it's a platform investing platform.13:25
They've done it in sports and other arenas, but this is now for film.13:27
And my movies, especially because I've got all my resources to keep the budget slow.13:31
You know how much the original John Wick cost?13:35
No idea.13:37
20 million.13:38
20 million.13:39
The last one was 100 as the audience group.13:40
So we're making budgets between 10 and 30 million.13:43
That's like a lower to mid -range budget, right?13:46
Right.13:48
That's not a lot of money for the chance to make something that could turn into a the billion dollar franchise that it is.13:49
We just keep making bites at the apple.13:55
One of those is going to turn into that.13:58
It's like venture capital.13:59
I mean, that hits straight into business.14:00
It's so fun because the fans, the other thing people always ask me, you don't believe, could you kill me in your movie?14:01
I love to die in your movie.14:07
Can you just have me die in your movie?14:08
Chop my head off, run me over, shoot me.14:09
Everyone wants to die.14:12
So that's one of the perks.14:13
So you put in enough money, you get to die on screen and create a way.14:14
Whatever.14:16
So it's a lot of fun.14:17
I miss the high federal.14:18
Somebody comes in, they say, I like the model a lot.14:19
I want to take 90 % of it.14:22
Right.14:23
Are there kind of limits on what investors can do?14:25
Yeah.14:27
This is just for the development.14:27
Because we can get the money for an action film.14:29
We can already fund the whole thing.14:31
Yeah, sure.14:32
I mean, the international buyers alone, and we could keep the domestic and sell it to all these guys.14:32
So it's like book publishing.14:37
You sell the foreign rights and use that to fund it.14:38
We sell the foreign rights to go ahead and make it if we want.14:40
Or if we have such a big idea, we could take it to a studio and get all the freedoms of an independent film.14:43
We have a lot of avenues because they just need it.14:47
This is the thing.14:49
The problem is they don't know how to make an action movie at a price because they have too much over and they're just too big.14:50
They spend so much.14:55
Well, the incentives are screwing.14:57
That's why John Wick was an independent movie.14:58
That's why Beekeeper was an independent movie.14:59
Because you can go make those for less, but there's always an appetite.15:01
We're not making dream projects or art films.15:05
You know, this is going to be just things that put food on table.15:09
Because I want the fans to win.15:12
Because it's going to be, one, a great story.15:14
And two, they should enjoy it.15:16
Because when you've made a movie at a studio, you don't even know what you got.15:18
Then you take it to the fans and show it to them in a private screening.15:21
They give you notes and then you go, oh, we screwed that up.15:26
We got to go fix that.15:28
We got to reshoot that.15:29
They're brought in at the end and then told to go spend their money on it.15:30
It's like, it should start with the fans and as well as finish with the fans.15:33
So that's the revolutionary thing we're doing because, you know, it's just like Rebel that I could.15:38
It's part of my whole democratizing the process, making it to removing the smoke and mirrors and letting us all enjoy that process together.15:42
Because I've seen the phenomenon of creating a new label.15:50
A label on yourself, a label on a business.15:56
And we'll get to that because I have it written down.15:59
I got, and that's, you'll see the value of brass knuckle, but I'll tell you where I did it before because this is something that's happened since our last 1016:01
years and it's a mindblower and it ties into what the first thing you asked about family.16:07
All right, sweet.16:12
So before we get there, I am so curious because you've written, and I'm sure you've read a lot of scripts.16:12
If you get 100, 200, 400, 500, two nos.16:22
Pitches.16:26
Okay, pitches.16:27
That's right.16:28
So you're not getting a script.16:28
No.16:29
So what form does the pitch?16:30
What form does the pitch?16:32
Well, you have a format.16:32
It's short.16:33
It's like, it should be less than five minutes.16:34
So maybe a two or three pages at the most, maybe one to three pages.16:35
Okay.16:39
Something to tell your story.16:39
And if you've already written, I've had a lot of people come and say, I have an action script for you.16:40
Can I, I said, well, come be an investor and you can pitch it.16:44
I tell you, I've sold more pitches from scripts I'd already half written or written because I know more about the story.16:47
I really know it.16:54
So when I go to pitch it, it's very easy for me to tell you the story.16:55
You've got a much better chance than someone who's just making a pitch.16:58
But we'll give you a format.17:01
We'll teach you.17:03
I want to train people how to do it so that they know.17:03
So it's kind of a film school too.17:05
Can you give us just a teaser of some of the ingredients of a good short pitch?17:07
A good pitch is anything.17:12
If we could sit here right now and I could tell you a story about, you know, there's a guitar player who comes into town.17:13
Music is his life.17:21
And that's all he thinks about.17:22
All he wants to do is find a place for somebody, you know, to hire him.17:24
He goes into a bar in this new town that he walks into.17:29
They don't hire musicians.17:32
He leaves.17:34
Second later, a guy with a guitar case full of weapons comes in, shoots the place up because he's after the main head honcho to leave a message.17:35
So now the word gets out.17:43
Find the guy in black with a guitar case full of weapons.17:44
It's mistaken identity thing.17:47
By the end, he'll become the guy with a guitar case full of weapons.17:49
And he becomes every movie's like a ballad, a sad, tragic ballad.17:53
Because he's going to meet somebody.17:57
She's going to help him.17:58
She's going to die.18:00
And he goes to the next town, but no longer can play the guitar.18:02
He gets his hands shot.18:05
So now he has to become that thing.18:06
Oh, OK.18:08
That's it.18:09
That's a pitch.18:09
That's it.18:10
I can tell you that pitch because I already made that movie.18:10
He already wrote that script.18:14
It was harder when I was first just trying to figure it out.18:15
I was just taking little cards.18:17
But a pitch could be something like that where I would see the potential in it and go, this one we can still work on.18:19
And we're in a higher rider.18:25
It's that seat of an idea that gets people to stop and listen that you want to find.18:26
That's the lightning in the bottle sometimes is just the idea.18:31
And everyone's got an idea just like everybody wants to get killed in the movies.18:33
This is how we're going to make it fun for the fans because it who's going to consume it at the end of the day is the fans.18:36
Not the zombies in suits that are up there who don't even watch these movies.18:43
I go up there at the disconnect blows my mind.18:47
Not all executives, but you go to some studios.18:49
You can tell they don't pay to go see movies.18:51
They don't watch movies.18:53
They don't love movies.18:54
It's a business.18:56
And then you go talk to the fans.18:57
I was just a South by Southwest.18:58
They're losing their minds.19:00
They tell you all about all the movies they've seen about all the things they collect.19:01
They should be sharing in that, not the executives.19:05
They're just going to piss it away.19:08
So you're very good at hooks.19:11
So before we start recording, when we're out on the sidewalk about to come into the building, you're like, yeah, there's this one line.19:15
There's one line at the end that I figured out.19:21
What was the line?19:23
Oh, at the end, when they, so when I told them all about this investment opportunity, at the end, I said, so this is how you manifest.19:24
Because I would have been talking about manifesting because they asked me the question, Robert, you're very positive, but do you have any human doubts?19:31
And I said, no.19:38
And I told them why.19:39
And they blew there.19:40
They were all clapping afterwards.19:41
So at the end, I said, okay, one more thing on manifesting.19:42
This is how you do it.19:46
Next year, it's our goal to come back to South by Southwest with our first brass knuckle film.19:46
Now ask yourself this, if you have the opportunity to invest in being part of it and pitch an idea, that might be that idea.19:53
Wouldn't you rather be sitting up here with us than down there in the audience?19:59
That's how you manifest.20:04
They all cheer.20:05
Mic drops.20:06
Mic drops.20:07
Goodbye.20:07
Yeah, it's true.20:08
You set a target.20:09
I told them about my old trainer.20:10
I don't know, trainer who'd be like, we'd be working now.20:11
And you can tell just making up as you went.20:14
200, 200 set up, 200 push ups, 200 push ups.20:17
And we just go, go, go, go.20:20
Just picking a big number and then just hitting it.20:22
That's kind of what you need to do.20:24
Because if you aim low, you'll hit low.20:26
But if you aim high, it might go low.20:27
It might go there.20:30
And like mariachi, when you read that book, it went straight up.20:31
But if I hadn't taken the action, it would never have happened.20:36
So so many people wait.20:40
That's the discussion we had about, remember you were talking about making a short film.20:41
Yep.20:47
And I said, we just got to commit to making it.20:48
We just got to go ready or not.20:50
Here we go.20:52
Let's set a date.20:52
We almost did everything.20:53
Both of our schedules got back.20:54
It was close.20:56
But you understood the lesson.20:57
I understood the lesson.20:59
Because I told somebody this whole thing.20:59
And he was there right before you were sitting.21:02
I think I told you.21:03
Somebody was right here and they said, wow, everything you're saying makes sense.21:04
You know, I've got a project.21:08
All the pieces are actually pretty much there.21:10
I just guess I'm not ready.21:14
And I said, that's going to be on your tombstone.21:15
Your lies so and so he was never ready.21:17
Why is it that art you have to be ready for in life?21:20
You didn't know you're going to get a flat tire.21:23
You didn't know you're going to go to work and be fired.21:25
You didn't know the fires you're going to be raging.21:26
Every day you're like this, you know, trying to move with the body.21:28
You're not ready for anything life is throwing at you.21:32
But you make you become ready on the spot.21:34
Right.21:36
Why is it that we think art and life should not be the same?21:37
Why art has to be you have to be ready before you can begin.21:40
That's no relation.21:43
They should be the same.21:44
You're not going to be ready until you're almost done with the project.21:46
Because a lot of the answers you need are not going to happen until you're on the journey.21:49
And that's what keeps most people from doing it.21:53
And so that's why I was going to show you that real time.21:56
We are going to do it still.21:58
We're going to do it.21:59
We're going to make a short film.21:59
You're not going to know what you're going to make it on.22:01
And it's going to fall in our lap because we start the process.22:03
That is a huge, huge, huge lesson.22:07
You got to start it.22:10
You just have to start.22:11
You got to start.22:12
In a couple of weeks, I don't even know if I've told you about this.22:12
I have a card game I've been working on secretly for two years.22:17
Card game?22:20
Yeah, card game.22:21
Yeah, you always give to me.22:22
Yeah, I love card games.22:24
And the reason that it happened ultimately is just booking a flight to go spend time with a master game designer and deciding by the time we leave, we're either22:26
going to have a game or we will have stopped.22:37
Because we did a couple of, I would say, B minus attempts where we didn't commit in that type of way and we met in different places around the country22:39
and we would play test different options and different concepts.22:50
And then this final trip was like, okay, look, we're both really busy.22:54
We've given this a few shots.22:58
This time, we're just going to pound our heads against the wall.23:00
So you're aiming up there now.23:04
And we're going to have a game or this is it.23:05
And that kicked off the whole process.23:08
Now it's going to be in thousands of stores.23:11
That's great.23:13
You know, I used to ask me, how do you get so much done?23:14
It's like, you know, I set the bridge on fire and then I run across.23:16
Otherwise, it's not enough steak.23:21
You have a way out like the last ones.23:23
You had a way out.23:25
Y 'all didn't have that goal.23:27
You'll take the escape route.23:29
Yeah, it's easier.23:31
But if you've burned the bridge, you've got to go.23:32
That's what the best thing about self -created deadlines, sometimes we don't have, when we have a deadline, it's a blessing.23:35
Like today, I even asked you earlier yesterday, I said, do you really need it by tomorrow?23:42
Because we could push it to let it go.23:45
No, no, let's do it.23:47
So when you have a deadline, you said you make it happen.23:48
You make it happen.23:50
Yeah, exactly.23:51
We tend not to do that with ourselves.23:51
And it's a crippling thing.23:53
So thinking of the audio book that you just produced and the book that you just made, we have spoken over the years about you writing another book.23:56
Yes.24:09
So what happened to that one?24:10
What happened to that one?24:12
You told me right after we had our test, you said, did you finish that book?24:13
Because I sounded like I was almost ready.24:16
The idea was called the creative life.24:18
Because I gave a talk once about Pro Max or something about creativity.24:21
They introduced me and they said, Robert Rodriguez, cinematographer, editor, composer, screenwriter.24:28
They went through all my credits.24:32
And I got up there and I said, I feel dizzy just hearing all that stuff.24:33
And there's this book out.24:37
I always see it in the bookstores at the airports called The One Thing about doing one thing.24:38
And I was thinking, well, that doesn't apply to me.24:43
Because I obviously carry color.24:45
But then I thought, there actually is one thing that I do.24:47
And I think about it.24:49
It's not those jobs.24:50
I live a creative life.24:52
I apply creativity to everything I do.24:54
And that's why anything that touches creativity is open to me.24:57
So I can paint, I can draw, I can do anything.25:00
Because 90 % of any one of those jobs is actually the creative part.25:02
The technical part about any one of those, whether it's music, say, 90 % creative.25:07
Some of the best musicians don't know how to read or write music.25:13
That's the technical part.25:15
So I realized that that is like, they did all those jobs.25:17
That was the thing.25:20
So I want to write a book called The Creative Life where every chapter is about raising your kids, painting, drawing, filmmaking.25:20
You're going to see the same lesson over and over because it applies.25:28
So that was the idea.25:31
And you ask what happened to it.25:32
It's like, I'm going through this whole new chapter that's so massive.25:34
I would feel dumb to put out the book now because I know this is going to change all my thinking.25:39
And it was when I turned 50, I thought, I wonder if there's some other job I could have where I don't have to be doing as hard work as25:44
filmmaking.25:57
But the knowledge I have, there must be some.25:58
I don't even know what jobs are out there.26:00
This is the first job I ever got was making movies.26:02
I was so young.26:04
So I literally bought jobs for dummies and was looking through it.26:05
No joke because I have these little icons just to see what's even out there.26:09
Yeah, what's in there?26:12
It's like, I don't want that.26:13
I don't want that.26:13
It got to filmmaker.26:14
And that little icon is the guy with his arms up like this.26:16
He said, this is the best job.26:18
You get to be creative with your friends, make stuff, and then just sit back and let the money roll in.26:21
It says, but 99 % of film students don't get this job.26:27
So forget that dream.26:31
Clearly, I got the best job.26:33
But I was thinking, well, I guess I could keep making movies.26:35
I guess that's been good to me.26:37
I guess I could just keep making more.26:38
But then I had to work with my kids for that Red 11 project.26:41
Remember, it was one where we had to do another Mariachi, another $7 ,000 movie, but with digital cameras and show people how it was done today, where we're going26:46
to make one.26:52
And I made all the other filmmakers that were in our group.26:53
For this TV show, I was doing called Rebel Without a Crew.26:56
You could only bring one person, just like I had Carlos Gallardo, the main actor for my Mariachi.26:59
Only one person.27:03
You got to do everything.27:04
He can be your sound man or he can be your cameraman, but you got to do everything.27:05
You got to edit.27:07
You got to shoot it.27:08
You got to write it.27:08
And you got two weeks.27:09
Like I had only two weeks to do Mariachi.27:10
And I saw the filmmakers, just like that thing I was saying about the kids pushing them, I saw them having, they'd only done short films.27:12
None of them had done a feature.27:20
This is your first feature.27:21
And we're going to document it.27:23
Documentary cameras going to be on your reality TV.27:24
I saw them turn superhuman between the first week and the second week.27:27
Once they started shooting, they had no idea how they were going to do it.27:31
They were like, oh my God, this is just so hard.27:33
By the second week, I go to ask them how it's going.27:36
They're already talking about their next three films.27:38
Suddenly their idea of what impossible was went from that to that.27:40
And so I did that as well.27:44
I wanted to do that, but with my kid, with Racer, I picked one kid, my son Racer, who hadn't been working with me in film at all for a27:46
while.27:52
I brought him to be my co -writer, my co -liter, my sound guy, and I didn't show him how to use the sound equipment.27:52
I waited till we were about to start filming, then I was like, okay, this is how it works, go.27:58
And it was very documented.28:03
And I wanted to show people that even without any experience, you can go make a movie in two weeks with no money.28:04
And we did.28:09
And that thing ended up going to festivals, even getting over to directors Fortnite, it can.28:10
People were flying us and paying us to go speak about our masterclass on how we made that movie and show clips from the making of.28:15
We're making money from this little no money movie.28:24
The only reason we had to stop doing a tour went to Columbia, went to Sweden, we went to Paris.28:27
We're doing really well.28:33
My kids were like, dad, you're right.28:34
This is really, this is really where I said, yeah, better than I thought.28:36
We only had to stop because we're shooting We Can Be Heroes.28:38
But the reason I'm going to talk about this label, what blew my mind about it is my kids, I thought they were going to - Labels you applied to28:40
yourself.28:46
Yeah.28:47
I'd put you yourself into just a label like a company, a fake company within your realm, like Press Nuckle.28:47
I would call that a label.28:54
I still don't do other things, but that has a very specific target.28:55
And I'm getting all kinds of ideas just popping in my head because I started that.28:58
It's just this phenomenon like ideas I never would have thought of before, because now it's got a place to go.29:02
Just like with yourself, there's a label I'll tell you about, I came about that with yourself that really transformed.29:07
But my kids, I thought they're going to resent me again.29:12
I'm afraid they might resent me for having to do this $7 ,000 movie for two weeks and see how much hard work it is because they had their own29:15
interests.29:22
They weren't wanting to make movies.29:23
But I said, I need him to be in it because he'll be a good example.29:24
And I made my other son act in it because he made those knives.29:27
I was inspired to make one of their characters a knife guy.29:29
And I asked him to do the score too with me, write the score.29:32
And I thought they have their own interests.29:36
They're going to work on this one day and hate it.29:38
I'm prepared for that.29:40
Instead, they came at the end of the day all excited, their eyes all bugging out of their head.29:41
And they were like, dad, the actor didn't show up.29:45
The script didn't match the location at all.29:48
And when we asked you in the morning what we were going to do, you said, I don't know.29:52
We'll figure it out.29:56
And we thought, that's finally the movie that stumped my dad.29:57
But then by the end, we figured it out.30:03
They were all excited.30:06
I went, oh, they don't realize that's the creative process.30:06
That's every day on a movie.30:09
But it's also every day in life.30:11
It's the same.30:13
And I realized on the making of that movie, so little of what I was teaching them was filmmaking.30:14
It was all life lessons.30:19
How to take on this impossible challenge.30:22
Two -man crew making a feature and then seeing it.30:25
I didn't know we were going to go to Cannes.30:29
I actually didn't predict any of that.30:30
I just wanted to finish for the project.30:32
But you get blessed because of that.30:34
And the label we created is because my son had come to me and said, I wanted to draw comics.30:37
But I wasn't born in the golden age of comics, but I am born in the golden age of technology.30:43
So I'm thinking maybe instead of doing storytelling through comics, give up the drawing thing and do it like with VR.30:47
So let's start a VR company.30:54
Let's start a company.30:55
I'll show you how this works.30:56
All these VR companies need people to buy their helmets.30:58
They need product.31:01
If I call them up and say, I have a VR company, they'll give us money to go make them a short film.31:02
Sure enough.31:07
I just said, here, your names.31:08
We all have double our names, all the kids.31:10
Let's start a company called Double R.31:12
It's the label we made.31:14
So now we're going to make t -shirts.31:15
We're going to make no pads.31:16
And they loved them.31:18
They were looking at it.31:19
Because now any project, any of you have, if Rhiannon has an album she wants to do or Rebel wants to put it on, I think we can do it31:20
through Double R.31:25
It's our company.31:26
Now when you have a company, you have a label, it's now manifested.31:27
Now you've got to do stuff to fill.31:32
You have to do stuff to put into it, right?31:34
Yeah.31:35
You get all these ideas.31:36
Michelle Rodriguez and Norman Reedus are in this movie called The Limit.31:37
Remember that one?31:40
I do.31:41
They made us a logo, Double R logo, big logo.31:41
It went in front of our $7 ,000 movie also.31:44
It went around the world.31:47
That same year, three projects in one year, I went to Netflix to ask what, if they needed any movies.31:49
And they said, we need family, spy kids type thing.31:56
Can you come up with something?31:58
Kind of came up with it in the room.32:00
People are always ripping off spy kids.32:02
I should just rip off myself.32:03
Little kids have to save their parents.32:04
Only what if they're superheroes and their parents are superheroes that get captured, like the Avengers get captured.32:06
Little kids with superpowers, they don't know how to use them yet.32:11
And the little girl who has no powers has to wrangle them together, to work together to go save the day.32:14
Simple pitch, right?32:21
I wrote it out, wrote it with my kids.32:23
We came up with all these fun, special powers we've never seen in any movie.32:26
We took it, we sold it.32:29
It's the biggest movie on Netflix.32:31
Most watched and rewatched movie in their history.32:33
Nothing can touch it because kids watch it over and over and over.32:35
And that has a big, glorious, the same double R logo in front of it.32:40
And my kids were just like, dad, this really works.32:44
I was like, I'm better than I thought.32:48
I was just doing it as an example.32:49
I did not know it was going to put food on the table in that way.32:51
So I'm going to do that again with brass knuckle, but with the fans, because we've done that before, because I told them, come be a part of it because32:54
proximity is everything.33:02
Remember I showed you that painter I went and watched?33:04
Yeah.33:06
And how my painting changed, even though he didn't teach me one thing, except I saw that he just had a regular brush, regular paint, and that it was different.33:06
He didn't know how he was going to attack it each time.33:16
It made you go like, oh, I thought, I thought I needed to know something.33:17
I had a mental block and I went and did it again.33:21
And I was like, there it was.33:25
It was unbelievable.33:26
The proximity sometimes teaches you a lot.33:27
So I tell people, if you come be a part of the company, the proximity to us as a filmmakers, making this stuff, you're going to get 10 ideas, 2033:29
ideas on your own.33:36
You're going to see your own thing.33:37
You'll be part of this, but it's almost like a masterclass without me even trying to teach you.33:38
That's just what I found by being proximity, by being around James Cameron, by being around George Lucas, by being around Spielberg.33:44
They didn't necessarily give me lessons, but just seeing how they move through the world, even for just a moment in time, transforms you completely.33:51
So let's say somebody's listening to this, and those are big names out of reach for most folks.33:59
But they're equivalent in their world.34:04
They're equivalents of people that they really admire, that if they just had proximity to them, they didn't even have to get a lesson from them, and it would just34:07
change.34:14
Your parents used to tell you this, be careful who your peers are.34:15
That meant one thing when you were younger.34:18
It means even more now when you're older.34:19
Like surround yourself with people who are heavier.34:20
We talk to each other all the time, because it just raises our game.34:23
Remember you coming over to my house and seeing, hey, what chopper is that?34:26
Did you, you know, you're like seeing upgrades that you can have just by proximity.34:29
You pick stuff up.34:34
Can you say more about labels?34:35
So label, I'm going to give you my favorite label example.34:37
And it's the thing I realized now when I did the audio book that I already knew and had forgot.34:40
People would come up to me sometimes and tell me some quote from my book, and I'd be like, that was from my book?34:45
I was smart back then, what happened?34:51
But there was something I said in the book saying, stop aspiring.34:54
Huh.35:00
Stop saying you're an aspiring filmmaker.35:01
People come up to you, I'm aspiring filmmaker.35:03
Oh, the words we use are really strong.35:05
You're always going to be aspiring.35:08
You're never going to get there if you call yourself somebody who's on the journey.35:09
Yeah.35:13
Say you're a filmmaker.35:14
Make a card.35:15
I said, make a business card that says, I did director, cinematographer, editor.35:16
Then what do you have to do?35:22
Just like the label.35:23
You have to conform to your identity.35:23
You don't have to go do that stuff now.35:25
And suddenly I have movies out.35:27
You go make movies, because that's what a filmmaker does.35:28
What does an aspiring filmmaker do?35:30
Aspire.35:32
Aspires.35:33
Yeah, you aspire.35:33
I knew that back then, but I'd forgotten it.35:35
The reason I remember it is you always remark, hey Robert, you're always in good shape.35:37
Did I ever tell you I hate sports?35:41
I hate working out.35:43
Did I ever tell you that?35:44
I'm not sure you told me.35:45
All through high school, they would want me to be on the team.35:46
Small school, I was so tall.35:50
Please, come be on our team.35:51
I was like, I don't need them.35:53
Which means sport, football.35:53
Any of them.35:55
Basketball, football.35:56
We need players.35:56
And you're so big.35:58
Come be on the team.35:59
I was like, I don't even know how these games are played.36:00
I've never followed sports.36:02
I'm a filmmaker.36:03
I'm an artist.36:04
I'm a musician.36:04
There's a line in the faculty, Elijah Wood says, that's my line.36:06
I used to tell people, I don't think you should run unless you're being chased.36:09
I just did not love exercise at all.36:11
But then later when I was making movies, my back kept going out, because I was doing Steadycam, because I was sitting drawing for long hours.36:14
My back every year would go out really bad, where I needed like a walker and a quarter sun shot, you know, quarters of shots on my back.36:19
I remember Ricardo Montalbán in his wheelchair at 84, and I had a walker on the spike.36:27
It's two in my back.36:31
And I go, Robert, I'm 84.36:32
What's your excuse?36:35
You have to work out.36:37
I was like, I know, I know.36:39
But I don't know how.36:40
I hate sports.36:41
I hate working out.36:41
The next year I worked with Stallone on the spike.36:42
It's three.36:44
And I said, how can I get better shame?36:45
So my back doesn't keep going out.36:48
And he goes, get the trader.36:49
Anyone who ever got anywhere physically had a trainer.36:51
I say, even you?36:55
Don't you just go trading?36:56
He said, no.36:57
I rather rearranged my sock drawer than go work out.36:59
I was like, well, even if you even need a trader, what chance do us mortal men have?37:03
So I got a trainer and I would hide from him.37:07
I would pay him not to show up.37:10
I hated it.37:12
I hated working out.37:13
I would feel so sick when he's coming over.37:14
And I would half -ass the workouts, because I hate it.37:17
So this woman, friend of mine from Mexico, older woman.37:21
My doctor told me I have to stop smoking, so I'm not smoking right now.37:25
I said, you're going to go back to smoking, because your identity is a smoker.37:28
You're saying you're a smoker.37:32
You're going to go back.37:34
You have to change your identity.37:35
You have to say, I'm a non -smoker.37:36
I'm a non -smoker.37:38
Because then if you just identify yourself as that, you're going to then conform to your identity.37:40
And you're going to, what does a non -smoker do?37:45
They hate smoke.37:46
Makes them sick.37:47
Stay away from cigarettes.37:49
All right, I'll try that.37:51
I don't know if it worked, because I didn't follow up.37:52
But right away I thought, hey, I should apply it to myself.37:53
It's a good thing to go checklist yourself every few years.37:57
Where are some places that I'm not doing that, that I can change the label?38:00
So you know what I did?38:04
And you got to go 180.38:05
If you go by degrees, you're going to get anywhere.38:07
20%, 30 % bullshit.38:10
180.38:11
I went from being hate sport.38:12
Of course I hate working out.38:14
What do I say to myself all the time?38:16
I hate sports.38:18
I hate working out.38:19
Hate exercise.38:20
I love food.38:22
I have to change my identity.38:23
Do you know what I said?38:24
I'm an athlete.38:26
I'm an athlete.38:27
I'm an athlete.38:30
By the next day, everything changed.38:30
What does an athlete do?38:33
Loves to work out.38:35
Makes time to work out.38:35
There is no time, but you make time when you love something.38:37
You eat right, because you're an athlete.38:40
As soon as your identity changes, your label, you conform to that.38:41
So that's the power of identity and the words we choose to describe ourselves.38:46
I catch people all the time describing themselves.38:52
And I go, you got to change that.38:54
Already out of the gate, you're talking about yourself in a way that's not going to be helpful.38:56
Yeah, it's not going to be helpful.39:01
Besides the aspiring, which you mentioned, where people are handicapping themselves by labeling using that term, within, say, filmmaking.39:02
And there are other ways that you see people handicap themselves, just in terms of how they view themselves or their situation or what they have or don't have.39:13
Are there any other common patterns that come up?39:22
Common ones?39:26
I don't know.39:27
They just seem to...39:27
Anything that takes you out of the game early, by a belief you have.39:28
Like, oh, well, I don't have access.39:33
Or everyone has access.39:36
Now, you have a phone.39:37
You can make actually a story out of a phone, or you can write.39:38
I just say whenever I hear anyone use some kind of negative connotation to something, like, well, I want to make something, but I just don't have the time.39:41
It's like, there's no time.39:49
If you're waiting for time to have, it's not going to have.39:50
All the time is gone.39:52
There's no time.39:53
But we can make time.39:55
We can make time for anything that we put our mind to.39:56
So don't give me that shit.39:59
That's like taking a hatchet and chopping off your left leg before the race.40:00
You literally did this to yourself.40:05
You just hobbled yourself for no reason with these beliefs.40:07
And it's all you.40:11
You're your own worst enemy.40:12
You're like the one in the audience in your way.40:13
The person, the biggest obstacle in your life is you.40:16
Always.40:19
Today, I asked you this question outside, because I was curious what your answer was.40:20
But one of the questions that came up was, so Robert, you're real positive.40:24
Do you have any human doubts?40:27
I wanted to come back to that, yeah.40:29
And your answer was no.40:30
Yeah, we'll come back to that.40:31
I just wanted to forget.40:32
It seemed like I could work it in here.40:33
Yeah, yeah.40:34
No, don't get after it.40:34
Because I'm sure a lot of people are like, what?40:35
No doubts.40:37
Yeah.40:38
Okay.40:39
So walk us through that.40:41
So they said, Robert, you're real positive.40:42
Do you have any human doubts?40:45
Yeah.40:47
And I said, just give me a chance to think, because I had never heard it that way, human doubts.40:47
But I said, what do you all think?40:51
And then I see people going like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.40:54
Because that's the real answer you would probably give.40:57
But I like to do counter -tuitive for everything.41:00
So I went, nope.41:03
Why?41:05
Because that's a manifestation, isn't it?41:05
Yeah.41:07
I have no human doubts.41:08
Because I know the process too.41:10
You can't wait to be ready.41:12
You have to have the confidence to know that if you, you know, they say knowing is half the battle, what's the other half?41:14
Not knowing.41:21
I think that's more important, because that's where the magic is.41:22
You don't know what the other half is.41:24
Not knowing is half the battle.41:25
You're going to think, yeah, not knowing is the major part of the battle.41:26
I got there to the set.41:29
I didn't know I was going to do any of it.41:31
But as soon as I saw how limited the options were, suddenly it became very clear.41:33
There was only one way to do it.41:37
And if you have that confidence going into each day, you shouldn't have any doubt.41:39
You shouldn't have any fear.41:43
A failure, my biggest successes came from my failure.41:45
So why would I fear that?41:48
What doubts?41:49
I couldn't think of any.41:50
Can you think of a doubt I should have?41:51
Like give me an example of one, a doubt.41:53
You think, or even you, what doubts would you have?41:54
I think I need to basically take the last four minutes and just listen to it every morning.41:57
I just need to replay that every morning.42:02
I think it's a good reminder.42:03
Okay, but what doubts do you have?42:04
Well, I'll tell you, I mean, and this is, you know, hopefully, hopefully my parents aren't listening to this, but like I grew up in a household where there was42:05
a lot of there's a lot of negativity.42:12
And there's a lot of we don't have X because we're never going to have Y because we can't ever have Z because did you already prove that wrong though?42:15
Yeah, no, exactly.42:27
That's all right.42:28
And you off your own history now.42:28
Yeah, no, totally.42:30
There's software to overwrite.42:31
Yeah, there's a formative year.42:33
So yeah, that's that's that's totally I can't think of any excuses that you should have.42:35
I don't see even what doubts would you think you would have just so I can hear because then I go, okay, I agree with that.42:39
I just hadn't thought of any the spot.42:44
It was so on the spot.42:45
I was wondering what you would answer on the spotlight.42:46
You know what I appreciate about the question is how effective it is at making you stumble because of the human doubts.42:48
I'm like, wait, do I have human doubts?42:57
That's like, do I have animal doubts?42:59
Let's just drop human.43:01
No, I know.43:02
I know.43:02
I just love that.43:02
I'm like, wow, that's a masterful.43:03
Have you dropped that judo move?43:05
Douts.43:07
Do you what doubts do you have?43:07
They wanted to humanize you because you sound like Superman when you talk.43:08
You know, a lot of times when we give these talks, everyone thinks you're Superman, but we know each other.43:11
We know that we all have weaknesses and this and that.43:14
But we don't want that and we don't want to manifest that.43:17
So we don't dwell on that.43:20
Yeah, totally.43:21
I would say that my inclination would be if I were on stage in your place, I probably would have said yes.43:21
But then if we dug a little deeper into what that means to me, I think it would differ from probably how a lot of people would use it.43:27
Right.43:34
So I would have doubts in the sense that I don't know how something is going to turn out.43:34
But that doesn't mean that I don't get started.43:39
And that doesn't mean that I stop experimenting because my whole thing is like, look, for instance, I'm launching this game.43:44
People are like, what?43:51
A game?43:52
Like it doesn't make any sense.43:53
It doesn't connect to the other things that you're doing.43:55
And I'm like, exactly.43:56
Because I want to see what's behind door number three.43:57
And I'm not going to know unless I do this thing that's off menu.44:00
So what are you going to do with it?44:04
What's next?44:06
I have no idea.44:06
Because anything I could plan now is not going to be as interesting as a lot that is going to surface if I do well with whatever the next step44:08
is in front of me.44:17
That's it.44:18
That's all I need to figure out.44:19
And a lot of the time, as you said, you're going to get there.44:21
And circumstances will have changed.44:25
The thing that was supposed to get shipped from the warehouse isn't there.44:27
And you're like, OK.44:31
And actually, side story, I'll keep it super short.44:33
And then I want to actually ask you about a name that came to mind when you said the creative life.44:37
Because then I thought the creative act and I thought Rick Rubin.44:44
And I know you've met Rick Rubin.44:47
So I want to ask about that.44:48
But when I had my very first presentation in South by Southwest 2007, it was the launch of the four hour work week.44:49
And I had put together the most incredible presentation of my life.44:57
I had rehearsed at a friend's garage to his Chihuahuas.45:03
That was the only test audience I had.45:06
And if they got bored and walked away, I had to change my presentation.45:08
That was the only fine tuning.45:12
But I was so proud of this huge deck that I put together, right?45:13
PowerPoint.45:18
I get to the venue, my computer crashes.45:19
And it's like, well, here we are.45:23
Now what?45:25
Roll up the sleeves now.45:26
And it ended up being so much better than if I had used the slides.45:27
It ended up being so much better because I had rehearsed enough that I knew the material.45:31
I didn't need the visual references.45:34
That was a self doubt that I had that I wouldn't be able to give it without the slides.45:36
And then the slides went away and it was better than I could have.45:40
You can have a doubt, but you're not going to live and breathe by that.45:43
You're going to push past it really quickly because you should have fear.45:46
You should have some fear going into something.45:49
I call it fear forward.45:50
Fear forward.45:52
Yeah, fear forward.45:53
Yeah, I like that.45:54
Like have the fear, but don't let it cripple you.45:54
Just go forward knowing you're doing something that's outside of your comfort zone and you're going to reap great benefits.45:57
Yeah.46:01
You might slip on the first two rocks.46:02
It might be four rooms.46:03
If you don't look at it with a negative point of view, you turn it into a spike.46:05
I think that's an RR merch teaching opportunity.46:08
I told somebody that usually they went fear forward.46:11
I like this.46:13
I guess that's kind of catchy.46:13
But I tell you, I got to tell my kids this after we did this project together.46:15
I said, now you really know how it works because like, you know, my son racer said he was helping me with the film, right?46:19
By the end of the two weeks, they interviewed him about it.46:27
He's waxing philosophically about the creative process like he's been doing it for a decade.46:30
He said, I never knew how my dad did El Mariachi.46:35
I mean, every day was, everything was just falling apart, but we'd figure it out.46:38
Every day was figured out.46:43
But I never knew how he did that movie for no money.46:45
But now I do because we just did it.46:46
He didn't know either.46:49
He just started.46:50
Most people never start.46:51
He figured it out day by day.46:52
And now he knew it in his blood because he had just done it.46:55
So I got them together and said, this was the greatest project we could have done together when you work with your kids because they get to be in the46:58
boat with you, figure and stuff out.47:05
They see you trying to figure it out.47:06
And they're figuring, they're part of the solution.47:09
We're going to get into this.47:11
I'm going to talk about nepotism.47:12
Why anyone who says anything negative on nepotism, you just get slapped in the face and kicked on the balls by their kids.47:15
It'll blow your mind.47:21
All right, we're going to come back to it.47:23
But this is the main thing.47:24
This is the main thing about this is that I told them, if I ever get hit by a bus, you all know what to do now because we just47:25
did it.47:32
It's all life lessons.47:32
You get together, you make your plan, which is like your script.47:34
You make it as bulletproof as possible.47:38
So then you can go do your film shoot.47:41
So you can go take action.47:42
You watch it all fucking fall apart.47:44
Just like your projector thing.47:47
And then that's when you roll up your sleeves and go, now let's take this chicken shit and make chicken salad.47:49
And it always comes out better.47:55
It always comes out better than your original plan.47:57
Every time.48:01
Wash, rinse, repeat.48:02
That's life.48:03
You just learn the most valuable lesson of life on this little microcosm of what life is, which is a movie.48:04
Because remember, life and art should be the same.48:09
You're writing a story and you're writing your own story while you're doing it.48:12
The story of who you are and who you're going to become and what you're going to achieve.48:15
As you're writing a fake story, that's why they go together.48:19
That's why people identify with stories.48:21
You're literally, we're writing our own story.48:24
So do you have doubts?48:25
Yeah, but I'm going to write past it.48:28
I'm going to write my story to where I'm not the guy that has doubts.48:29
So that's the power of creativity and labeling.48:32
And that's a label.48:36
Am I going to say I'm a guy who has doubts?48:37
No, because then guess what?48:39
And now I have doubts.48:40
And if there is a doubt I can identify, I'm sure like you just did, figure out a way past it right away.48:42
So that's why I would just say blanket.48:47
I don't have any doubts because I don't want to be the guy that has doubts.48:49
Yeah.48:52
You have to make your business card first that says, guy with no doubts.48:52
I'll add that to it.48:56
I have no doubts.48:57
I remember Kevin Smith, filmmaker.48:58
Yeah, sure.49:00
Clarkson and all that.49:00
He sent me a script called Dogma.49:01
You said, I wrote this script.49:03
It's got special effects.49:06
It's all out of my wheelhouse.49:07
So but you wrote it and he goes, yeah, but it's definitely a Robert Rodriguez move.49:09
You direct it.49:12
You go, why didn't you want to direct it?49:13
It's too big for me.49:15
Well, now you have to make it.49:16
You fear forward.49:18
You're doing something that pulls you out of your wheelhouse.49:19
And you're going to he was so thankful that I told him that and that he did it, gave him the permission to go do it and it transformed his49:22
career.49:28
You know, because now he wasn't doing the comfort zone.49:29
He was now going, you know, reaching way beyond.49:32
Discomfort zone.49:35
So fear forward, get out of the comfort zone.49:35
That means you're on the right track.49:38
If you don't have fear on something you're going to do that day, you're probably fucking wasting your time.49:39
You're doing something that you're just spinning your wheels.49:44
Yeah.49:46
So you want to put yourself out there.49:46
That's not the same as having doubt.49:49
I don't think it's just.49:51
It's a good.49:51
It's a good litmus test.49:53
I have a little bit of doubt that this is my daughter's going to be able to form a morgue.49:54
It's the first time in front of a crowd.49:57
She may get nervous.50:00
I don't know.50:01
She's never seen a crowd.50:01
She might step out and see the crowd and freeze.50:02
Who knows?50:04
Yeah.50:05
But I don't want to put that out there because I don't want to manifest that.50:05
I want to manifest.50:08
And we're going to have cameras filming.50:08
We're going to make this a big moment.50:10
Yeah.50:11
And she rose to the occasion because she's what happens.50:12
She looked like a seasoned vet.50:15
So Rick Rubin, his very first podcast, as far as I'm aware, was on this podcast, the Tim Ferriss show.50:17
All right.50:23
Ages ago, it was in his sauna.50:24
He actually didn't think I was going to say yes because he had a barrel sauna at what was Shangri -La in Malibu.50:27
It ended up burning down.50:34
Sadly, this is quite a few years ago now.50:35
But he said, OK, OK, we'll do the podcast.50:38
At that time, he basically did next to no media.50:40
And he said, we'll do the podcast, but it has to be in the sauna.50:43
And we're going to do the sauna and then cold plunging and sauna.50:47
And I was like, all right.50:49
Just sweating it out.50:50
So we did it in the sauna.50:51
Now, the one thing we neglected to consider was not the temperature of the recorder, because I could put that on the floor and it was fine.50:52
It was the mics.50:59
So we had to wrap those in towels as we did the interview.51:00
But you got to meet Rick a handful of years ago.51:04
Yeah, 22.51:08
What was that like?51:08
I don't even speculate.51:10
I mean, I have my own guesses as to how you guys might mesh or interact.51:11
But what was that like?51:16
Oh, it was wonderful.51:17
He showed up at my house.51:17
OK.51:20
You know, he was in town producing a band and I heard he wanted to meet me.51:21
So I said, yeah, you can just come to the house.51:26
So he shows up at my house.51:27
So I figured, oh, he's probably heard some of my podcast stuff very similar to his creativity.51:29
We all approach it differently.51:34
We all have our own theories.51:36
Like, so he shows up and he goes, I don't know who you are or what you do or anything about you.51:37
But I had a feeling I was supposed to come meet you.51:44
So I said, you came to the right place.51:47
I'm going to show you my house.51:49
You know, you've seen my crazy.51:51
Yeah.51:52
I'm going to talk about my house.51:52
I'm talking about how I drew it first, envisioned it, built it.51:53
By the time I finish telling you about my house, you'll know who I am.51:57
So I go out and I give him the whole tour and he's like, OK, OK, yeah.52:00
That was just like my house.52:03
It might have been the one in Malibu.52:04
That's just like my house in somewhere.52:05
And he goes, we're the same guy.52:07
So we go outside where my waterfall is and my phone we sit and he puts his feet up.52:09
And we just start talking.52:14
He just wants to hear about it.52:15
So I start telling him what we're talking about.52:16
All this creativity, my whole spiel on it.52:18
And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're going on and going on and going on and going on.52:21
I'm doing most of the talking.52:25
And then as we're leaving, he said, I want to give you my book.52:26
I'm about to put out a book.52:32
This book wasn't out yet.52:34
So he ran to the car, came back out and it was just like a galley version of the book.52:35
I said, what is this?52:40
And he goes, actually, it's pretty much everything we're just talking about is in there.52:41
I was like, really?52:45
Okay, I want to give you my book.52:46
So I gave my books the picture I have.52:47
I'll show you.52:48
It was him with my book in front of my house.52:49
Oh, that's funny.52:51
And then he left.52:52
And then when he left, I'm reading him like, oh my God, I read the book.52:52
It's so similar, but different to things that I, because we all come at it from a different area.52:56
But his solutions were similar, but different because it's from a different word than mine.53:02
Same question, same kind of things.53:07
It's that hive brain.53:09
I don't know.53:11
And you said this before.53:11
You said, because you're a creative, I know other creatives like this, you have one foot in the magic realm.53:12
And it's like when your foot's in there, you pick up the signal from the others.53:19
You all kind of get ideas from each other before even that.53:22
It's why he knew to show up.53:24
And I've had people just show up knowing drawn there, knowing they're supposed to be there, not knowing why.53:25
It's this kind of magical thing that when you get into the creativity world, you really are tapping into the universe in a way to get your ideas because your53:31
brain's not smart enough.53:38
I'm not smart enough to come up with these ideas.53:40
They're out there.53:41
And everyone in every discipline has a different line for that.53:42
Like Keith Richards says, I don't come up with these riffs.53:44
They're all floating around.53:47
I was just the first one to pull it down and use it.53:48
You know, they all have their version of that, that it's not from them.53:50
That's the best way to think because then there's no ego involved.53:53
And if you have no ego, that it's just you're a conduit for this creative spirit to come through you.53:56
Well, then you can do anything.54:01
I can be a good pipe.54:02
I just get my ego out of the way and let it come through.54:03
Because when you're in a flow, you start, I don't want to write this book.54:06
And you start writing the first few lines come out and it starts going.54:09
You can't even believe what's coming out.54:13
It's because creative spirit, in my theory, doesn't have hands.54:14
It's waiting for you to get off your ass and pick up the pen and then it can help take over.54:19
And so always take action.54:25
That's why I say always take action.54:27
Don't wait to be inspired.54:28
Action first, inspiration second.54:30
Yeah.54:32
Because if you wait to be inspired, like to make your short film, good luck.54:32
They ain't ever coming.54:36
But if you just start making the film, ideas you never in a million years would have come up with come into your head because it's not you.54:36
It's coming through you now.54:45
It's like finally you're going to go make that film we've been wanting to make.54:46
Creative spirit must be very disappointed in people who don't take action.54:50
Who sit there.54:54
And I tell you where I figured this out.54:54
When I was a cartoonist at 19, I had a daily cartoon strip.54:57
It had to take me hours to draw it.55:01
I would have to draw a little bit, try to figure out a joke.55:03
And I'd have a deadline every day.55:05
I wouldn't get paid.55:07
And I needed the money.55:08
I already had two jobs.55:09
So one day I thought, I gotta figure out a better, easier way.55:10
I wonder if I could just come up with a method where I go home, sit and just try and picture it.55:14
Just picture it and then go draw it.55:20
And I sit there for hours and be like, deadline's over.55:23
Oh shit, I gotta go do this.55:25
I just have to pick up the pen and draw.55:26
And as soon as I started drawing, I would draw one drawing, three others.55:29
And then I was kind of, oh, this kind of drawing kind of goes with that.55:32
I put that there and then that would be formulated.55:35
That's the process.55:37
It's not going to come to you if you're just sitting on your ass waiting for it to make magic.55:39
You have to physically pick up the pen or pick up the camera or pick up the guitar.55:43
And then it's like, thank God, because it doesn't have hands.55:48
Now I can come through.55:51
Now let me take over.55:52
That's the whole magic of creativity.55:54
So you shouldn't have any doubts if you could do it.55:56
As soon as you say, wow, I don't know how I did that.55:58
I wonder if I can do it again.56:01
You just shut the pipe.56:02
Because your ego got in the way.56:04
You thought it was you.56:05
It's not you.56:06
It's coming through you.56:07
So just be a clear pipe.56:08
I know that works because I taught that to my kids in a class when they were younger.56:10
And right away, they each wrote a book.56:15
It was unbelievable because they didn't have anything to unlearn.56:17
They didn't have any experience yet where we all have more doubts now because we're older.56:22
It's like that thing where you teach a class full of grade school kids who can write novel, who can be the president, who can do an opera, who can56:28
dance ballet.56:36
They all put their hands up because they don't know better.56:36
You keep asking them as the years go on, hands start going down.56:38
Even with no life experience, they just all stop believing they're that person without any evidence that they're not.56:42
I always wanted to be that kid who had his hands up.56:50
No matter what.56:53
Even if it was something I didn't know how to do, put your hand up because you're figuring out as you go.56:54
Don't have a doubt.56:59
Just go do it.56:59
Just go do it.57:00
Seems to be working for you so far.57:01
It's that, do you ever see that movie Being There with Peter Sellers?57:03
No.57:07
He's so naive.57:07
He's just a gardener.57:09
But he gets hit by a car and he ends up in Washington.57:10
And everyone thinks he's so smart because he's just talking about the garden and they all creep into him.57:14
And by the end, he walks across the lake.57:20
Oh.57:25
Because he doesn't know you can't.57:26
Doesn't know you can't do it.57:28
It's the most beautiful movie you can see.57:29
Peter Sellers, I think, got an Oscar for it or a nomination of these.57:31
And it's amazing.57:34
And you're just like, oh my god, they all think he's this prophet.57:36
And everyone's quoting him and doing their own version of what he's saying.57:39
But he's just saying, when the roots are strong, the garden will flourish.57:42
And everybody's like, whoa.57:46
But that naive quality, you want to keep that naive quality.57:50
That's what got me to do mariachi.57:53
I didn't know it couldn't be done.57:54
It was only till later when people said, how'd you make that movie for $7 ,000?57:56
You know, that's impossible.57:59
I was like, really?58:00
You're just like, it didn't seem that hard.58:01
But if you're telling me, I guess I just followed my nose and I ended up at the top of my own ever somehow.58:04
I wasn't trying to do that.58:08
So some people was impossible.58:10
But to me, it was just solutions I came up with to make up for what I didn't have.58:11
Yeah.58:17
What does your journaling look like these days?58:17
Or what insights have you had?58:19
I hope I can inspire everybody to journal.58:21
Yeah.58:23
It's really weird.58:23
I go do a talk and I say, how many people keep a diary or journal?58:24
It could be like a group of 400 people.58:28
I'll see two hands, three hands.58:31
I'm like, oh my God, if I can leave you with any impression.58:34
My big thing now, I tell people, this is my theory.58:38
Living is reliving.58:42
Living is reliving.58:44
Because you go to a concert and people have their video cameras up and everybody says, put it away, live in the moment.58:48
Counterintuitive.58:55
I say, the moment fleets.58:56
You're not going to even remember it tomorrow.58:59
Do you even remember who was standing next to you?59:01
You know, like from day to day, it just goes by because we see life at 96 frames per second, 20K resolution, surround sound.59:03
Like right now I'm looking at you, but I can see there's a glass here.59:15
I can see in the peripheral, there's someone over here operating this thing.59:17
A year from now, five and then 10.59:20
And all our three pound meat computer can process.59:24
It might have a file photo of you and a t -shirt and me and a t -shirt because we kind of remember each other.59:29
But the metadata will be some kind of narrative that we spoke and had a good time.59:33
That's it.59:38
That's all you're going to have.59:39
And when you journal, I'm shocked going back.59:40
I was trying to figure out when I had done my guitar, when I bought certain guitars, I couldn't remember.59:44
I knew some were gifted, but I couldn't remember.59:49
I just did a word search in my journals because I have a year.59:52
By year journal, guitar, guitar, guitar.59:54
So I've read it.59:57
Shocked me that, oh, wow, I thought I bought this one.59:58
It was a gift from this person.60:00
How can I not remember that?60:01
This is a big guitar.60:02
This is like a $10 ,000 guitar.60:04
How would I not remember that?60:06
And I would read a little bit of the diary around it.60:07
I was floored.60:09
Have you go back 10 years?60:11
Yeah.60:12
Even 15 years.60:12
It's like you're reading someone else's journal.60:14
You're reading someone else's journal.60:16
And it's like, I guess I just have to take it for what it's there.60:18
Well, my mom actually gave me a box of papers that was sitting in one of the rooms in my childhood home.60:21
She said, what do you want to do with this?60:29
And I opened it up and in that box were printed out emails that I had sent my mom when I was 15 from Japan to tell her what I60:30
was up to.60:42
And I did not remember.60:42
That was one of the most formative experiences of my life.60:44
I have a lot of memories from that period.60:46
I did not remember 99 % of what I put in those emails.60:48
It's got like a dehydrated version of, you know, that you have to put water on to reconstruct.60:53
But even then it mostly just fades away.60:57
You don't even recognize it.60:59
So it's so important to keep your history.61:00
But imagine what's your favorite jokes and your favorite things about life that you share with your brothers, your family, or, you know, it's all past stuff.61:02
Yeah.61:10
So living is reliving.61:11
My kids now love watching the movies of them growing.61:12
I shot so much video and kept journals of all their childhood.61:15
They all journal now, but they have their whole childhood because I gave them the journals of their childhood.61:18
They got their whole life journaled.61:22
But I've been showing them home movies recently because I've been digitizing all the old tapes.61:24
And I thought, they're not going to dig this.61:27
Some of this shit looks like VHS.61:28
It's so cruddy and compared to today's HD stuff.61:30
I was showing them footage of them younger and I have tons of it.61:35
Because I thought later in life I could be watching relive their wonderful childhood, right?61:39
Forget it.61:44
You don't remember.61:45
I don't remember even filming this stuff.61:45
It's like new adventures of we're watching it, not knowing what's going to happen next.61:47
And they're watching it.61:51
I saw my son leaning into the screen to see what was around the corner.61:53
I said, you just leaned into the screen.61:56
He said, oh, wow, I left the living room.61:58
This is like virtual reality to me.62:01
And I was like, wow, that's interesting.62:03
Then I realized why compared to our memory.62:05
That's virtual reality.62:09
Even the crappiest VHS tape.62:10
You hear the sounds.62:13
You see the place.62:14
You start reformulating.62:15
And they cannot stop watching it.62:17
Every time they come over, we watch new fun tape.62:20
And we find classic new things that become benchmarks of humor and jokes that become iconic.62:23
Reliving is living.62:28
Like my mom turned 75 and I said, we got to do some for your 75th birthday.62:30
And she said, no, no, no, no, no, we don't want anything done.62:35
Why not?62:37
Because nothing can top my 65th birthday.62:38
65th, what happened then?62:40
Oh, you gave me a car and you flew in everybody from out of town.62:42
I was like, really?62:45
I don't remember that.62:46
It was only 10 years before.62:47
I must have tape.62:48
I looked it up, found the tape, put it in.62:49
Oh my god, I didn't remember any of this.62:52
So I recut the tape, took it to her and we had a big party and I showed the tape.62:53
She was crying more.62:57
Now she knows she gets the key what it means.62:59
She's like, oh my god.63:03
That's like, I don't have to do anything anymore.63:04
We'll just play the old tapes.63:06
It was more appreciated the second living is reliving because that's when it becomes iconic.63:08
And in the moment this is all just flying by and we don't know what's important.63:13
It's only by journaling that you go, this person's no longer with us.63:16
What he said changed my life and I didn't know and I forgot that he told me this at this time.63:20
If I had not journaled that, so if your life is worth anything, write it down because then you'll be surprised how much of it is more valuable than you63:25
think.63:33
And that's and you're only going to know that by journaling.63:34
What's your process?63:37
Is it like end of day Word document?63:37
What is it?63:40
End of day is 12, 12 a .m.63:40
An alarm goes off.63:42
It says journal because I figured by 12 at night, I will finish with most bullshit that I can actually sit and do it.63:43
Okay.63:51
And I've actually got my partner writing journal now.63:51
Never kept a journal before because of the stuff I just said.63:56
They're starting to see the value in it and they send me their journal too.64:00
That's always the best.64:03
If your partner also journal.64:03
Seeing someone else's perspective on a big event.64:04
I see you have to journal every day.64:07
If you don't want, but at least the big events, Valentine's, Christmas, birthday, special trip journal.64:08
I'm going to take you on a trip with journal for me and give me that as a gift.64:14
And it's wonderful.64:17
Is it bullets points?64:18
Is it a page?64:19
Tell you what, I used to sometimes just do bullets.64:19
I try to write more now because I've gone back.64:22
Curls.64:24
Just more detail about what happened just because it's going to be gone.64:24
Now I know it goes away.64:28
It's not going to trigger your memory.64:30
In the earlier days, if I only had time to write some bullet point type stuff, I would just do that because I thought my memory, you know, Cumin.64:31
No.64:39
Gone.64:40
Yeah.64:40
Gone.64:41
It's someone else's journal.64:42
Yeah.64:43
Just know that.64:43
Even like seven years ago, before my son started writing music for me, he had told me, I found a diorange.64:44
He said, Rebel told me his one year, five year and 10 year plan.64:51
It was great.64:55
And I was like, what did he tell you?64:56
I don't remember.64:58
And I asked him, did you have it somewhere?64:59
He goes, oh yeah, I have it on my phone.65:00
Oh, shit, it's not on my phone.65:02
It's in my diary.65:03
Oh, please find it and send it because now I want to know.65:04
Because your whole life changed after that.65:07
I really want to know now with more interest than when you first told me.65:09
Because now we know that whatever you said is not the path that ended up.65:14
And so yeah, journaling is so powerful and so needed because you think you're going to remember.65:18
It's just a meat computer.65:25
It's not going to remember it at all.65:27
Yeah.65:29
And now I just find myself having to leave myself breadcrumbs all day because my memory is fading anyway, just to know what I'm doing, much less what I already65:29
did.65:36
But it does become iconic and you find some really fun stuff.65:37
And if we find a video, oh my God, this is the best thing.65:41
We find a video of us playing, having a great time back in 2003.65:44
And the weird thing you'll find if you videotape your kids and journal, you find these weird 20 year full circle moments.65:47
You know, full circle moments.65:57
Like we just started working with a studio, their favorite animation studio in Japan.65:59
They love Japan.66:04
They love Japan.66:05
They're all about Japan.66:06
Japanese knife making.66:07
They build houses with no nails, my kids.66:08
Oh yeah, the joiner is amazing.66:10
I found the videotape the first time I told them about Japan.66:12
Me telling them and I had, I taped it because I wanted to see their reaction because it was like, you're going to love this place.66:16
And you see their eyes light up and they watch it now and go, that was the moment of inception.66:22
That was the moment we never forgot and we built upon.66:27
And to see that is amazing.66:31
But then you go back to the journal, because there's stuff in the journal, it's not on video and vice versa.66:32
And I go, wow, you know what we were doing?66:37
What I was doing while we were playing all those games, I was wheeling and dealing big deals in LA for once upon a time Mexico and Cincinnati.66:39
And they see the context of what was happening in between those moments.66:46
And you get this clear picture of, oh my God, you can totally be all in as a dad and all in as a businessman.66:50
And that teaches them about life.66:57
Like, wow, you can have it all.66:59
You really can.67:01
You know, it just helps in so many ways to document your life.67:02
Do you have any other parenting hacks?67:06
The biggest life hacks is just working with your kids.67:09
Like I said, I stumbled upon it.67:12
But then when they, when I saw a racer being so excited about what he learned about the creative process, and then I realized everything I was teaching them was67:14
life lessons.67:25
I went from fearing that they were going to resent me to realizing I'm going to make all of them work on a film with me.67:26
That's just going to be, this is what you got to do.67:34
Part of the deal.67:36
Part of the deal.67:37
Not so that you can become a filmmaker, because you're going to learn more about life.67:38
These are life lessons.67:41
And it's the best way to do it.67:43
It's project based.67:44
It's challenging.67:46
So my son, when we did We Can Be Heroes, I thought, okay, he's done a few scores for me, because he'd been playing piano since he was four.67:48
They all played piano.67:55
Just, and it was just to connect right to left side of the brain.67:56
That's all we gave them that for.67:58
But he was our best piano player.68:00
And at the end, he did his last recital, the high school was finished.68:01
And he was already doing knives, Japanese knives making.68:04
And he won, Forged in Fire.68:06
Oh my God.68:08
Did I tell you he won Forged in Fire?68:08
My son got on, when he was 18, got on Forged in Fire.68:10
There's a TV show.68:13
And won that TV show.68:14
Outdoing all these other blacksmiths, because he'd been teaching himself Japanese knife maker.68:15
And I asked him, how did you win?68:19
You won $10 ,000.68:22
How did you, what was your mindset?68:23
You were using tools you'd never even used before.68:24
They were just throwing stuff at you, problem solving, creative problem solving.68:27
And he gives me this samurai answer that I love.68:31
He said, I convinced myself that I'd already won.68:34
Somehow I won.68:38
And so when I'd come up against the challenge, instead of thinking what I had to do to get past the challenge, I just needed to remember what I did68:40
to get there.68:46
I was just like, whoa.68:47
Some Musashi samurai stuff.68:50
I was like, wow.68:53
But again, you'll come up with innovations when you're thrown into the fire.68:54
And so he was doing so good with the music.68:59
He composed a couple of scores for me, but they were just all synth based, for Red Eleven, for that short film that was a VR film.69:02
We can be heroes though.69:10
That's my bag.69:11
I do orchestral stuff.69:12
We'll do the score for that together.69:13
That way I can teach him orchestral scoring, because that'll be the next stage.69:15
He writes the first piece, not even a picture.69:18
He saw what picture I was at and he went and wrote it to me.69:21
It's like John Williams was huge.69:23
It was massive.69:25
And I was like, okay, yeah, sure.69:26
Let me check it out.69:28
I'll try it to picture.69:29
I didn't want him to see me try it to picture.69:30
I put it to picture.69:32
It matched.69:33
I doubled it, tripled it.69:34
It fit this whole five minute sequence.69:35
I called him up 10 minutes later, come back up here and watch.69:37
It hits everything perfectly.69:40
If you could do more of this there, more of that there.69:42
He was stunned.69:44
I said, good news and bad news.69:45
Good news is it's awesome.69:47
Bad news is I can't help you at all.69:50
I don't know how you did this.69:53
Where did you learn music theory?69:55
They don't teach you that piano, because I never learned theory.69:57
And I was always proud of that.69:59
That's the 10%.70:00
I thought you didn't need to know.70:01
Different.70:03
I mean, how he can manipulate music because he knows theory.70:04
He goes, oh, I learned it on YouTube.70:06
I was like, well, I'll tell you what, you're going to have to write the whole score, but I'll help you.70:08
I'll be your assistant.70:12
I'll edit it.70:13
I'll show you how you can repeat themes.70:14
And he sat there and he did it.70:16
And he was just, I could just see, he was just under the gauntlet.70:18
I said, dude, this is the only way to learn.70:21
Throw you in the deep end.70:23
If you get a lung full of water, we'll fish you out.70:24
And his eyes were like this big.70:27
But years later, he came back to me and said, I'm so thankful you did that.70:29
My whole life changed because you put, I didn't know I could do it, but I had no choice.70:33
He knew I could not help him.70:38
I wasn't doing it as some kind of weird teaching exercise.70:40
I had no, I said, let me see your charts.70:42
The thing you have going on in the baseline only, I would do a whole score with that.70:46
How'd you come up with all this?70:50
So there's, I can't help you.70:51
And I remember the conductor said, you know, we recorded in Vienna.70:53
Stop.70:58
He sent me a video.70:58
Of him conducting.70:59
Yes.71:00
I said, go learn on YouTube real quick how to conduct.71:01
Because I want you to conduct one of them.71:04
Because I want video of you with the James Bond Orchestra conducting your own piece.71:05
Because I never got to do that.71:10
Yeah.71:11
And it's, you're so proud when your kids can take on the chart and you see it just transforms their life.71:11
But he, the Vienna conductor stopped the score and said, this is a magnificent score.71:16
I can't believe you're 20.71:22
He was 20 at the time.71:23
But again, you throw your kids in the deep end.71:25
And I tell this to all the parents I can, because it's counterintuitive.71:27
And a lot of parents would say, I don't want to push.71:31
But I tell you, if you have the opportunity to work with your kids, do it.71:33
Because it enriches your life.71:38
Because you are mentoring them.71:40
They're mentoring you because they're figuring out shit like that.71:43
But you never would have thought of.71:46
You're doing a project based thing together.71:48
That's impossible.71:51
That you're all going to overcome together.71:52
You know how many parents, you know, like try to give their kids advice on their job.71:54
And the kids just like, yeah, you don't know.71:58
You're not in my shoes.71:59
You're in their shoes.72:00
You're all trying to figure it out together.72:01
So you're actually useful.72:03
You're not just some jepetto who's worried about their kid all the time.72:04
I always say, don't just parent.72:07
Partner.72:10
Because after a certain age, as soon as they're teenagers, they replace you with their peers because you become useless to them.72:11
If you went a relationship that lasts a long time, partner.72:17
Don't parent anymore.72:20
They don't need a parent anymore.72:21
They need a partner.72:23
They need a mentor.72:23
They need an OB1.72:24
Because that's what they look for in their life.72:25
Mentors.72:27
Be their mentor.72:27
Because then their confidence grows when they're mentoring you back.72:28
And they're seeing that their confidence soars.72:32
And it's family time.72:35
You're checking all the boxes.72:36
I don't even do anything anymore.72:38
I don't take any job, any assignment, unless it's going to involve my children.72:39
Because life is so good that way.72:44
You're checking all the boxes.72:46
You're preparing them for life.72:47
You're learning from them.72:48
They're learning from you.72:49
And it's family time.72:50
I was telling this to Stallone.72:51
How he's having dinner with Stallone and his wife.72:53
It's pre -COVID, right after COVID.72:56
Something I'd just done, We Can Be Heroes, this movie, the biggest movie on Netflix.72:58
And I was telling him my son did score.73:02
Wrote it with my kids and all this.73:04
And Jennifer was like, her eyes were just wide.73:06
Like, whoa, she hits Stallone.73:10
She goes, you don't work with your daughters.73:12
You don't work with your daughters.73:15
And Stallone was like, I was like, man, I wouldn't get anybody in trouble here.73:16
You know, maybe I should reel it back a little bit.73:20
But sure enough, next year, his daughters have podcasts.73:23
He would show up every once in a while to help boost some ratings and stuff.73:27
Now they have a TV show.73:31
It's Family Stallone.73:32
All of them together working together.73:34
They live in that dream.73:36
And they're just so happy.73:37
So I tell people, because people can't unhear it when they hear it.73:39
They just need to know someone did it and that it worked.73:43
To know, oh, I have a way to try that with my kids.73:45
Because I didn't know my kids would want it to work with me.73:49
You know what happened with my teacher?73:51
My kid's teacher told me, you know, your son racer, when he was like 15, he loves knights.73:53
We're studying knights and we're talking about squires.73:58
And I asked, well, who would you want our apprentice under?74:00
And he said, my dad.74:02
I was like, really?74:04
He's never told me that.74:05
Did he say that?74:07
She was like, yeah, he said it was your dad.74:09
I was like, wow.74:10
How'd that feel later?74:11
It was wild.74:12
They see kids have egos too.74:13
They don't want to go and just tell you that.74:15
They might tell someone else, but they're not going to tell you.74:17
So don't assume.74:19
Don't assume they don't want to be a part of your life or be part of your work.74:20
Because I've been working with my kids since they were very young.74:25
I didn't know it would keep going for 20 years, you know.74:28
And now it's just become the thing that we do.74:31
And they endlessly inspire me because they just have that confidence built in.74:33
But we're building a go -kart together.74:38
I know some parents would dismiss it as an opportunity like that and call it entitlement.74:40
But wow, you're so wrong.74:47
So wrong.74:49
Let me set you straight.74:49
Because this would be a curse on your life if you don't at least know this.74:50
I would say, and I'm curious if you agree or not, or if you have your own position on it, I would say that if you have an opportunity to74:55
work with your children, if you're in that position, because I don't know, maybe not all jobs adapt to that, but take it.75:01
It's a tremendous gift to everyone involved and beyond.75:07
Because if you refuse to do so, because you're afraid other people will call it nepotism, you are missing out the most important opportunity of your collective lives.75:11
Because look, what happens as parents when we pass away?75:22
Don't we just give everything that we've created to our children?75:26
Is that not entitlement?75:31
They had no part in building?75:33
There was an opportunity to build this with them, so that when they inherited it, they could go, I made this with my dad.75:36
Right.75:45
So it's like, oh, thanks, dad, for all this shit that I had no part of, that you went made without me being involved at all, getting that chance to75:46
have that mentorship go both ways, to build something together, to have that family time together, because you were afraid someone would call you up for nepotism.75:57
Thanks.76:11
I'm having a ball and it's inspiring everyone who's a parent to go partner instead of parent, their child, and have a relationship to last your whole life.76:12
I mean, what strikes me about it also, I mean, there's trust fund kids or trusteferians have a new term.76:23
Well, it's not exactly the same, but it gets used similarly, nepo babies, right?76:31
But the connotation of that word, I don't think applies to you at all, because at least, and this is not the Merriam -Webster definition, but when I think of76:36
nepotism, there is a sort of unearned giving implied.76:44
There's an unearned giving implied.76:51
And then there is teaching, which you do, and then there is another thing, I would say a step above that, which is enabling someone specifically to have the confidence76:52
that they can figure it out, that they can learn.77:10
You didn't tell your son to go to YouTube and learn music theory, but you put him in situations, or you hinted at forthcoming situations, that would require a lot77:12
of tap dancing and figuring things out.77:24
And if we were to create some type of like Maslow's hierarchy of working with your kids, there are different things you can impart or give.77:29
And I would say the lowest level is giving someone a fish, right?77:40
Instead of teaching them a fish.77:44
But then above teaching someone to fish, teaching your kids to fish, is saying, hey, whether it's piano, fishing, music theory, or something that you are going to come up77:46
with on your own as a solution to a problem or a challenge or a dream that I can't even think of, I'm going to put you into enough circumstances77:58
that you have the confidence you can fear for.78:05
You have the confidence that not knowing is half the battle, but you will get there.78:10
You can tell them that stuff all you want, but when they're doing it with you, they learn so much better.78:15
I mean, that's why I said - On the couch with your head behind you, you're trying to come up with the comic strip.78:19
It's not going to happen.78:24
It's not going to happen.78:25
But you can tell them all that, but it's different when they've lived it too.78:25
And that's why I did the whole.78:28
If I get hit by a bus, you know what to do because now they know it in their bones.78:29
When we did a talk in Columbia with a $7 ,000 movie that we did together, I mean the boys, we went, they flew us down there to go talk78:33
and everyone was in Columbia.78:40
These guys live in poverty.78:42
They were leaning forward to find out how to make a movie with no money so they could get out of there.78:44
And we were talking and one woman was asking a question about screenwriting and I was giving my answer and racer said, because he had written the script for me78:49
now, he wanted to stand up and say, what are you saying is really true because he had lived it already.78:56
It wasn't, this is the stuff he'd heard before, but now it really sank in because he was there.79:03
And what's cool is if you build your family up like your team like that, you know what I hear so much now that I hadn't probably because I'm older79:08
and I've been around longer, a lot of people just assume I'm too busy to do whatever project I'm doing alone.79:14
So they said, we can't wait to work with you and your team.79:20
Most people have a team.79:23
My team is my kids and it's got just more jobs.79:24
Like a video game company wanted to be in partnership with me and said, well, let me tell you who my team is.79:28
All my kids are gamers.79:33
I got them into games when they were really little.79:34
They know this world inside out.79:36
One of them is even a game designer.79:37
That's my team and they're in my house.79:38
We love this.79:41
We want to work with you and we're going to take it to the next level because we've done this other project and this other project and this was the79:42
process we did.79:48
They've done deal.79:50
We're doing it now.79:51
Now my kids get to make a game, a real game, like a big ass game.79:52
And you get to do it together because you've already trained them to be.79:56
And it used to be a joke when I had so many kids, I had five kids.79:58
I would say, oh, yes, my future cast and crew.80:01
I would just say it as a joke.80:03
Hey, it turned out to be true.80:04
I'm happy.80:05
They're my cast and crew.80:06
Is there anything to the story of the double Rs besides the fact that you have the double Rs?80:07
Is there more to it?80:15
Yeah, double Rs was just from a family of 10 kids.80:17
My mom's name is Rebecca and my sister's name is Rebecca.80:20
We're the only double Rs.80:22
My mom, my sister, me.80:23
And I always just loved the alliteration of that.80:25
You know, like the double Rs, it was really powerful.80:27
R, R, Rebecca, Rodriguez, you know, Robert Rodriguez.80:30
So once you name the first kid with an R name, well, then the second one and then the third one, the fourth.80:34
And I gave them regular middle names that didn't have to be, you know, so like there's Rocket, Valentin, Rodriguez, Aveyan.80:39
You can be Valentin Aveyan or you can be Rocket Rodriguez.80:47
Or Racer Rodriguez or Maximilian Aveyan.80:49
They can, if they want to go into politics and not be pro -wrestlers, they can change their name.80:52
But I didn't know they were going to keep those names past child.80:56
I thought it was just fun kid names.80:59
Everybody has five names.81:01
One is Rho, Joaquin, Cecilio, Rodriguez.81:02
One has five names.81:04
So he can pick his identity.81:05
I wanted him to just use it as a little - Every time he has to fill out a government form, he's like, oh, god damn it.81:07
I'm not going to use all.81:11
But they didn't want to get rid of their first names.81:12
They loved their first name.81:14
So I thought, if everyone's keeping their first name, let's own it.81:15
Double Rs is kind of a cool logo.81:18
What's fun was that it just looks cool.81:20
Double Rs.81:22
It means all of us.81:23
And it makes this like a tribe and it makes this all, and it gave them a lot of pride.81:24
I was surprised how much pride they had in it.81:28
And they all started coming up with ideas.81:30
Rick Rubin comes over and he saw them holding a picture of it.81:32
He goes, a day, double Rs.81:35
He goes, that was my artist's name when he was a DJ.81:36
He was double Rs.81:39
That's amazing.81:41
This is one of my favorite things that when I've told parents, they go, I want to try that with my kids.81:42
Some of them I stumbled upon.81:47
You know, we're having some kind of family talk with the kids.81:49
We usually have these things called tribe talks where we talk about anything.81:51
It's like, like we're a tribe.81:54
Like we help each other out.81:55
They get so excited about a tribe talk.81:56
And the tribe talk is like asking one another for help?81:59
I have a new thing I want to talk about that's going to affect their lives later.82:02
Let's have a tribe talk about this.82:07
They're like so excited because they learn about something that I want to share with them to prepare them for life.82:09
Something that I might have just learned that I wish I could take a time machine and tell myself, you can't.82:13
The closest thing to it is telling your children.82:18
Because I used to think, any advice I give them, I'm afraid, might probably just go in one ear out the other because it's not real to them yet.82:20
They probably have to live through it and find their own mistakes.82:26
Oh, they would process it and give it back to me.82:29
And I would be like, where'd you get that philosophy?82:32
You told me that.82:35
I didn't tell you like that.82:36
I said, I might have said, glass is half empty or half full.82:38
Oh yeah, well, we built upon it.82:40
Well, they take what you tell them and build upon it.82:41
Right.82:44
So this one was, I thought, I'm going to be very honest with them and tell them all the major decisions I made and walk them through.82:45
Because there's a funny scene.82:54
It came up because of a movie.82:55
We did another Spike Kids.82:56
There's a scene where the parents are talking about Operation Fireball with such memories about it.82:58
And the little girl asked, what is that exactly?83:03
Oh, we beat up the bad guy.83:05
We blew up his lair and all this stuff.83:06
And she's just like, you could have done it a better way.83:07
You could have gone to him nicely.83:10
You could have talked to him seen his aesthetic.83:11
And it plays it out, right?83:13
So I thought, I'm going to try that with my kids.83:14
I bet if I told them all the decisions I was faced with, that a lot of times are lose, lose.83:16
There's no clear way to go.83:22
And as you think, 10 years later, you'll see what the real answer should have been.83:24
Nothing.83:28
There's never clarity sometimes.83:28
I'm curious to see what they would have done with the knowledge more evolved.83:31
So I walk them through.83:36
It was fascinating.83:37
It was fascinating at every turn.83:39
Okay, A or B, which way would you go?83:42
I'm not going to tell you what I did.83:46
Yeah, they both suck.83:48
And do you know what they say?83:49
I don't want to have to pick.83:50
No, you have to pick.83:56
I had to pick.83:57
You have to pick.83:58
They picked every time it was the same.83:59
Until one, they go, it's a big one.84:01
They go, well, if that's the circumstances, that's what the knowledge you have.84:05
We go, yeah, that's all the knowledge you have.84:11
Well, I would have done what you did too.84:14
I would have left.84:16
I should have done that.84:18
I didn't.84:19
I stayed.84:20
Let me tell you what happened because I stayed.84:21
I should have done that.84:23
I knew I should have done that.84:24
But I went ahead and stayed because that's the right thing to do.84:25
I did the right thing and it blew up in my face.84:27
Watch.84:30
The right thing by external right thing, external external status.84:31
Anyone else counterintuitive though, would say, with the evidence you have, counterintuitive as it sounds, you should go that way.84:35
So you pick the right thing.84:44
I should have done that, but because I decided to do the right thing, you just felt so good after.84:46
And they were so excited knowing now what life really is like.84:51
It's going to throw shit at you.84:55
That's no clear answer.84:57
Even with all this time, no clarity.84:59
They know that it's a lot tougher.85:02
And they're invested because it's you and them in a way.85:04
So I tell parents, I'll tell you, but several hours are like, I'm going to try that with my kids for sure.85:08
I'm curious to see what they say because you want to see if they remix a better version of you.85:15
But you might be surprised.85:19
It's just as unfathomable to them to have an answer as you did.85:21
Okay, life hack.85:25
My favorite life hack.85:26
I showed you that little spark gimp, right, that I could play.85:27
You did.85:31
Okay.85:31
So no time.85:32
There's no time.85:35
Even when you try to make time, you can't make consistent time.85:36
It's supposed to walk 10 ,000 steps, you know, for your health, especially after 50 or whatever.85:39
I have time for that.85:44
It takes an hour, an hour and a half.85:45
I don't have enough things to listen to or phone calls to make to go do that.85:47
Then I love guitar.85:51
I can't be playing guitar for a freaking hour.85:53
You know, we listen to Tom Morello on this master class.85:55
You want to get better at guitar?85:58
Play for an hour a day.85:59
You want to get better than that more?86:00
So I started trying to do an hour a day.86:03
I couldn't do it consistently.86:04
So I'd be like, God, I want to play guitar.86:05
I'm not time to walk.86:07
So I put them together.86:08
There's spark gimp.86:10
They have some that are really small.86:10
And now they just came out with a headphone ones that you just put it on.86:11
It's the amp is built in and you plug in your guitar wireless.86:14
And I used to have just the one in my pocket, their older one.86:17
And I put a playlist on backing tracks, drums and bass for songs, my favorite songs that I played to and I walk just around my house.86:20
And you forget you're even there.86:29
It's like the Angus Young workout.86:30
You know, he's always doing that or Eddie Van Halen running around.86:32
The music drives you.86:35
You don't even the room is gone.86:37
You're in a stadium.86:39
You're walking across the stage.86:40
Your house is bigger than most stages walking across.86:42
I put on like an hour to an hour and a half playlist.86:46
So it's like 10 or 12 songs.86:49
Easy 15 ,000 steps, 17 ,000 steps.86:52
Easy.86:56
You don't even know you did it.86:57
You don't even remember walking.86:58
You're so transported.87:00
You're going to keep playing and just keep walking.87:05
That's why you saw me in the crowd walking through the crowd.87:08
I'm so used to playing walking.87:11
I was so used to walking.87:11
I went walking through the crowd greeting everybody that I knew instead of I said, well, should I can play and walk and not have to look at my because87:12
I got that training.87:19
Anyway, anyone who's a guitarist, the best life hack you get an hour plus practice every day.87:21
I got so much better on guitar because of it.87:28
And you're walking.87:31
Yeah.87:32
And you're not even feeling it.87:32
I didn't even remember doing it.87:33
Biggest life hacker.87:35
I couldn't wait to tell you.87:36
I call it the Rock Walk.87:38
The Rock Walk.87:40
Gotta do the Rock Walk.87:40
My friend goes out in the neighborhood with his thing.87:42
He just walks around the neighborhood.87:44
When I saw you on stage with your daughter, that's the most I've seen you play guitar.87:45
I've only seen your guitars in the house.87:49
Right.87:52
But that was the most actual playtime I have seen.87:53
Wow.87:56
It's funny.87:57
True.87:58
That's right.87:59
Because I don't just play songs.87:59
With the Hello Kitty guitar.88:01
Rocking the Hello Kitty.88:03
It's a good guitar.88:04
It looks great.88:05
Robert, we'll have to do this more than once a decade.88:07
But yeah, thank you so much for all the stories and I took a ton of notes.88:10
How can people learn more about brass knuckle films?88:15
Where should they go?88:18
Where should they check out?88:19
There's a brass knuckle films you know, website where you can learn all about it, get all the updates, show you how you can invest and you'll see all the88:21
perks and things for the different levels and get a part of it.88:30
It's a community.88:35
I think it's really going to appeal to anyone who's a fan of action movies but also filmmakers but just people who are interested in trying, you know, people who88:35
consume.88:44
Don't just be a consumer.88:46
Make the money back.88:47
I want you to make the money so that you're not just consuming and watching a movie.88:48
If you like movies, this is the best way.88:52
I try to figure out ever since I was a kid.88:54
How can I get paid to watch movies?88:56
Because I watch movies all the time.88:58
This is the closest thing.89:00
Yeah, brass knuckle films.89:03
Beautiful.89:04
All right, folks.89:05
We're going to link in the show notes to everything.89:06
10 .0.89:08
Thank you Robert.89:08
Thank you for giving me a forum to tell people.89:09
Of course.89:11
There are no people who are here because you're going to listen to your thing because 100 % Just like with my book, I always wanted, as soon as I89:12
made mariachi, I wanted to share it with people because I knew I would have appreciated hearing that as a filmmaker who had no money from a family of 1089:17
that it was possible because everyone made it sound like it was not.89:24
So I just wanted to shout it from the mountaintop and it still feel that same way as I discovered things.89:28
I want to tell people because the feedback loop is amazing.89:32
You know, when people come back and tell you how they worked it into their life in their own way, it inspires you all over.89:36
It's super gratifying.89:41
It inspires you even.89:41
You're like, well, you just inspired me now to go try it that way.89:42
Yeah.89:45
So yeah, I love sharing that.89:46
Yeah, incredibly energizing.89:47
It's a virtuous circle and for everybody listening and watching until next time, be just a little bit kinder than is necessary to others and to yourself.89:48
Thanks for tuning in.89:57

Fast American English Speaking Practice from a Ten Year Reunion Conversation

This clip gives you english speaking practice built on a real conversation, not a scripted lesson. Tim Ferriss and Robert Rodriguez are catching up after almost ten years apart, and the opening minutes move from an argument about excuses into personal history: a red plate Rodriguez once brought over as a housewarming gift, going bald early, and a move to Austin. The pace is measured at 248 words per minute, faster than 93 percent of the catalogue, so lines come quickly and the tone swings from blunt to warm within a few lines.

The level is B2, which fits a listener who already follows most spoken English but still trips on speed and casual phrasing. Two speakers trading turns, one pushing back hard on excuses and the other reflecting on a decade of change, make this good material for daily english conversation practice: real interruptions, real self correction, and short reactions like 'Yeah' and 'Sure' dropped between longer thoughts.

The Language in This Clip: Blunt Advice and an Old Friendship

Listening closely here also works as practice for how to pronounce english words in american accent, since both speakers talk at a natural clip with almost no pause between thoughts. A few lines stand out.

"So don't give me that shit." The stress falls hard on "don't" and "shit," with everything between them flattened, a good line for practising emphatic stress rather than clear word by word pronunciation.
"That's like taking a hatchet and chopping off your left leg before the race." It's one long sentence with no breath break, useful for shadowing a full thought instead of single words.
"You're your own worst enemy." The contraction "you're" collapses into almost one syllable at speed, worth repeating slowly first and then at full pace.
"The person, the biggest obstacle in your life is you always." Rodriguez restates the same idea Ferriss just made, a chance to compare two ways of saying one thing.
"A lot has happened in the last 10 years." "Has" almost disappears between "lot" and "happened," and later in the recording you'll also hear casual forms like "gotta" and "ain't" used the same relaxed way.

How to Shadow This B2 English Podcast Clip Line by Line

This exchange works well for shadowing english speaking practice at a b2 level, since the lines are short enough to repeat but fast enough to push your timing. Work through it in this order.

Start with "But we can make time." and "We can make time for anything that we put our mind to." Shadow this line twice, matching the rising conviction in the voice.
Repeat "So don't give me that shit." five times, keeping the stress on "don't" and "shit" and letting the middle words blur.
Read the hatchet line, "That's like taking a hatchet and chopping off your left leg before the race.", once slowly for meaning, then three times at full speed to match the pace of this recording.
Shadow "You're your own worst enemy." and "The person, the biggest obstacle in your life is you always." back to back, since they carry the same point in two different rhythms.
Move to the reunion section and shadow "A lot has happened in the last 10 years.", listening for how casually "has" folds into the sentence.
Once each line feels steady, run the whole opening again without pausing, matching Ferriss and Rodriguez turn for turn, which does more to improve english speaking than reading the lines silently ever will.