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cover story
Rebel With a Crew
He’s been considered a do-it-yourself
filmmaker his entire career. Now, director Robert Rodriguez is recruiting
from inside his own brood.
By Kiko Martinez
PHOTOS By Crawford Morgan
It wasn’t until 2001 that filmmaker Robert Rodriguez
revealed to his kids what he actually did for a living. For all
they knew, when their dad excused himself to go tinker in the garage,
he could have been mining for uranium or training miniature poodles
to jump through hoops of fire.
Instead, Rodriguez was doing something he had been doing ever since
he picked up a camera while still in elementary school. He was making
movies.
“I kind of wanted to wait and surprise them,” Rodriguez
told Hispanic during a visit to his Troublemaker Studios in Austin,
Texas. “I decided to tell them after the premiere of Spy Kids.
When we came home I pulled out some of the actual props and toys
we used on the movie and told them, ‘I’m the one who
made [Spy Kids].’ They were really stunned.”
From that moment on, the Rodriguez kids were hooked on Hollywood.
Now with five children—Rocket, 13; Racer, 12; Rebel, 10; Rogue,
5; and Rhiannon, 3—the director of such films as Desperado,
Sin City, and the Spy Kids franchise has a big enough family to
field an indoor soccer team or stage a competitive game of Texas
Hold ‘Em. Still, he’d rather do what his father did
with him and keep everyone in the family business—at least
for a while.
“My dad worked with his dad ... as a butcher in a meat market,”
Rodriguez says. “I grew up working with my dad selling cookware
and working in his office. Now, my kids work in my office. If I
owned a restaurant, they’d be working there.”
While Rodriguez is more than capable of putting together a hearty
meal (watch his 10-minute cooking segments on some of his DVDs),
he’s not the owner of a popular Austin taqueria that sells
the city’s best migas. Rodriguez had something else on his
plate and was excited to share it with his kids.
With the highly successful family-friendly Spy Kids trilogy behind
him, he turned to the young members of Team Rodriguez to use their
imaginations and develop his next wholesome project. In 2005, Rodriguez’s
second oldest, Racer, who was 8 years old at the time, came up with
the story for his father’s 10th feature film, The Adventures
of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3-D. Rocket and Rebel joined Racer as actors
on the film.
In his most recent movie, Shorts, Rodriguez again asked the boys
for some creative advice. This time, it was Rebel who stepped up
to take a swing at storytelling.
“[Rebel] wanted to come up with the next movie so I said,
‘Sure, your turn! Do you have a good idea?’ Rodriguez
says. “And he did! He came up with the whole idea of short
films kind of like The Little Rascals. Then we both came up with
different stories together.”
Set in the fictional town of Black Falls (the cinematic equivalent
of Austin), Shorts tells the story of what happens when a young
boy discovers a rainbow-colored rock that grants wishes. When other
kids and adults learn of the magic meteor, everyone wants to get
their hands on it for their own selfish reasons.
“There are not a lot of live-action family movies,”
Rodriguez says. “A lot of family movies are animated. It really
is unique to see one with real actors. It is a unique genre in a
way.”
 During
their brainstorming sessions, Rodriguez says he realized a child
wouldn’t understand the power he possessed if he were to find
rock like the one in Shorts. The idea that a child would wish for
something as impractical as “a fortress or an endless supply
of chocolate” opened the story up to more wacky scenarios.
“I asked Rebel, ‘If you could wish for anything, what
would you wish for?’” Rodriguez says. “He said,
‘Um, to have a butt for a head.’ Then I asked Racer
and he said, ‘Uh, to be a potato.’ I said, ‘Well,
I would wish for a million more wishes.’ Then you just saw
their faces drop like, ‘Oh, no! We just wasted our wish!’”
Along with learning good wishing techniques from their dad, Rodriguez
says by working with him on some of his films his kids have come
to understand that a job can be something to look forward to when
getting up in the morning.
“They’re learning good work ethic,” Rodriguez
says. “They know what it’s like to put in hours. Part
of their work is going to school and the other part is having fun
working on a movie. This will help them seek out jobs that they
want and are passionate about later in life.”
Could this mean one of the kids will follow in dad’s footsteps
and become a famous Hollywood director? It’s too early to
tell, says Rodriguez, but right now, Racer seems to be the one that
enjoys the process the most.
“He seems to have the same personality I had when I was young,”
Rodriguez says. “He comes up with his own stories and films
them. The other ones love doing it, too, but Rocket is more into
science and wants to be an astronaut and get into space exploration.
Rebel loves acting, but he wants to be a marine biologist. He knows
everything about every kind of fish. He loves to talk about fish.
Everything goes back to fish. That’s his passion.”
If anyone can teach children about following their passion, it’s
Rodriguez. Whether he’s behind the camera shooting a movie
about flesh-eating zombies or about a family of spies saving the
world from a mad scientist, Rodriguez says he is fortunate to be
part of the film industry and to have the opportunity to change
up genres every so often.
“It keeps everything fresh,” Rodriguez says. “I
do enjoy making movies for big kids like Grindhouse, but I also
like making movies for families. People say, ‘Write what you
know’ whenever you’re writing a script, or a book, or
anything. Family is what I know.”
on the film horizon
Although Shorts was just released, Rodriguez is already
up to his ears in other projects–some currently in production
and some just whispers in the Hollywood rumormill. Hispanic gives
you the latest updates as of press time.
Machete:
Production began in August and should be wrapped by the time you
read this. The film, a spin-off of a fake movie trailer featured
in 2007’s Grindhouse, stars Danny Trejo (Once Upon a Time
in Mexico) as a knife-wielding former Mexican Federale turned hitman.
Machete, which is co-directed, produced and written by Rodriguez,
also stars Robert De Niro, Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Alba, Michelle
Rodriguez and Steven Segal.
Predators:
Production of this alien series reboot, which started in 1987 with
Arnold Schwarzenegger and ended 20 years later with Aliens vs. Predator
- Requiem, is scheduled to begin in late September 2009. While Rodriguez
won’t be directing (he’s handed the reigns over to Vacancy’s
Nimród Antal), he will be producing the film at Troublemakers
Studios.
Nerverackers:
While Variety announced an April 2010 release date for the sci-fi
film last February, it looks like Dimension Films has bumped it
from their lineup for now. Rodriguez, however, still has it on his
radar.
Sin City 2:
According to the Austin American Statesman, a script by graphic
novelist Frank Miller (Sin City) is completed, but consider it on
the back burner since nothing else has been announced.
The Jetsons:
MTV reported in early August that a live-action version of the 1960s
cartoon is in the works. Rodriguez was quoted saying he hopes to
start shooting “next year.”
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