#804: Robert Rodriguez, The Wizard of Cinema Returns — The "Fear-Forward" Way of Life, How to Overcome Self-Doubt, Learning to Love Limitations, and Counter-Intuitive Parenting That Works | The Tim Ferriss Show

Hello boys and girls ladies and germs this is Tim Ferriss welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show where it is my job To interview world -class performers to break down how they do what they do.

What are the frameworks tools?

Influences so on and so forth that have helped make them who they are My guest today is back at long last. He is one of my most requested guests for a follow -up, Robert Rodriguez.

He is a film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, editor, and composer.

He does everything, absolutely everything.

And to give you an idea of the genesis, while a student at the University of Texas at Austin, UT Austin, that's right here in my backyard in 1991, Rodriguez wrote the script to his first feature film while sequestered at a drug research facility as a paid subject in a clinical experiment.

I'm not making that up.

That paycheck covered the cost of shooting his $7 ,000 film, El Mariachi, which won the coveted audience award at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival and became the lowest -budget movie ever released by a major studio.

If you want the full story on that, listen to our first conversation, which you can find in the show notes.

Rodriguez wrote about these experiences in Rebel Without a Crew, a Perennial Guide for the Independent Filmmaker.

Really, it is a guide to bare -bones, boot -strapped Entrepreneurship of any type it's worth reading then he went on to write produce direct and edit a series of successful films Including desperate from dusk till dawn the faculty and the spy kids franchise Which is huge once upon a time in Mexico Frank Miller's Sin City We can be heroes and he's also collaborated with director James Cameron on the film Adaptation of Alita battle angel.

His films have grossed more than 1 .5 billion dollars at the box office then in 2000 suppose, somewhere in the middle there.

Rodriguez founded Troublemaker Studios in Austin, Texas, which I've visited a number of times.

It's worth checking out if you've ever had the chance.

He recently directed the Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande video, Rain on Me in episodes of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett and launched Brass Knuckle Films, an investible action film slate.

What does that mean?

If you've ever wanted to pitch Robert Rodriguez a film idea or get profit participation in action films and sequels, he tells you all about it in this conversation.

But there are lots of tactical takeaways.

Lots of actionable bits of advice that you can use.

And that is his style.

He had an entire dossier of things he'd been collecting over the last nine, 10 years since our last conversation that he wanted to share on this podcast specifically.

So you can find him on X at x .com slash Rodriguez.

R -O -D -R -I -G -U -E -Z. And on Instagram, slash Rodriguez, at Rodriguez.

He's Rodriguez everywhere.

So now just a few words from our sponsors, we'll get right to this very, very practical tactical conversation with Robert Rodriguez.

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That's my question.

Now what is the end of my perfect time?

What if I did the invisible?

I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over a metal endoskeleton.

The Tim Ferriss Show...

. All right. Dr. Rodriguez, here we are again.

Yes! It has been almost 10 years.

Can you believe it?

10 years. And, I can't believe it's been almost 10 years and then, one, my decision to go bald early was helpful in making me look somewhat similar to the way I looked then.

And I always wear black shirts, yeah.

And some people may not know, also, when I first moved to Austin, which is coming up on eight years, well, so nuts.

I did not have any plates or silverware at my house, and I invited you over for dinner, not even thinking of this, and you were kind enough to bring over, I still have it, this red plate.

Red plate. and a couple of your dungeon forks and knives.

So thank you for that.

Sure, absolutely. Texas offwarming gift. Yeah, a lot has happened in the last 10 years, and we've continued to hang out and talk, and you have a whole new bag of tricks.

Our first conversation was a barn burner of an episode.

People were super excited by it.

There was a lot of tactical advice, and you have explored a lot, you have found a lot, you've fine -tuned a lot in the last decade.

upon new things. You stumble upon them, literally.

So yeah, we adopt them, and I store them away so I can tell you about them.

Look at this. And I've stored 10 years worth of stuff.

So we open the vault, and here we are.

Let's just start with a very broad question.

I mean, what are some of the things that come to mind that have happened since we last spoke?

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 of started it off.

And when was that in the nineties, like 95?

Because I remember, you know, Desperado, Dust Till Dawn four rooms, and that book all came out within four months.

And my son, my first born five things four months.

I'll never forget. But it was full of stories and my diary on how I did Mariachi.

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, you know, or it just applied to so many things as the idea of just taking on a big challenge, betting on yourself, going where no one else is.

That's very entrepreneurial stuff.

What's wild though is I hadn't read it since I wrote it.

So when I had to suddenly do an audio book for it a couple months ago, I was astounded.

I'd forgotten so much of the details.

And I was like, now I see why it was so inspirational.

It blows your mind.

Cause when you're younger, six months feels like six years.

But now when you hear the dates, the dates of my journal how quickly I go from clearly clueless and penniless filmmaker making a movie, having the idea, having a movie, doing it by myself, trying to sell it to Spanish Home Video, to instantly being the toast of the town.

This is unbelievable!

You could see why people would read the book and just drop it and go, I got to go make something because the only reason that happened is because he took action.

He got up and made that movie.

What do you hear most from that book from readers, 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 you have a better way to phrase this, but basically making a list of assets, right?

Not focusing on what you don't have. Yeah, focusing on what you do have. Right, so if you got a turtle, a pit bull, and you got a friend who's a school bus driver, it's like, all right, we're going to figure out how to work that into the script, And it's all point of view, right?

It's like, you can really concentrate on what you don't have in life, and that becomes your focus.

And then that becomes your life.

All the things you don't have and never get.

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.

If we had to make a movie right now with this room, that's it.

It's kind of very freeing.

It's like, okay, this is all we have to work with.

You can come up with a million ideas.

When you can do anything, remember we're trying to make a short film.

When you've got unlimited, it's harder is it not?

is it not? That is one of my great embarrassments.

So we're going to talk about it.

It's very, we are going to talk about it because it's exactly what we're talking about because you can do anything.

And a lot of times when you can do anything, you can't do anything because it's too wide.

So the smaller aperture, the fact that I had very little things was a blessing.

People took that lesson, applied it to business.

And the whole time I'm reading this, you can hear, I'm laughing.

And I stopped several times, 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.

It's very rare, this is lightening in a bottle.

And it's like a movie, you see incredible setup, payoff, setup, payoff, where a huge setup falls in my lap.

Don't even know what to do with it.

It pays off in a huge way, two weeks later.

And then three weeks later and then four weeks later, And then you also see why, I was really bummed I couldn't sell the movie to Spanish on video.

I was gonna sell it for $20 ,000 before Christmas and the contracts weren't through.

I went home a failure and said, ''Merry Christmas, I didn't sell the movie.'' I was really bummed.

And then you see, because it's so a journal, one month later, I had an agent suddenly because of the movie.

Good thing I didn't sell it.

I was chasing those guys down for the contract, they could have had it for $20 ,000.

Two months later, I sell it for 10 times that.

Yeah, incredible. And I'm the toast of the town and getting my first movie deal.

I mean, it's unbelievable.

When I was reading it, I was like, now I see why.

Because when you're living it, you don't know how special it is till later.

30 years later, it still is an unbelievable story.

And I think it will still inspire people today.

And in that example too, it makes me think of advice I got from a mentor of mine at one point.

And he said, And sometimes you need life to save you from what you want.

Yes. Yes. In that instance.

That's what I, I really wanted that.

And when something doesn't work out, we think we made a mistake.

Like, that's one of my favorite stories.

The keys to your next success is in your failure because you followed your instinct.

You gotta dig in deep and look.

And I show you that like, I made a movie called Four Rooms, it bombed.

But I took it on instinct.

Not, cause I thought it would make money.

If I just be upset about it and be bummed about it, like, wow, I must've made a wrong choice.

I haven't learned anything.

But if I go sift through the ashes of that failure, I find I got the idea for spy kids from that because I saw Antonio and his Asian wives, looked like a cool international spy couple because they're dressed in tuxedos, and I thought, what do these two kids have to save them for?

There's five of those movies now.

And then also, it's an anthology and it didn't work, but I thought, instead of four stories, maybe three stories, one director, now multiple directors.

I'm going to try it again.

Even those anthologies never work.

Why would I do that?

Cause I just did it and I saw what I could do better.

And that was Sin City.

Two of my biggest movies came directly from a movie that you would consider a failure.

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.

But sometimes the only way across the river is to slip on the first two rocks.

It's the only way to get there.

And if you don't do it, you don't get there.

Yeah, and I'm sure we'll talk about this more.

When I talk to people and they say, yeah, I journal.

I'm like, you do, but you should see what Robert does.

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, she was on a chairlift skiing, and she's still very active, she lives in Idaho.

She was chatting up the woman next to her on the ski lift. She's like, oh, what do you do?

And the woman's like, oh, I'm a swimmer.

And she goes, oh, me too, I'm a swimmer.

It was Dara Torres, the Olympian, right?

So it's kind of like, there's journaling and then there's capital J, marquee lights, journaling, which we'll get to.

But I want to ask you first because I just experienced this, was it yesterday?

I'm time traveling because there's a whole warp with South by Southwest employment.

But I got to see you on stage with your daughter, Rhiannon.

I thought to myself, holy shit, she's really good, right?

Like, I was going to clap anyway, like no matter what, obviously.

But I thought to myself, wow, she's really good.

I wonder how many performances she's done.

And the answer was?

Yeah, I waited till the end, I didn't want to tell anybody, I want to make sure it went right.

She never ever performed before on stage, or to a crowd, but we'll get to this thing later because I want everybody to hear this, it's so inspiring.

And I've stumbled upon it.

It's counterintuitive parenting, the kids step up.

But we'll get to that, because it's a big thing.

Because it comes back to parenting and also modeling and coaching, right?

How do you use that creative...

not just capability but confidence into other people.

Yeah, I stumbled upon it.

I'll tell you where it started.

It started on spy kids.

My kids were much younger than my two actors.

My two actors were eight and 11, Alexa and Daryl.

And my kids were younger.

You know, when you're learning how to raise kids, you tend to go a little easier on your kid, not to the spy kids, because they're actors, I'm treating them like performers.

So they were having to do, there's no kid stuntmen.

They're having to do their own stunts.

They're having to do the daily, daily challenges, mind bending challenges for these little kids to be action stars.

They're like mini Tom Cruise's that you're just throwing them in.

There's no training for that.

And at the end of it, I would just see them become so confident and superhuman there even today, the actors.

And I would tell myself I need to make sure I challenge my own kids like this.

Cause I saw them go from just regular kids into super kids over the course of those three films. So I started putting my kids making movies with us.

Like, one of them came up with Shark Boy Lava Girl.

I put him in his actors, his Stunt Kids.

And I kept thinking, I wonder if they're gonna really resent me later for putting them to work at a young age, because it wasn't their passion.

These two kids that were in the movie, they wanted to be actors.

That's a different, that they chose.

But I tried it anyway.

It was an experiment because I thought, maybe it'll give them a comment.

And boy, it has just opened up a whole world.

And we'll get to how big - We're going to come back to that.

Yeah, it is big. And I'm going to tell you, some famous people, that it's inspired and you'll go like, oh, it was directly because something I told them.

All right, all right.

So we're going to get to that.

Now, right next to Sienna there is a huge screen and there were other things that were being launched slash announced.

So what else? Oh, yeah, the reason we had a big party at my studio on the back lot of my studio, which still has the huge 90 ,000 square foot Alita set, because I'm resourceful enough to put it in a corner of my studio where I could keep it.

Since 2016 we built it with steel support beams so we could have forever.

It's the largest standing set in the country, if not the world.

Well, because they mow them down after each movie because the next movie's coming in.

But I put it in a corner of my big section of my studio so we could have it to film for Mexico, for other cities, we've used it on every movie since then.

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, you know, you've seen my studio.

I've got that huge set.

I've got all the vehicles.

Every prop we've ever made.

Every costume. And usually that savings gets passed on to studios.

They just piss it away because, you know, they just like they got so much overhead.

So I thought, let's make a slate of action films. It's called brass knuckle films. Just action is action.

There's an international appetite.

Always. In fact, if you were to ask Netflix right now what they need, they would say action, action, action, we don't have enough action.

So let's make something that everyone needs and wants.

Slate of four pictures, only that fans are usually an afterthought.

They're only like, right now people are showing their movies at South by Southwest to get the fans, to get the friends to go spend money on their movies for the privilege of seeing the movies.

What if they made money on those movies?

So you, for the cost of a badge, can invest into my brass knuckle films for a slate of films. That means you got four bites of the apple.

One of those is gonna make money and sequels and you sharing all that because you're at the ground floor of development." And that's the revolution that we're doing.

And people come up to me all the time with movie ideas saying, I got an idea for you.

And they tell me, and they're ready to give it to me.

It's like, no, you get to come be a co -creator because one of the movies in that slate is gonna be picked from one of the fan investors.

And even at the lowest level, everyone gets to pitch us their action movie idea.

And the top 20 gets to pitch it directly to me so you can be a co -creator and fan, but there's other perks, the perks alone would get you creative, but it's not crowdsourcing, it's not Kickstarter.

You're actually an investor.

We're using Republic, which is, you know, can use, even unaccredited investors can come invest in this.

And it's a platform, an investing platform.

They've done it in sports and other arenas, but this is now for film, in my movies especially, because I've got all my resources to keep the budgets low.

Like, you know how much the original John Wick cost?

No idea. 20 million.

Okay. 20 million. The last one was a hundred as the audience grew.

So we're making budgets between ten and 30 million.

That's like a lower to mid range budget, right?

Right. That's not a lot of money for the chance to make something that could turn into a billion dollar franchise that it is.

We just keep making bytes at the apple.

One of those is going to turn into that.

That's a hundred capital, I mean, it's a hit stream.

And it is so fun because the fans, people, the other thing people always ask me, you know I believe, could you kill me in your movie?

I'd love to die in your movie.

like, can you just have me die in your room?

Chop my head off, run me over, shoot me.

Everyone wants to die, so that's one of the perks.

If you put in enough money, you get to die onscreen in a creative way whenever there's action films. So it's a lot of fun.

But it gets the pain.

Somebody comes in, they say, hey, I like that, I like the model a lot, I wanna take 90 % of it.

Are there limits on what investors can do?

Yeah, this is just for the development.

This is to like, give us money, because we can get the money for an action film, we can already fund the whole thing.

Yeah, sure. I mean, the international buyers alone and we could keep the domestic And so all these guys have appetite for it.

You sell the foreign rights and use that to kind of fill the now.

We sell the foreign rights to go ahead and make it if we want.

Or if we have such a big idea, we could take it to a studio and get all the freedoms of an independent film.

We have a lot of avenues because they just need it.

This is a thing. 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.

They spend so much. Well, the incentives are screwed into it.

That's why John Wick was an independent movie.

That's why Beekeeper was in the movie because you can go make those for less But there's always an appetite.

We're not making dream projects or you know art films, you know We're not this is going to be just things that put food on tables because I want the fans to win Yeah because it's going to be one a great story and two they should they should enjoy it because they're the ones When when you've made a movie at a studio, you don't even know what you got Yeah, then you take it to the fans and show it to them in a private screening They give you notes and then you go.

Oh, we screwed that up.

We got to go fix that We gotta reshoot that." They're brought in at the end and then told to go spend their money on it.

It should start with the fans and as well as finish with the fans.

So that's the revolutionary thing we're doing because it's just like Rebel Without a Crew.

It's part of my whole democratizing the process, making it, removing the smoke and mirrors, and letting us all enjoy that process together.

Because I've seen the phenomenon of creating a new label, a label on yourself, And we'll get to that because I have that written down.

You'll see the value of brass knuckle, but I'll tell you where I did it before.

Cause this is something that's happened since our last 10 years and it's a mind blower and it ties into what the first thing you asked about family.

All right, sweet. So before we get there, I am so curious because you've written and I'm sure you've read a lot of scripts.

If you get 100, 200, 400, 500, who knows?

Pitches. Okay, pitches.

Right? So you're not getting a script.

No. So what form does the pitch?

What form does the pitch...?

Well, you have a format, it's shorter.

It's like, you could be like, it should be less than five minutes.

So maybe two or three pages at the most, maybe one to three pages.

Something to tell your story.

And if you've already written, I've had a lot of people come and say, I have an action script for you.

Can I enjoy it? I said, well, come be an investor and you can pitch it.

I'd tell you, I've sold more pitches from scripts I'd already half -written or written because I know more about the story.

I really know it. So when I go to pitch it, it's very easy for me to tell you the story.

You've got a much better chance It's someone who's just making a pitch. But we'll give you a format.

I want to train people how to do it so that they know.

So it's kind of a film school too.

Can you give us just a teaser of some of the ingredients of a good short pitch?

A good pitch is anything, if we could sit here right now and I could tell you a story about, there's a guitar player who comes into town.

He's all he wants, music is his life and that's all he thinks about.

All he wants to do is find a place for somebody You know to hire him.

He goes into a bar and this new town that he walks into Didn't hire musicians.

He leaves second later a guy with the guitar case full of weapons comes in Shoots the place up because he's after the the main bed honcho to leave a message So now the word gets out find the guy in black with a guitar case full of weapons Mistaken identity thing by the end he'll become the guy with a guitar case full of weapons.

And he becomes, every movie's like a ballad, a sad tragic ballad.

He's gonna meet somebody, she's gonna help him, she's gonna die.

And he goes to the next town, but no longer can play the guitar because he gets his hands shot.

So now he has to become that thing.

Yeah, that's it. That's a pitch. But I can tell you that pitch because I already made that movie.

I already wrote that script.

It was harder when I was first just trying to figure it out.

I was just taking little cards.

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 it.

We're gonna hire a writer.

It's that seat of an idea that gets people to stop and listen that you wanna find.

That's the lightening in the bottle sometimes is just the idea, and everyone's got an idea, just like everybody wants to get killed in the movies.

So it's like, this is how we're gonna make it fun for the fans, because who's gonna consume it at the end of the day?

It's the fans, not the zombies in suits that are up there who don't even watch these movies.

I go up there, the disconnect blows my mind.

You go talk to some, not all executives, but you go to some studios, you can tell they don't pay to go see a movie.

They don't watch movies.

They don't love movies.

It's a business. And then you go talk to the fans.

I was just at South by Southwest. They're losing their minds.

They tell you about all the movies they've seen, about all the things they collect.

They should be sharing in that, not the executives.

They're just going to piss it away.

So that's the idea.

So you're very good at hooks.

So before we start recording, when we were out on the sidewalk about to come into the building, You're like, yeah, there's this one line.

There's one line at the end that I figured out what was the line Oh, at the end, when there is so when I told them all about this investment opportunity at the end, I said, so this is how you manifest because I had been talking about manifesting.

They asked me the question, Robert, you're very positive.

But do you have any human doubts?

And I said, No. And I told them why.

And they were all clapping afterwards.

At the end. I said, Okay, one more thing on manifesting.

This is how you do it.

The next year it's our goal to come back to South by Southwest with our first brass knuckle film.

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, wouldn't you rather be sitting up here with us than down there in the audience?

That's how you manifest. They all do.

Mike dropped. Good bye.

Yeah, it's true. You set a target.

I thought my old trainer, I had an old trainer who would be working out – and you can tell It's not just making it up, it's, wait a minute.

200, 200 set up, 200 pushups.

And we just go, go, go, go, you know, just picking a big number and then just hitting it.

That's kind of what you need to do because if you aim low, you'll hit low.

But if you aim high, it might go low, it might go there.

And like Mariachi, when you read the book, it went straight up.

But if I hadn't taken the action, it would never have happened.

So, so many people wait.

That's the discussion we had about, remember, you were talking about making a short film.

yep. And I said, we just gotta commit to making it.

We just gotta go ready or not.

Here we go. Let's set a date.

We almost did it, but then both of our schedules got whacked.

But you understood the lesson.

I understood the lesson because I told somebody this whole thing, and he was there right where you were sitting and I think I told you, somebody was right here and they said, wow, everything you're saying makes sense.

I've got a project.

All the pieces are actually pretty much there.

I just guess I'm not ready.

And I said, that's gonna be on your a tombstone.

Here lies so -and -so.

He was never ready.

Why is it that art, you have to be ready for?

In life, you didn't know you're going to get a flat tire.

You didn't know you're going to go to work and be fired.

You didn't know the fire's going to be raging out.

Every day, you're like this, you know, trying to move with the— You're not ready.

You're not ready for anything life has thrown at you, but you become ready on the spot, right?

Why is it that we think art and life should not be the same?

Why art has to be, you have to be ready before you can begin?

There's no relation.

They should be the same.

You're not going to be ready, until you're almost done with a project, because a lot of the answers you need are not going to happen until you're on the journey.

And that's what keeps most people from doing it.

And so that's why I was going to show you that real time, but we are going to do it.

We're going to make a short film.

You're not going to know what you're going to make it on, and it's going to fall in our lap because we start the process.

That is a huge, huge, huge lesson.

You got to start it.

You just have to start.

I mean, in a couple weeks, you know I have this, I don't even know if I've told you about this, I have a card game I've been working on kind of secretly for like two years.

Card game? Yeah, card game.

Yeah, you always gifting me card games so you wanted to do your own.

I love card games. 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 are either gonna have a game or we will have stopped because we did a couple of, I would say, B - attempts, where we didn't commit in that type of way.

And we met in different places around the country, and we would play test different options and different concepts.

And then this final trip was like, okay, look, we're both really busy.

We've given this a few shots.

This time, we're just going to pound our heads against the wall, so you're aiming it up there now, and we're going to have a game or this is it.

And that kicked off the whole process.

Now it's going to be in thousands of stores.

That's great. That's the way that's used to ask me.

How do you get so much done?

It's like, you know, I set the bridge on fire, and then I run across.

Otherwise, it's not enough steak.

You have a way out.

Like the last ones, you had a way out.

Y 'all didn't have that goal.

You will take the escape route.

Yeah, it's easier. But if you just have, you burned the bridge, you've got to go.

When we have a deadline it's a blessing.

Like today, I even asked you yesterday.

I said, do you really need it by tomorrow, because we could push it to the next week.

Oh no, let's do it!

So when you have a deadline you said, you make it happen.

You make it happen.

But we tend not to do that with ourselves and it's a crippling thing.

Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show.

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from the best version of the book.

Thinking of the audio book that you just produced and the book, we have spoken over the years about you writing another book.

Yes. So what happened?

What happened to that one?

You told me right after we had our talks, you said, did you finish that book?

Because it sounded like I was almost ready.

The idea was called The Creative Life, because I gave a talk once about Pro Max or something about creativity, and they introduced me and they said, Robert Rodriguez, cinematographer, editor, composer, screenwriter.

They went through all my credits and I got up there and I said, I feel dizzy just hearing all that stuff.

And there was this book out, I always see it in the bookstores at the airport, it's called The One Thing.

About doing one thing.

And I was thinking, well, that doesn't apply to me, obviously.

But then I thought, there actually is one thing that I do when I think about it.

It's not those jobs.

I live a creative life.

I apply creativity to everything I do, and that's why anything that touches creativity is open to me.

So, I can paint, I can draw, I can do anything, because 90 % of any one of those jobs is actually the creative part.

The technical part about any one of those, whether it's music, say, 90 % creative.

Some of the best musicians don't know how to read or write music.

That's the technical part.

So, I realized that, as I did all those jobs, That was the thing.

I wanna write a book called The Creative Life where every chapter is about raising your kids, painting, drawing, filmmaking.

You're gonna see the same lesson over and over because it all applies.

So that was the idea.

And you ask, what happened to it?

It's like, I'm going through this whole new chapter that's so massive, I would feel dumb to put out the book now because I know this is gonna change all my thinking.

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 a work as filmmaking.

With the knowledge I have, there must be some, I don't even know what jobs are out there, this is the first job I ever got was making movies, I was so young.

So I literally bought Jobs for Dummies and was looking through it.

No joke, because they have these little icons just to see what's even out there.

It was like, I don't want that, I don't want that.

It got to filmmaker, and that little icon is a guy with his arms up like this, and it said, This is the best job.

Get to be creative with your friends, make stuff and then just sit back and let the money roll in.

It says but, 99 % of film students don't get this job.

So forget that dream.

Oh, clearly I got the best job.

But I used to think, well, I guess I could keep making movies, I guess that's been good to me.

I guess I could just keep making more.

Then I had to work with my kids for that Red Eleven project, remember?

One where we had to do another Mariachi, another $7 ,000 movie, but with digital cameras and show people how it's done today.

We're going to make one, and I made all the other filmmakers that were in our group for this TV show I was doing called Rebel Without a Crew.

You can only bring one person just like I had Carlos Gallardo, the main actor from Mariachi.

Only one person. You've got to do everything.

He can be your sound man, or you can be your cameraman, but you've got to do everything.

You got to edit. You've got to shoot it.

You've got to write it, and you've got two weeks.

I had only two weeks to do Mariachi.

And I saw the filmmakers, just like that thing I was saying about the kids pushing them.

They'd only done short films. None of them had done a feature.

This is your first feature, and we're going to document it, so a documentary camera is going to be on you, like reality TV.

I saw them turn superhuman between the first week and the second week.

Once they started shooting, they had no idea how they were going to do it.

They were like, oh my God, this is just so hard. By the second week I go to ask them how it's going, they're already talking about their next three films. Suddenly their idea of what impossible was went from that to that.

And so I did that as well.

I wanted to do that.

But with my kid, Racer, I picked one kid, my son, Racer who hadn't been working with me in film at all for awhile.

I brought him to be my co -writer, my co -lighter, my sound guy, and I didn't show him how to use the sound equipment.

I waited till we're about to start filming.

Then I was like, okay, this is how it works, go.

And it was very documented.

And I wanted to show people that even without any experience, you can go make a movie in two weeks with no money.

And we did. and that thing ended up going to festivals, even getting over to Director's Fortnight at Cannes.

People were flying us and paying us to go speak about our master class on how we made that movie and show clips from the making of.

We were making money from this little No Money movie.

The only reason that we had to stop doing the tour, we went to Columbia, we went to Sweden, we went to Paris.

I mean, we were doing really well.

My kids were like, dad, you're right.

This is really, that's really worth it.

Yeah, better than I thought.

We only had to stop because we're shooting We Can Be Heroes.

But the reason I'm talking about this label, what blew my mind about it is my kids, they were gonna - Labels you apply to yourself.

Yeah, they'll be to yourself and to just a label like a company, a fake company within your realm.

Like breast and uncle.

I would call that a label.

I still don't do other things, but that has a very specific target and I'm getting all kinds of ideas just popping in my head because I started that.

It's just this phenomenon, like ideas I never would have thought of before because now it's got a place to go, just like with yourself.

There's a label, I'll tell you about, came about that With Yourself that really transformed, but my kids, I thought they're gonna resent me again.

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 own interests.

They weren't gonna want me to make movies.

But I said, I need him to be in it cause he'll be a good example, and I made my other son act in it because he made those knives.

I was inspired to make one of the characters a knife guy.

And I asked him to do the score too, with me, write the score.

And I thought, they have their own interests, they're going to work on this one day and hate it.

I'm prepared for that.

Instead, they came at the end of the day all excited, their eyes all bugging out of their head.

And they were like, Dad, the actor didn't show up, the script didn't match the location at all.

And when we asked you in the morning, what were we going to do?

You said, I don't know.

We'll figure it out.

And we thought, just finally, finally the movie that stumped my dad, But then by the end, we figured it out.

They were all excited.

I went, oh, they don't realize that's the creative process.

That's every day on a movie.

But it's also every day in life.

It's the same. And I realized on the making of that movie, so little of what I was teaching them was filmmaking.

It was all life lessons.

How to take on this impossible challenge.

Two -man crew making a feature.

I didn't know we were going to go to Cannes.

I actually didn't predict any of that.

I just wanted to finish for the project.

But you get blessed because of that.

The label we created is because my son had come to me and said, I wanted to draw comics, and I wasn't born in the golden age of comics, but I am born in the golden age of technology.

So I'm thinking maybe instead of doing storytelling through comics, give up the drawing thing and do it like with VR.

So let's start a VR company, let's start a company.

I'll show you how this works.

All these VR companies need people to buy their helmets.

They need product. I call him up and say, I have a VR company.

They'll give us money to go make them a short film." Sure enough, I just said, Here, we all have double R names, all the kids.

They started a company called Double R.

It's the label we made.

So now we're going to make t -shirts, we're going to make notepads.

And they loved him.

They were looking at him 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 it through Double R.

It's our company. Now when you have a company, you have a label, it's now manifested.

Now you gotta do stuff to fill the...

You have to do stuff to put into it, right?

You get all these ideas.

Michelle Rodriguez and Norman Reedus are in this movie called The Limit.

Remember that one? They made us a logo, double R logo, big logo.

They went in front of our $7 ,000 movie also.

They went around the world that same year, three projects in one year.

I went to Netflix to ask what if they needed any movies.

And they said, we need family, spy kids type thing, can you come up with something?

I kind of came up with it in the room.

People are always ripping off spy kids.

I just rip off myself.

Little kids have to save their parents.

Only what if they're superheroes and the parents are superheroes that get captured, like the Avengers get captured.

Little kids with superpowers, they don't know how to use them yet.

And the little girl who has no powers has to wrangle them together to work together to go save the day.

Simple pitch, right?

I wrote it out, wrote it with my kids.

We came up with all these fun special powers we've never seen in any movie.

We took it, we sold it.

It's the biggest movie on Netflix.

Most watched and re -watched movie in their history.

Nothing can touch it, because kids watch it over and over and over.

And that has a big, glorious, the same double R logo in front of it.

And my kids were just like, Dad, this really works.

I was like better than I thought.

I was just doing it as an example.

I did not know it was gonna put food on the table in that way.

So I'm gonna 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, because proximity is everything.

Remember, I showed you that painter I went and watched 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.

He didn't know how he was gonna tack it each time.

He made you go like, oh, I thought I needed to know something.

I had a mental block.

And I went and did it again, and it was like, there it was.

It was unbelievable, the proximity sometimes to each other.

I tell people, if you come be a part of the company, the proximity to us as filmmakers, making this stuff, you're going to get 10 ideas, 20 ideas on your own.

You're going to see your own thing.

You'll be part of this, but it's almost like a masterclass without me even trying to teach you.

That's just what I found by being proximity.

By being around James Cameron, by being around George Lucas, by being around Spielberg, they didn't necessarily give me lessons, but just seeing how they moved through the world, even for just a moment in time, transforms you completely.

So let's say somebody is listening to this, and those are big names, out of reach for most folks.

Are there - But they're equivalent in their world.

Yeah. 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 just change.

Because your parents used to tell you this, be careful who your peers are.

That meant one thing when you're younger, it means even more now when you're older, like, surround yourself with people who are heavy hitter.

We talk to each other all the time because it just raises our game.

I remember you coming over to my house and saying, hey, what chopper is that that you're using?

You're like seeing upgrades that you can have just by proximity.

You pick stuff up. Can you say more about labels and stuff?

So label, I'm going to give you my favorite label example and it's a thing I've realized now when I did the audio book that I already knew and had forgot.

People would come up to me sometimes and tell me some quote from my book I'd be like, that's my book.

I was smart back then.

What happened? But there was something I said in the book saying, stop aspiring.

Stop saying you're an aspiring filmmaker.

People come up to you, I'm an aspiring filmmaker.

The words we use are really strong.

You're always going to be aspiring.

You're never going to get there if you call yourself somebody who's on the journey.

Say you're a filmmaker — make a card. I said make a business card that says, I did director, cinematographer, editor, then what do you have to do?

Just like the label, you have to conform to your identity.

You have to go do that stuff now and suddenly have movies, go make movies, because that's what a filmmaker does.

What does an aspiring filmmaker do?

Yeah. You aspire. I knew that back then, but I'd forgotten it.

The reason I remember it is, okay, you always remark, Hey Robert, you're always in good shape.

Did I ever tell you I hate sports?

I hate working out.

Did I ever tell you that?

I'm not sure you told me.

All through high school, they would want me to be on the team.

Small school, I was so tall.

Please, come be on our team.

I was like, I don't know.

Which sport? Any of them.

Basketball, football.

We'd need players and you're so big.

I was like, I don't even know how these games are played.

I've never followed sports.

I'm a filmmaker. I'm an artist. I'm a musician.

And there's a line in the faculty, Elijah Wood, said, that's my line I used to tell people.

I don't think you should run unless you're being chased.

I just did not love exercise at all.

But then later when I was making movies, my back kept going out because I was doing steady cam, because I was sitting drawing for long hours.

My back every year would go out really bad, where I needed a walker and quarter -sun shots at my back.

I remember Ricardo Montalban in his wheelchair at 84, and I had a walker with spy kids too in my back.

Then he goes, Robert.

I'm 84. What's your excuse?

You have to work out.

I was like, I know.

I know. I don't of Spy Kids 3, and I said, how can I get better shape so my back doesn't keep going out?

He goes, get the trainer.

Anyone who ever got anywhere physically had a trainer.

Said, even you? Don't you know, don't you just go train?

No, he said, no, no, I'd rather rearrange my sock drawer than go work out.

I was like, well, even if you even need a trainer, well, what chance do us mortal men have?

So, I got a trainer and I would hide from him.

I would pay him not to show up.

I hated it. I hated working out.

I would feel sick when he's coming over.

And I would half -ass the workouts, you know, cause I hate it.

So this woman, friend of mine from Mexico, older woman, my doctor told me I have to stop smoking, so I'm not smoking right now.

Said, you're gonna go back to smoking, cause your identity is a smoker.

You're saying you're a smoker, you're gonna go back.

You have to change your identity.

You have to say I'm a non -smoker.

I'm a non -smoker, cause then if you just identify yourself as that, you're gonna then conform to your identity What does a non -smoker do?

They hate smoke, makes them sick.

Stay away from cigarettes.

All right, I'll try that.

I don't know if it worked because I didn't follow up, but right away, I thought, hey, I should apply that to myself.

It's a good thing to go checklist yourself every few years.

Where are some places that I'm not doing that, that I can change the label?

So you know what I did?

And you got to go 180.

If you go by degrees, you're not going to get anywhere, 20%, 30 % bullshit, 180.

Of course I hate working out.

What do I say to myself all the time?

I hate sports. I hate working out.

I hate exercise. I love food.

I have to change my identity.

You know what I said?

I'm an athlete. I'm an athlete.

I'm an athlete. By the next day, everything changed.

What does an athlete do?

Loves to work out. Makes time to work out.

There is no time, but you make time when you love something.

You eat right because you're an athlete.

As soon as your identity changes, your label, well, you conform to that.

So that's the power of identity and the words we choose to describe ourselves.

I catch people all the time describing themselves and I go, you got to change that description.

Already out of the gate, you're talking about yourself in a way that's not going to help you.

Besides the aspiring, which you mentioned, where people are handicapping themselves by labeling, using that term.

Within say, filmmaking, are there 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. Are there any other common patterns that come up?

Common ones, I don't know, it just seems like anything that takes you out of the game early by a belief you have. I don't have access, everyone has access, you have a phone.

You can make actually a story on a phone or you can write.

I just say whenever I hear anyone use some kind of negative connotation to something like, well, I wanna make something but I just don't have the time.

It's like, you just, there's no time.

If you're waiting for time to happen, it's not gonna happen.

All the time's gone, there's no time, but we can make time.

We can make time for anything that we put our mind to.

So don't give me that shit.

That's like taking a hatchet and chopping off your left leg before the race.

You literally did this to yourself.

You just hobbled yourself for no reason with these beliefs.

And it's all you. You're your own worst enemy.

You're like the one in the audience in your way.

The biggest obstacle in your life is you, always.

I asked this question outside, because I was curious what your answer was.

But one of the questions that came up was, So Robert, you're real positive.

Do you have any human doubts?

I wanted to come back to that.

Yeah. And your answer is no. Yeah.

We'll come back. I just don't want to forget.

It seemed like I could work it in here.

Yeah, yeah, no, don't get it.

After, I wanted to, because I'm sure a lot of people are like, No doubts.

Okay. So walk us through that.

Yeah, so they said, Robert, you're real positive.

Do you have any human doubts?

And I said, this took me a chance to think because I had never heard it that way, human doubts.

But I said, what do you all think?

And then I see people going like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, because that's the real answer you would probably give.

But I like to do counterintuitive for everything.

So I went, no. Why, because that's a manifestation, isn't it?

I have no human doubts because I know the process too.

You can't wait to be ready.

They say, knowing is half the battle.

What's the other half?

Not knowing. I think that's more important because that's where the magic is.

You don't know what the other half is.

You're going to figure that's yeah, not knowing is the major part of the battle.

I got there to the set.

I didn't know I was going to do any of it, but as soon as I saw how limited the options were, suddenly it became very clear there was only one way to do it.

And if you have that confidence going into each day, you shouldn't have any doubt, you shouldn't have any fear.

A failure, my biggest successes came from my failure so why would I fear that?

What doubts, I couldn't think of any.

Can you think of a doubt I should have?

Give me an example of one doubt, or even you, what doubts would you have?

I think I need to basically take the last four minutes and just listen to it every morning.

I just need to replay that every morning.

I think it's a good reminder.

Okay, but what doubts do you have?

Well, I'll tell you, and this is hopefully - are listening to this, but I grew up in a household where there was a lot of, there's a lot of negativity.

And there's a lot of we don't have X because, we're never gonna have Y because, we can't ever have Z because.

Didn't you already prove that wrong, though?

Yeah, no, exactly. So, right now you have your own history now.

It's our vast history.

No, totally, so there's software to overwrite.

And - And those are formative years, so yeah, that's hard. and I can't think of any excuses that you should have. Or just you even, what doubts would you think you would have just so I can hear it?

Because then I'd go, okay, I agree with that.

I just hadn't thought of any.

The spot, it was so on the spot.

I was wondering what you would answer on the spot line.

You know what I appreciated about the question is how effective it is at making you stumble because of the human doubts.

I'm like, wait, do I have inhuman doubts?

Do I have animal doubts?

Let's just drop human doubts.

No, I know. I love that I'm like, wow, that's masterful.

Have you dropped that judo move doubts?

Do you? What doubts do you have?

They wanted to humanize you cause you sound like Superman.

When you talk, you know, that's how we give these talks.

Everyone thinks you're Superman, but we know each other.

We know that we all have weaknesses and this and that, but we don't want that.

And we don't want to manifest that.

So we don't dwell on it.

Totally. I would say that.

My inclination would be if I were on stage in your place, I probably would have said yes, but then if we dug a little deeper into what that means to me, I think you would differ from probably how a lot of people would to use it.

So I would have doubts in the sense that I don't know how something's gonna turn out.

But that doesn't, but that doesn't mean that I don't get started.

And that doesn't mean that I stop experimenting because my whole thing is like, look, for instance, I'm watching this game.

People are like, what?

A game? It doesn't make any sense.

It doesn't connect to the other things that you're doing.

And I'm like, exactly.

Because I wanna see what's behind door number three and I'm not gonna know, unless I do this thing that's off menu.

So, what are you going to do with it?

What's next? I have no idea, 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 step is in front of me.

That's it. That's all I need to figure out.

And a lot of the time, as you said, you're going to get there and circumstances will have changed.

The thing that was supposed to get shipped from the warehouse isn't there, and you're like, okay.

And actually, side story, I'll keep it super short, and then I want to actually ask you about a name that came to mind when you said the creative life because then I thought the creative act and I thought Rick Rubin, and I know you've met Rick Rubin, so I want to ask you about that.

But when I had my very first presentation at South by Southwest, 2007, it was the launch of the four -hour workweek, and I had put together the most incredible presentation of my life.

I had rehearsed at a friend's garage to his chihuahuas.

That was the only test audience I had.

And so they got bored and walked away, I had to change my presentation.

That was the only fine tuning.

But I was so proud of this huge deck that I put together.

PowerPoint. I get to the venue, my computer crashes.

And it's like, well, here we go.

Now what? We can roll up the sleeves now.

And it ended up being so much better than if I had used the slides.

It ended up being so much better because I'd rehearsed enough that I knew the material.

I didn't need the visual references.

That was a self doubt that I had that I wouldn't be able to give it without the slides, and then the slides went away, and it was better than I could have thought.

So you might have, so you can have a doubt, but you're not gonna live and breathe by that.

You're gonna push past it really quickly because you should have fear.

You should have some fear going into something.

I call it fear forward. Fear forward. Yeah, fear forward. Yeah, like have the fear, But don't let it cripple you.

Just go forward knowing you're doing something that's outside of your comfort zone, and you're going to reap great benefits.

You might slip on the first two rocks.

It might be four rooms. But if you don't look at it with a negative point of view, you turn it into a spy and get some sense in.

Yeah. I think that's an R, R merch teaching opportunity.

I told somebody that.

They went fear forward. I like this.

I guess it's kind of catchy.

But I tell you, I got to tell my kids this after we did this project together.

I said now you who really know how it works.

Because like, my son Ray started to say, he was helping me with a film, right?

By the end of the two weeks, they interviewed him about it.

He's waxing philosophical about the creative process like he's been doing it for a decade.

He said, I never knew how my dad did El Mariachi.

I mean, every day was, everything was just falling apart, but we'd figure it out.

Every day I was figuring it out.

But I never knew how he did that movie for no money.

But now I do, because we just did it.

Yeah. He didn't know either.

He just started. Most people never start.

He figured it out day by day, and now he knew it in his blood because he had just done it.

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 the boat with you figuring stuff out.

They see you trying to figure it out.

They're part of the solution.

We're going to get into this and I'm get slapped in the face and kicked on the balls by their kids.

It'll blow your mind.

All right, we're going to come.

But we'll get back to but this is the main thing, 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 just did it.

It's all life lessons.

You get together. You make your plan, which is like your script.

You make it as bulletproof as possible.

So then you can go do your film, so you can go take action, watch it all fucking fall apart.

It's like your projector thing.

And then that's when you roll up your sleeves and go, now let's take this chicken shit and make chicken salad.

And it always comes out better.

It always comes out better than your original plan.

Every time, watch, rinse, repeat, that's life.

You just learned the most valuable lesson of life on this little microcosm of what life is, which is a movie.

Because remember life and art should be the same.

You're writing a story, and you're writing your own story while you're doing it.

The story of who you are and who you're gonna become and what you're gonna achieve as you're writing a fake story.

That's why they go together.

That's why people identify with stories.

You're literally, we're writing our own story.

So do you have doubts?

Yeah, but I'm gonna write past it.

I'm gonna write my story to where I'm not the guy that has doubts.

So that's the power of creativity and labeling.

And that's a label.

Am I gonna say I'm a guy who has doubt?

No, because then guess what.

Now I have doubts. And if there is a doubt, I can identify, like you just did, figure out a way past it right away.

So that's why I would just say, blanket, I don't have any doubts because I don't want to be the guy that has doubts.

Then I'm going to figure out, you know, it's kind of like, you have to make your business card first that says, a guy with no doubts.

I'll add that to it.

I have no doubts. I remember Kevin Smith, filmmaker, clerks and all that, he sent me a script called Dogma, and he said, I wrote this script.

It's got special effects.

It's all out of my wheelhouse.

He said, but you wrote it, he goes, yeah, but you, it's definitely a Robert Rodriguez movie.

You direct it. You go, why didn't you want to direct it?

It's too big for me.

Well, now you have to make it.

You fear forward. You're doing something that pulls you out of your wheelhouse.

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 his career, you know, because now he wasn't doing the comfort zone.

He was now going even way beyond, reaching way beyond.

So fear forward, get out of the comfort zone.

That means you're on the right track.

If you don't have fear on something you're going to do that day, you're probably fucking wasting your time.

You're doing something that you're spinning your wheels.

So you want to put yourself out there.

That's not the same as having doubt, I don't think.

It's a good litmus test. I have a little bit of doubt that my daughter's going to be able to perform tomorrow because it's the first time in front of a crowd.

She may get nervous.

I don't know, she's never seen a crowd.

She might step out and see the crowd and freeze, who knows?

But I don't want to put that out there because I don't want to manifest that.

I went to Memphis and we're gonna have cameras filming.

We're gonna make this a big moment.

And she rose to the occasion because she looked like a seasoned vet.

So Rick Rubin, his very first podcast, as far as I'm aware, was on this podcast, the Tim Ferriss show, ages ago.

It was in his sauna.

He actually didn't think I was gonna say yes because he had a barrel sauna at what was Shangri -La in Malibu, ended up burning down.

Sadly this is quite a few years ago now.

But he said, OK, OK, we'll do the podcast. At that time he basically did Next To No Media.

And he said, we'll do the podcast but it has to be in the sauna.

And we're going to do the sauna and then cold plunge and then sauna.

And I was like, all right.

So we did it in the sauna.

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.

It was the mite. So we had to wrap those in towels as we did the interview.

But you got to meet Rick a handful of years ago.

What was that like?

I don't want to even speculate.

I mean, I have my own guesses as to, like, how you guys might mesh or interact.

But what was that like?

Oh, it was wonderful.

He showed up at my house.

OK. He was in town producing a band.

I heard he wanted to meet me.

So I said, yeah, he can just come to the house.

He shows up at my house.

So I figured, oh, he's probably heard some of my podcast stuff very similar to his creativity.

We all approach it differently and we all have our own theories.

So he shows up and he goes, I don't know who you are or what you do or anything about you, but I had a feeling I was supposed to come meet you.

So I said, you came to the right place.

I'm going to show you my house.

You've seen my crazy house.

I'm going to talk about my house.

I'm talking about how I drew it first, envisioned it, built it, by the time I finished telling you about my house, you'll know who I am.

So I go out and I give him the whole tour And he's like, okay, okay.

Yeah. That was just like my house.

It might've been the one in Malibu.

That's just like my house in somewhere.

He goes, we're the same guy.

So we go outside to where my waterfall is and my phone, we sit and puts his feet up and we just start talking.

He just wants to hear about it.

So I started telling him what we're talking about.

All this creativity, my whole spiel on it.

And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We're going on and going on and going on, going on.

I'm doing most of the talking.

And then as we was leaving, And he said, I want to give you my book.

I'm about to put out a book.

His book wasn't out yet.

So he ran to the car, came back out, and it was just like a galley version of the book.

I said, what is this?

And he thought... Actually, he said, Pretty much everything we were just talking about is in there.

And I was like, Really?

Okay, I want to give you my book.

So I gave my books, the picture I have, I'll show you, it was him with my book in front of my house.

And then he left. And then when he left, I'm reading, I'm like, Oh, my God, I read the book.

it's so similar, but different to things that I...

Because we all come at it from a different area.

But His solutions are similar, but different because it's from a different world than mine.

Same questions, same kind of things.

It's that hive brain...

I don't know. When you...

And you said this before, you said, because you're a creative...

I know other creatives like this, you have one foot in the magic realm and then it's like when your foot's in there, you pick up the signal from the others.

You all kind of get ideas from each other before you even Why he knew to show up.

And I've had people just show up drawn there, knowing they're supposed to be there, not knowing why.

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 your brain's not smart enough.

I'm not smart enough to come up with these ideas.

They're out there. And everyone in every discipline has a different line for that.

Like Keith Richards says, I don't come up with these rifts.

They're all floating around.

I was just the first one to pull it down and use it.

They all have their version of that, that it's not from them.

And that's the best way to think because then there's no ego involved.

And if you have no ego, that it's just you're a conduit for this creative spirit to come through you.

Well then you can do anything.

I can be a good pipe.

I just get my ego out of the way and let it come through.

Cause you know, when you're in a flow, you start, I don't want to write this book.

And then you start writing and the first few lines come out then it starts going.

You can't even believe what's coming out.

It's because creative spirit and my theory is it doesn't have hands.

It's waiting for you to get off your ass and pick up the pen.

and then it can help take over.

And so always take action.

That's why I say, always take action.

Don't wait to be inspired.

Action first, inspiration second because if you wait to be inspired, like to make your short film, good luck, that ain't never coming.

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.

It's coming through you now.

It's like, finally, you're gonna go make that film we've been wanting to make.

Creative spirit must be very disappointed in people who don't take action, who sit there.

And I tell you why I figured this out.

When I was a cartoonist at 19, I had a daily cartoon strip.

It would take me hours to draw it.

I would have to draw a little bit, try to figure out a joke, and I'd have a deadline every day or I wouldn't get paid.

And I needed the money.

I already had two jobs.

So one day I thought, I got to figure out a better, easier way.

I wonder if I could just come up with a method where I go Hold on, I'm gonna go home, sit, and just try and picture it.

Just picture it and then go draw it.

And I sit there for hours and be like, "'Deadlines,' oh shit, I gotta go do this." I'd have to pick up the pen and draw.

And as soon as I started drawing, I would draw one drawing, three others, and then I was like, oh, this kind of drawing kind of goes with that, but I put that there, and then that would be formulated.

That's the process.

It's not gonna come to you if you're just sitting on your ass waiting for it to make magic.

you have to physically pick up the pen or pick up the camera or pick up the guitar.

And then it's like, thank God, he says, it doesn't have hands now I can come through and now let me take over.

And that's the whole magic of creativity.

So you shouldn't have any doubts if you could do it.

As soon as you say, wow, I don't know how I did that.

I wonder if I can do it again.

You just shut the pipe because your ego gotten the way you thought it was you.

It's not you, it's coming through you.

So just be a clear pipe.

I know that works because I taught that to my kids in a class when they were younger.

Right away they each wrote a book.

It was unbelievable because they didn't have anything to unlearn.

You know, they didn't have any experience yet where we all have more doubts now because we're older.

We're like, ugh. You know, it's like that thing where you teach a class full of grade school kids who can write a novel, who can be the president, who can do an opera, who can dance badly, they all put their hands up because they don't know better.

you keep asking them as the years go on, hands start going down.

Even with no life experience, they just all stop believing they're that person without any evidence that they're not.

I always wanted to be that kid who had his hands up, no matter what.

Even if it was something I didn't know how to do, put your hand up because you'll figure it out as you go.

Don't have a doubt, just go do it.

Just go do it. It seems to be working for you so far.

It's been working for me.

You remember that movie being there with Peter Sellers?

He's so naive. Steve, he's just a gardener, but he gets hit by car, and he ends up in Washington, and everyone thinks he's so smart because he's just talking about the garden, and they all read into him, and by the end, he walks across the lake.

Because he doesn't know you can't.

It doesn't know you can't do it.

It's the most beautiful movie you can see.

Peter Sellars, I think, got an Oscar for it, or a nomination on these.

And it's amazing. And you're just, like, oh my God, They all think he's this prophet.

And everyone's quoting him and doing their own version of what he's saying.

But he's just saying, when the roots are strong, the garden will flourish.

And everybody's like, whoa.

But the naive quality, you want to keep that naive quality.

That's what got me to do mariachi.

I didn't know it couldn't be done.

It was only till later when people said, how'd you make that movie for $7 ,000?

You know that's impossible.

I was like, really?

It was like, it didn't seem that hard. But if you're telling me, I guess I just followed my nose and I ended up at the top of Mount Everest somehow.

I wasn't trying to do that.

But to some people it was impossible, but to me it was just solutions I came up with to make up for what I didn't have. What does your journaling look like these days?

Wow, I'm gonna hope I can inspire everybody to journal.

It's really weird, I go do a talk and I say, how many people keep a diary or journal?

It could be like a group of 400 people, I'll see two hands, three hands.

I'm like, oh my God, if I can leave you with any impression.

My big thing now, I tell people, this is my theory, living is reliving.

Because you know, you go to a concert and people have their video cameras up and everybody says, put it away, live in the moment.

Counterintuitive I say, the moment fleets.

You're not going to even remember it tomorrow.

Do you remember who was standing next to you yesterday?

the day. From day to day, shit just goes by.

Because we see life at 96 frames per second, 20K resolution surround sound.

Like right now, I'm looking at you, but I can see there's a glass here.

I can see in the peripheral there's someone over here operating this thing.

A year from now, 5, and then 10, all our three -pound meat computer can process.

They might have a file photo of you in a t -shirt and me in a t -shirt because we kind of remember each but the metadata will be some kind of narrative that we spoke and had a good time.

That's it, that's all you're going to have. And when you journal, I'm shocked, I was trying to figure out when I bought certain guitars, I couldn't remember.

I knew some were gifted, but I couldn't remember.

I just did a word search in my journals cause I have a year by year journal, guitar, guitar, guitar.

So I'd read and it shocked me that, oh wow, I thought I bought this when it was a gift from this person, how can I not remember that?

This is a big guitar, it's like a $10 ,000 guitar.

I would not remember that.

And I would read a little bit of the diary around it.

I was floored. Have you go back 10 years?

Even 15 years? It's like you're reading someone else's journal.

You're reading someone else's journal and it's like, I guess I just have to take it for what it's there.

Well, my mom actually gave me a box of papers that was sitting in one of the rooms in my childhood home.

She said, What do you want to do with this?

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 I was up to.

And I did not remember, that was one of the most formative experiences in my life.

I have a lot of memories from that period.

I did not remember 99 % of what I put in those emails.

It's got like a dehydrated version that you have to put water on to reconstruct, but even then it mostly just fades away, you don't even recognize it.

So it's so important to keep your history, but imagine what's your favorite jokes and your favorite things about life that you share with your brothers, your family.

It's all past stuff.

So living is reliving.

My kids now love watching the movies of them growing.

I shot so much video and kept journals of all their childhood.

They all journal now, but they have their whole childhood because I gave them the journals of their childhood.

They got their whole life journaled.

But I've been showing them home movies recently because I've been digitizing all the old tapes.

And I thought, they're not gonna dig this.

Some of this shit looks like VHS.

It's so cruddy. Compared to today's HD stuff, I was showing them footage of them younger, and I have tons of it.

I thought later in life, I could relive their wonderful childhood, right?

Forget it. I don't remember even filming this stuff.

It's like New Adventure's Up.

We're watching it not knowing what's gonna happen next.

And they're watching it.

I saw my son leaning into the screen to see what was around the corner.

I said, you just leaned into the screen.

They said, oh wow, I left the living room.

This was like virtual reality to me.

And I was like, wow, that's interesting.

Then I realized why.

Compared to our memory, that's virtual reality, even the crappiest VHS tape.

You hear the sounds, you see the place.

You start reformulating.

They cannot stop watching it.

Every time they come over, we watch new fun tape and we find classic new things that become benchmarks of humor and jokes that become iconic.

Reliving is living.

Like my mom turned 75 and I said, We've got to do something for your 75th birthday." And she said, no, no, no, no, no, no, we don't want anything done.

Why not? Because nothing could top my 65th birthday.

65th, what happened then?

Oh, you gave me a car.

You flew in everybody from out of town.

I was like, really?

I don't remember that.

It was only ten years before.

I must have tape. I looked it up, found the tape, put it in.

Oh my God, I don't remember anything.

So, I recut the tape.

Took it to her. And we had a big party and I showed the tape.

She was crying more.

Now she knows, when she gets the key, what it means.

She's like, Oh my God!

I was like, I don't have to do anything anymore.

We're just playing the old tapes.

It was more appreciated the second living is reliving because that's when it becomes iconic.

And in the moment this is all just flying by and we don't know what's important.

It's only by journaling that you go, this person's no longer with us.

What he said changed my life and I didn't know and I forgot that he told me this at this time.

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 you think.

And you're only going to know that by journaling.

What's your process?

Is it like end of day, word document?

End of day at 12, 12am an alarm goes off.

It says journal because I figured by 12 at night, I would have finished with most bullshit but I can actually sit and do it.

I've actually got my partner writing Journal Now.

I never kept a journal before, but because of the stuff I just said, just starting to see the value in it.

And they send me their journal, too.

That's always the best of your partner.

So a journal, seeing someone else's perspective on a big event, you don't have to journal every day, but at least the big events – Valentine's, Christmas, birthday, special trip, journal.

I'll take you on a trip with a journal for me and give me that as a gift, and it's wonderful.

Tell you what, I used to sometimes just do bullets.

I try to I try to write more now, because I've gone back.

I try to write more, just more detail about what happened, just because it's going to be gone.

Now I know it goes away.

It's not going to trigger your memory.

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 will accumulate.

Gone, gone. It's someone else's journal.

Just know that. Even like seven years ago, before my son started writing music for me, and I found a diary, and she said, Rebel told me his one year, five year, and 10 year plan.

It was great. And I was like, what did he tell me?

I don't remember. And I asked him, did you have it somewhere?

He goes, oh yeah, have it on my phone.

Oh shit, it's not on my phone.

It's in my diary. Oh, please find it and send it, because now I want to know.

Now I want to know.

Because your whole life changed after that.

I really want to know now, with more interest than when you first told me because now we know that whatever you said is not the path that ended up.

And so journaling is so powerful and so needed because you think you're gonna remember it's just a neat computer, it's not gonna remember it at all.

And now I just find myself having to leave myself breadcrumbs all day as my memory is fading anyway, just to know what I'm doing, much less what I already did.

But it does become iconic and you find some really fun stuff.

And if we find a video, oh my God, this is the best thing.

We find a video of us playing, Having a great time back 2003 and the weird thing you'll find if you videotape your kids and journal You find these weird 20 year full circle moments you know full circle moments like We just started working with a studio their favorite animation studio in Japan.

They love Japan. They loved you They're all about Japan Japanese knife -making.

They build houses with no nails my kids I found the videotape the first time I told them about Japan.

Me telling them, and I taped it because I wanted to see their reaction because I was like, you're going to love this place.

And you see their eyes light up and they watched it now and go, that was the moment of inception.

That was the moment we never forgot and we built upon.

And to see that is amazing.

But then you go back to the journal because there's stuff in the journal that's not on video and vice versa.

And I go, wow, you know what we were doing, what I was doing while we're playing all those games?

I was wheeling and dealing big deals in L .A.

for once upon a time Mexico in Cincinnati or, you know, and they see the context of what was happening in between those moments.

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.

And that teaches them about life.

Like, wow, you can have it all.

You really can. You know, it just helps in so many ways to document your life.

Do you have any other parenting hacks?

The biggest life hacks is just working with your kids.

Like I said, I stumbled upon it, but then when I saw Racer being so excited about what he learned about the creative process, and then I realized everything I was teaching them was life lessons, I went from fearing that they were gonna resent me to realizing I'm gonna make all of them work on a film with me.

That's just gonna be, this is what you gotta do.

Part of the deal. Part of the deal.

Not so that you can become a filmmaker, because you're going to learn more about life.

These are life lessons.

And it's the best way to do it.

It's project -based.

It's challenging. 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.

They all played piano, and it was just to connect right to left side of the brain.

That's all we gave him that for.

But he was our best piano player, and at the end he did his last recital as high school was finished, and he was already doing knives, Japanese knives -making.

And he won. forged in fire.

Oh, my God, did I tell you he won forged in fire?

My son when he was 18 got on forged in fire.

That's a TV show. And won a TV show out doing all these other blacksmiths because he'd been teaching himself Japanese knife making.

And I asked him, how did you win?

You won $10 ,000. What was your mindset?

You were using tools you've never even used before.

They were just throwing stuff at you and problem solving, creative problem solving.

And he gives me this samurai answer that I love.

He said, I convinced myself that I'd already won.

Somehow I won. So when I'd come up against a challenge instead of thinking what I had to do to get past the challenge, I just needed to remember what I did to get there.

I was just like, whoa!

This amazing show, wow!

I was like, wow! But again, you'll come up with innovations when you're thrown into the fire.

And so he was doing so good with the music, 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.

We can be heroes though, that's my bag.

I do orchestral stuff.

We'll do the score for that together, that way I can teach him orchestral scoring because that'll be the next stage.

He writes the first piece, not even a picture.

He saw what picture I was editing, he went and wrote it to me.

It's like John Williams. It was huge, it was massive.

And I was like, okay, yeah, sure, let me check it out.

I'll try the picture.

I didn't want him to see me trying to picture.

I put it to picture.

It matched. I doubled it, tripled it.

It fit this whole five -minute sequence.

I called him up 10 minutes later, come back up here and watch. It hits everything perfectly.

If you could do more of this there, more of that there, he was stunned.

I said, good news and bad news.

Good news is, it's awesome.

Bad news is, I can't help you at all.

I don't know how you did this.

Where did you learn music theory?

They don't teach you that on piano because I never learned theory and I was always proud of that.

That's the 10 % I thought you didn't need to know.

now I'm different, now he can manipulate music because he knows theory, he goes, oh, I learned it on YouTube.

I was like, well, I'll tell you what, you're gonna have to write the whole score but I'll help you, I'll be your assistant, I'll edit it, I'll show you how you can repeat themes.

And he sat there and he did it.

And he was just, I could just see, he was just under the gauntlet.

I said, dude, this is the only way to learn.

Throw you in the deep end, if you get a lung full of water, we'll fish you out.

And his eyes were like this big.

But years later he came back to me and said, I'm so thankful you did that.

My whole life changed because I didn't know I could do it, but I had no choice.

He knew I could not help Him.

I wasn't doing it as some kind of weird teaching exercise.

I said, Let me see your charts.

The thing you have going on in the baseline only, I would do a whole score with that.

How'd you come up with all these others?

I can't help you. And I remember the conductor said, we recorded in Vienna, stopped midway— I think you sent me a video of him conducting.

I said, go learn on YouTube real quick how to conduct.

Cause I want you to conduct one of them.

Cause I want video of you with a James Bond Orchestra conducting your own piece.

Cause I never got to do that.

And you're so proud when your kids can take on the child, and you see it just transforms their life.

But the Vienna conductor stopped the score and said, this is a magnificent score.

I can't believe you're 20.

He was 20 at the time.

But again, you throw your kids in the deep end.

And I tell this to all the parents I can because it's counterintuitive.

A lot of parents would say, I don't wanna push it, but I tell you, if you have the opportunity to work with your kids, do it because it enriches your life because you are mentoring them, they're mentoring you because they're figuring out shit like that that you never woulda thought of.

You're doing a project -based thing together that's impossible that you're all gonna overcome together.

Now, how many parents do you know try to give their kids advice on their job and the kids just like, you're in their shoes, you're all trying to figure it out together.

So you're actually useful.

You're not just some Geppetto who's worried about their kid all the time.

I always say don't just parent, partner.

Because after a certain age, as soon as they're teenagers, they replace you with their peers because you become useless to them.

If you went to a relationship last long time, partner, don't parent anymore.

They don't need a parent anymore.

They need a partner, they need a mentor.

they need an OB1, because that's what they look for in their life, mentors.

Be their mentor. Their confidence grows when they're mentoring you back, and they're seeing their confidence soar.

And it's family time!

You're checking all the boxes—I don't even do anything anymore.

I don't take any job, any assignment, unless it's going to involve my children, because life is so good that way.

You're checking all the boxes.

You're preparing them for life, you're learning from them, they're learning from you, and it's family time.

I was telling this to Stallone and I was having dinner with Stallone and his wife.

It's pre -COVID, right after COVID — something.

I had just done We can be Heroes, this movie, the biggest movie on Netflix.

And I was telling him, my son did score, I wrote it with my kids and all this.

And Jennifer was like — her eyes were just wide, like, whoa, she hits Stallone.

She goes, you don't work with your daughters.

You don't work with your daughters.

And Stallone was like, ooh, ooh.

I was like, well, man, I don't want to get anybody in trouble here, right.

you know, maybe I should reel it back a little bit.

But sure enough, next year his daughters have podcasts.

He would show up every once in a while to help boost some ratings and stuff.

Now they have a TV show, Family Stallone.

And all of them together, working together, they live their dream, and they're just so happy.

So I tell people, because people can hear it when they hear it, they just need to know someone did it and that it worked to know, oh, I have a way to try that with my kids.

Because I didn't know my kids would have wanted to work with me.

You know what happened when my kid's teacher told me, you know your son Racer, when he was like 15, he loves knights, we're studying knights and we're talking about squires.

And I asked, well, who would you want to apprentice under?

And he said my dad.

I was like, really?

He's never told me that.

Did he say that? He goes, yeah.

He said it to your dad.

I was like, wow. How'd that feel to hear?

It was wild. They made you, see, kids have egos too.

They don't want to come just tell you that.

They might tell someone else, but they're not going to tell you.

So don't assume. Don't assume they don't want to be part of your life or be part of your work.

Since I've been working with my kids since they were very young, I didn't know it would keep going for 20 years.

And now it's just become the thing that we do.

And they endlessly inspire me because they just have that confidence built in, but we're building a go -kart together.

So I know some parents would dismiss it as an opportunity like that and call it entitlement, but wow, you're so wrong, So, Ron, let me set you straight, because this would be a curse on your life if you don't at least know this.

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 to 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 – it's a tremendous gift to everyone involved and beyond.

Because if you refuse to do so, because you're other people will call it nepotism.

You are missing out the most important opportunity of your collective lives.

Because look, what happens as parents when we pass away?

Don't we just give everything that we created to our children?

Is that not entitlement?

That they had no part in building?

There was an opportunity to build this with them, so that when they inherited they could go, I made this with my dad.

Right? Right? So it's like, oh, thanks, dad, for all this shit that I had no part of, that you went and made without me being involved at all.

Getting that chance to 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, thanks.

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 that lasts your whole life.

Yeah, I mean, what strikes me about it also, I mean, there's trust fund kids or trustafarians have a new term, well, it's not exactly the same, but it gets used similarly, nepo babies, right?

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 of nepotism, there is a sort of unearned giving implied, right?

There's an unearned giving implied.

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 confidence that they can figure it out, that they can learn, right?

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 lot of tap dancing and figuring things out.

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, and I would say the lowest level is giving someone a fish, right?

Instead of teaching them to fish.

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 gonna come up 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 gonna put you into enough circumstances that you have the confidence you can fear for it.

You have the confidence that not knowing is half the battle, but you will get there.

You can tell them that stuff all you want, but when they're doing it with you, they learn so much better.

I mean, that's why I said - Well, it's like you sitting on the couch with your hands behind you.

Yeah. Trying to come up with the comic strip.

It's not gonna happen.

But you can tell them all that, but it's different when they've lived it too.

You know, that's why I did the whole.

If I get hit by a bus, you know what to do, because it's true, now they know it in their bones.

When I did a talk in Columbia with the $7 ,000 movie that we did together, meaning the boys.

We went, they flew us down there to go talk, and everyone was, it was Columbia.

These guys live in poverty.

They were leaning forward to find out how to make a movie with no money so they could get out of there.

And we were talking, and one woman was asking a question about screenwriting, and I was giving my answer.

And Racer said, because he'd written the script for me now, He wanted to stand up and say, what he's saying is really true because he had lived it already.

It wasn't, this is stuff he'd heard before, but now it really sank in because he was there.

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 hadn't, probably cause I'm older and I've been around longer, a lot of people will just assume I'm too busy to do whatever project I'm doing alone.

So they said, yeah, we can't wait to work with you and your team.

Most people have a team.

My team is my kids.

Yeah. And it's got more jobs.

A video game company wanted to be in partnership with me and said, well, let me tell you who my team is.

All my kids are gamers.

I got them into games when they were really little.

They know this world inside out.

One of them is even a game designer.

That's my team and they're in my house.

We love this. 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 the process we did.

It's a done deal. We're doing it now.

Now my kids get to make a game, a real game, like a big ass game.

And you get to do it together because you've already trained them to be.

And it used to be a joke, when I had so many kids.

I had five kids, I would say, oh yes, my future cast and crew.

I would just say it as a joke.

Hey, it turned out to be true, manifest it.

They're my cast and crew.

So is there anything to the story of the Double R's besides the fact that you have the Double R's?

Is there more to it?

Yeah, Double R's was just from a family of 10 kids.

My mom's name is Rebecca and my sister's name is Rebecca.

We're the only double R's.

My mom, my sister, and me.

And I always just love the alliteration that I know like the double R's.

It was really powerful.

R, R. Rebecca Rodriguez.

Robert Rodriguez. So, once you name the first kid with an R name, well then the second one, and then the third one for, and I gave them regular middle names that didn't have to be, you know, so like is Rocket, Valentin, Rodriguez, you can be Valentin Avian or you can be Robert Rodriguez or Reza Rodriguez or Maximiliano Avian.

If they want to go into politics and not be pro -wrestlers, they can change their name.

But I didn't know they were going to keep those names past childhood.

I thought it was just fun kid names.

Everybody has five names.

One is Roque, Joaquin, Cecilia, or Rodriguez, everyone has five names.

So he can pick his identity.

I want him to just use it as a little...

Every time he has to fill out a government form, he's like, God, God damn it.

I'm not going to use up.

But they didn't want to get rid of their first names, They love their first names.

So I thought, let's keep, if everyone's keeping their first name, let's own it.

Double R is kind of a cool logo.

What's fun was that it just looks cool, Double R.

It means all of us.

And it makes us like a tribe.

And it makes us all, and it gave them a lot of pride.

I was surprised how much pride they had in it.

And they all started coming up with ideas.

Rick Rubin comes over and he saw them holding a picture of it.

And he goes, hey, Double R.

That was my artist's name when he was a DJ.

That's why he was Double R.

That's amazing. Okay, this is one of my favorite things that when I've told parents they go, I want to try out with my kids.

With something I stumbled upon.

You know, I was having some kind of family talk with the kids.

We usually have these things we call tribe talks.

We didn't talk about anything that's like, we're a tribe, we help each other out.

They get so excited about tribe talks.

Let's have a tribe talk.

And the tribe talk is asking one another for help?

Let's have a new thing I'm going to talk about that's going to affect their lives later.

Let's have a tribe talk about this.

They're so excited, because they learn about something that I want to share with them to prepare them for life.

Something I might have just learned that I wish I could take a time machine and tell myself, you can't.

The closest thing to it is telling your children.

Because I used to think, any advice I'd give them, I'm afraid, might probably just go in one ear and out the other because it's not real to them yet.

They probably have to live through it and find their own mistakes.

No! They would process it and give it back to me.

And I would be like, where'd you get that philosophy?

You told me that. I didn't tell it to you like that.

I said, I might have said glass is half empty or half full.

Oh yeah, we built upon it.

They take what you tell them and build upon it, right?

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, because there's a funny scene, it came up because of a movie.

We did another Spike Kids.

There's a scene where the parents are talking about Operation Fireball with such memories about it.

And the little girl asks, what is that exactly?

Oh, we beat up the bad guy, we blew up his lair," and all this stuff.

And she's just like, you could have done it a better way.

You could have gone to him nicely, you could have talked to him, seen his aesthetic.

And it plays it out right.

I thought, I'm going to try that with my kids.

I bet if I told them all the decisions I was faced with, that a lot of times are lose -lose.

There's no clear way to go.

And did you think 10 years later, you'll see what the real answer should have been?

Nothing. There's never clarity sometimes.

I'm curious to see what they would have done with knowledge more evolved So I walk them through it was fascinating was fascinating at every turn Okay A or B, which way would you go?

I'm not gonna tell you what I did They both suck.

And do you know what they say?

I don't want to have to pick No, you have to pick I had to pick you have to pick they picked every time it was the same until one You go, it's a big one.

You go, well, that's the circumstances.

That's the knowledge you have?

You go, yeah, that's all the knowledge you have. I would've done what you did too.

I would've left. I should have done that.

I didn't, I stayed.

Let me tell you what happened because I stayed.

I should've done that.

I knew I should have done that, but I went ahead and stayed because that's the right thing to do.

I did the right thing and it blew up in my face.

Watch, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

The right thing by external.

Right thing, external.

The external stance.

that anyone else, counterintuitive though, would say with the evidence you have, it's counterintuitive as it sounds, you should go that way.

So you picked the right thing, I should have done that, but because I decided to do the right thing, you just felt so good after, and they were so excited knowing now what life really is like.

It's gonna throw shit at you that's no clear answer.

Even with all this time, no clarity.

They know that it's a lot tougher, And they're invested because it's you and them in a way.

So I tell parents, I told, I only tell you but several others were like, I'm gonna try that with my kids for sure.

I'm gonna tell my kids that.

I'm curious to see what they say.

Do you wanna see if they remix a better version of you?

But you might be surprised that it's just as unfathomable to them to have an answer as you do.

Okay life hack, my favorite life hack.

Have you seen? I showed you that little spark amp, right?

That I can play guitar.

Okay, okay. in your kitchen.

So, no time, even when you try to make time, you can't make consistent time.

Supposed to walk 10 ,000 steps for your health, especially after 15 or whatever, time for that.

It takes an hour, an hour and a half.

I don't have enough things to listen to or phone calls to make, to go do that.

Then I love guitar.

I can't be playing guitar for a freaking hour.

You know, you listen to Tom Morello on this masterclass, you want to get better at guitar?

Play for an hour a day.

If you want to get better than that, more.

So I started trying to do an hour a day, couldn't do it consistently.

So I'd be like, God, I want to play guitar.

Now, time to walk. So I put them together.

The Spark amps, they have some that are really small.

And now they just came out with the headphone ones that you just put it on.

It's the amp that's built in.

And you plug in your guitar, wireless.

And I used to have just the one in my pocket, their older one.

And I put a playlist on of backing tracks, drums, and bass for songs, my favorite songs, that I played to.

And I walk just around my house.

And you forget you're even there.

It's like the Angus Young work I, You know, he's always doing that, or Eddie Van Halen running around.

The music drives you, you don't even, the room is gone, you're in a stadium.

You're walking across the stage.

Your house is bigger than most stages, walking across.

I put on like an hour to an hour and a half playlist. This was like 10 or 12 songs, easy.

15 ,000 steps, 17 ,000 steps, easy.

You don't even know you did it, you don't even remember walking.

You're so transported.

You're so busy doing this that I'll be at the end of my playlist going, I'm going to keep playing.

And you just keep walking.

That's why you saw me in the crowd walking through the crowd.

I'm so used to playing and walking.

I went walking through the crowd greeting everybody that I knew instead of...

I said, well, shit, I can play and walk and not have to look at my...

Because I got that training.

Anyway, anyone who was a guitarist, the best life hack.

You get an hour plus practice every day.

I got so much better on guitar because of it, and you're walking, and you're not even feeling it.

I don't even remember doing it.

Biggest life hack era.

I couldn't wait to tell you.

I call it the rockwalk.

Gotta do the rockwalk.

My friend goes out into the neighborhood with his thing.

He just walks around the neighborhood.

When I saw you on stage with your daughter, that's the most I've seen you play guitar.

I've only seen your guitars in the house.

But that was the most actual play time I have seen you standing at your daughter.

That's right, because I don't go to just play songs with the Hello Kitty guitar.

Rocking the Hello Kitty is a good guitar and it looks great.

Robert, well, I have to do this more than once a decade.

But yeah, thank you so much for all the stories and I took a ton of notes.

How can people learn more about brass knuckle films?

Where should they go?

Where should they check out?

There's a brass knuckle films website where you can learn all about it, Get all the updates, show you how you can invest. You'll see all the perks and things for the different levels.

Get a part of it. It's a community, I think is really gonna appeal to anyone who's a fan of action movies, but also filmmakers, but just people who are interested and people who consume.

Don't just be a consumer, make the money back.

I want you to make the money so that you're not just consuming and watching a movie.

If you like movies, this is the best way.

I try to figure out ever since I was a kid, how can I get paid to watch movies?

I watch movies all the time.

It's the closest thing.

Yeah breast knuckle films. Beautiful.

Alright folks, we're gonna link in the show notes to everything tuned up blog such podcast. Thank you Robert.

Thank you for giving me a forum to tell people.

Oh of course. They know people were here cause everyone listens to your thing.

100 % I just like with my book I always wanted as soon as I 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 10 that it was possible Because everyone made it sound like it was not.

So I just wanted to shout it from the mountain top.

And I still feel that same way as I discover things.

I want I want to tell people because the feedback loop is amazing.

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 again, inspires you even you're like, well, you just inspired me now to go try that way.

So, yeah, I love sharing that.

Yeah, incredibly energizing.

It's a virtuous circle.

And for everybody listening and watching till next time.

Be just a little bit kinder than it's necessary.

to others and to yourself.

Thanks for tuning in.

or have started exploring over that week.

It's kind of like my diary of cool things.

It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums, perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests.

And these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you.

So if that sounds fun again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about.

If you'd like to try it out just go to tim .blog slash Friday type that into your browser tim .blog slash Friday drop in your email and you'll get the very next one thanks for listening.

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Listeners have heard me talk about making before you manage for years.

All that means to me is that when I wake up, I block out three to four hours to do the most important things that are generative, creative, podcasting, writing, et cetera, before I get to the email and the admin stuff and the reactive stuff and everyone else's agenda for my time.

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[The Art of Creative Entrepreneurship: Lessons from Robert Rodriguez]-[#804: Robert Rodriguez, The Wizard of Cinema Returns — The "Fear-Forward" Way of Life, How to Overcome Self-Doubt, Learning to Love Limitations, and Counter-Intuitive Parenting That Works]

📋 Summary

The Philosophy of 'Freedom of Limitations'

The Power of Identity and Labeling

Fear-Forward Creativity

Partnering with the Next Generation

The Discipline of Journaling

Democratizing Film: Brass Knuckle Films

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[The Art of Creative Entrepreneurship: Lessons from Robert Rodriguez]-[#804: Robert Rodriguez, The Wizard of Cinema Returns — The "Fear-Forward" Way of Life, How to Overcome Self-Doubt, Learning to Love Limitations, and Counter-Intuitive Parenting That Works]

📋 Summary

The Philosophy of 'Freedom of Limitations'

The Power of Identity and Labeling

Fear-Forward Creativity

Partnering with the Next Generation

The Discipline of Journaling

Democratizing Film: Brass Knuckle Films

Deep Learning with ListenLeap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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