AI transcript
0:00:04 Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of
0:00:09 The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to interview world-class performers, to break down
0:00:15 how they do what they do, what are the frameworks, tools, influences, so on and so forth that have
0:00:22 helped make them who they are. My guest today is back. At long last, he is one of my most
0:00:28 requested guests for a follow-up, Robert Rodriguez. He is a film director, screenwriter,
0:00:33 producer, cinematographer, editor, and composer. He does everything, absolutely everything.
0:00:38 And to give you an idea of the genesis, while a student at the University of Texas at Austin,
0:00:44 UT Austin, that’s right here in my backyard, in 1991, Rodriguez wrote the script to his first feature
0:00:50 film while sequestered at a drug research facility as a paid subject in a clinical experiment. I’m not
0:00:57 making that up. That paycheck covered the cost of shooting his $7,000 film El Mariachi, which won the
0:01:04 Award at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival, and became the lowest budget movie ever released by a major
0:01:09 studio. If you want the full story on that, listen to our first conversation, which you can find in the
0:01:15 show notes. Rodriguez wrote about these experiences in Rebel Without a Crew, a perennial guide for the
0:01:22 independent filmmaker. Really, it is a guide to bare-bones, bootstrapped entrepreneurship of any
0:01:26 type. It’s worth reading. Then he went on to write, produce, direct, and edit a series of successful
0:01:33 films, including Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn, The Faculty, and the Spy Kids franchise, which is huge.
0:01:38 Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Frank Miller’s Sin City, We Can Be Heroes. And he’s also collaborated
0:01:44 with director James Cameron on the film adaptation of Alita, Battle Angel. His films have grossed more
0:01:51 than $1.5 billion at the box office. Then, in 2000, I suppose somewhere in the middle there, Rodriguez founded
0:01:57 Troublemaker Studios in Austin, Texas, which I’ve visited a number of times. It’s worth checking out if you
0:02:02 ever have the chance. He recently directed the Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande video, Rain On Me, and episodes of The
0:02:08 Mandalorian, and The Book of Boba Fett, and launched Brass Knuckle Films, an investable action film slate.
0:02:13 What does that mean? If you’ve ever wanted to pitch Robert Rodriguez a film idea, or get profit
0:02:19 participation in action films and sequels, he tells you all about it in this conversation. But there are
0:02:26 lots of tactical takeaways, lots of actionable bits of advice that you can use, and that is his style. He
0:02:33 had an entire dossier of things he’d been collecting over the last nine, 10 years since our last conversation
0:02:39 that he wanted to share on this podcast specifically. So, you can find him on x at x.com
0:02:47 slash Rodriguez, R-O-D-R-I-G-U-E-Z, and on Instagram slash Rodriguez at Rodriguez. He’s Rodriguez everywhere.
0:02:54 So, now, just a few words from our sponsors. We’ll get right to this very, very practical tactical
0:03:01 conversation with Robert Rodriguez. Listeners have heard me talk about making before you manage for
0:03:05 the years. All that means to me is that when I wake up, I block out three to four hours to do the most
0:03:11 important things that are generative, creative, podcasting, writing, etc. Before I get to the email
0:03:18 and the admin stuff and the reactive stuff and everyone else’s agenda for my time. For me, let’s
0:03:24 just say I’m a writer and entrepreneur, I need to focus on the making to be happy. If I get sucked
0:03:29 into all the little bits and pieces that are constantly churning, I end up feeling stressed
0:03:35 out. And that is why today’s sponsor is so interesting. It’s been one of the greatest
0:03:42 energetic unlocks in the last few years. So, here we go. I need to find people who are great at managing.
0:03:48 And that is where Cresset Family Office comes in. You spell it C-R-E-S-S-E-T. Cresset Family Office. I was
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0:04:07 strategies, timely exit planning, bill pay, wires, all the dozens of other parts of wealth management,
0:04:12 just financial management that would otherwise pull me away from doing what I love most, making
0:04:18 things, mastering skills, spending time with the people I care about. And over many years, I was
0:04:23 getting pulled away from that stuff at least a few days a week, and I’ve completely eliminated that.
0:04:28 So, experience the freedom of focusing on what matters to you with the support of a top wealth
0:04:35 management team. You can schedule a call today at CressetCapital.com slash Tim. That’s spelled C-R-E-S-S-E-T.
0:04:41 CressetCapital.com slash Tim to see how Cresset can help streamline your financial plans and grow
0:04:48 your wealth. That’s CressetCapital.com slash Tim. And disclosure, I am a client of Cresset. There are
0:04:52 no material conflicts other than this paid testimonial. And of course, all investing involves
0:05:00 risk, including loss of principle. So, do your due diligence. Way back in the day, in 2010, I published
0:05:07 a book called The 4-Hour Body, which I probably started writing in 2008. And in that book, I
0:05:15 recommended many, many, many things. First-generation continuous glucose monitor and cold exposure and
0:05:21 all sorts of things that have been tested by people from NASA and all over the place. And one thing in
0:05:27 that book was Athletic Greens. I did not get paid to include it. I was using it. That’s how long I’ve
0:05:34 been using what is now known as AG1. AG1 is my all-in-one nutritional insurance. And I just packed up,
0:05:40 for instance, to go off the grid for a while. And the last thing I left out on my countertop to remember
0:05:47 to take, I’m not making this up, I’m looking right in front of me, is travel packets of AG1. So,
0:05:51 rather than taking multiple pills or products to cover your mental clarity, gut health, immune health,
0:05:58 energy, and so on, you can support these areas through one daily scoop of AG1, which tastes great,
0:06:02 even with water. I always just have it with water. I usually take it first thing in the morning,
0:06:05 and it takes me less than two minutes in total. Honestly, it takes me less than a minute.
0:06:11 I just put it in a shaker bottle, shake it up, and I’m done. AG1 bolsters my digestion and nutrient
0:06:17 absorption by including ingredients optimized to support a healthy gut in every scoop. AG1 in
0:06:23 single-serve travel packs, which I mentioned earlier, also makes for the perfect travel companion. I’ll
0:06:28 actually be going totally off the grid, but these things are incredibly, incredibly space-efficient.
0:06:31 You could even put them in a book, frankly. I mean, they’re kind of like bookmarks.
0:06:36 After consuming this product for more than a decade, I chose to invest in AG1,
0:06:41 in 2021 as I trust their no-compromise approach to ingredient sourcing and appreciate their focus
0:06:48 on continuously improving one formula. They go above and beyond by testing for 950 or so contaminants
0:06:53 and impurities compared to the industry standard of 10. AG1 is also tested for heavy metals and 500
0:07:00 various pesticides and herbicides. I’ve started paying a lot of attention to pesticides. That’s a
0:07:05 story for another time. To make sure you’re consuming only the good stuff. AG1 is also NSF
0:07:09 certified for sport. That means if you’re an athlete, you can take it. The certification
0:07:15 process is exhaustive and involves the testing and verification of each ingredient and every finished
0:07:21 batch of AG1. So they take testing very seriously. There’s no better time than today to start a new
0:07:28 healthy habit. And this is an easy one, right? Wake up, water in the shaker bottle, AG1, boom. So take
0:07:34 advantage of this exclusive offer for you, my dear podcast listeners, a free one-year supply of liquid
0:07:41 vitamin D plus five travel packs with your subscription. Simply go to drinkag1.com slash
0:07:48 Tim. That’s the number one. Drinkag1.com slash Tim for a free one-year supply of liquid vitamin D plus
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0:08:01 Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.
0:08:02 Can I ask you a personal question?
0:08:05 Now would it seem an appropriate time?
0:08:10 what if I did the opposite? I’m a cybernetic organism living tissue over a metal endoskeleton.
0:08:14 The Tim Ferriss Show.
0:08:24 All right. Dr. Rodriguez, here we are again.
0:08:25 Yes.
0:08:27 It has been almost 10 years.
0:08:28 Can you believe it? 10 years.
0:08:32 And I can’t believe it’s been almost 10 years, number one.
0:08:37 My decision to go bald early was helpful in making me look somewhat similar to the way
0:08:38 I always wear a black shirt.
0:08:43 And some people may not know also when I first moved to Austin, which is coming up on eight
0:08:50 years, also nuts. I did not have any plates or silverware at my house.
0:08:56 And I invited you over for dinner, not even thinking of this. And you’re, you’re kind enough
0:09:02 to bring over. I still have it. This red plate and a couple of your like dungeon forks and
0:09:03 knives. Yeah. So thank you for that.
0:09:04 Sure. Absolutely.
0:09:12 And a lot has happened in the last 10 years and we’ve continued to hang out and talk and
0:09:17 you have a whole new bag of tricks. Our first conversation was a barn burner of an episode.
0:09:18 Yeah.
0:09:25 People were super excited by it. There’s a lot of tactical advice and you have explored a
0:09:28 lot. You have found a lot. You’ve fine tuned a lot.
0:09:33 You stumble upon new things. You stumble upon them literally, you know? So yeah, we adopt
0:09:36 them and I’ve stored them away so I can tell you about them.
0:09:36 Look at this.
0:09:39 And I’ve stored 10 years worth of stuff.
0:09:46 So we opened the vault and here we are. Let’s just start with a very broad question. I mean,
0:09:49 what are some of the things that come to mind that have happened since we last spoke?
0:09:55 Well, what’s wild is just like a month ago, we just put out an audio book for the first
0:09:59 time for Rebel Without a Crew. The book that kind of started it all.
0:10:00 And when was that published?
0:10:01 In the 90s.
0:10:02 It was like 95.
0:10:02 Yeah.
0:10:08 Because I remember Desperado, Dust Till Dawn, Four Rooms, and that book all came out within
0:10:09 four months. And my son.
0:10:10 My first four.
0:10:11 Five things.
0:10:12 It was a packed four months.
0:10:13 I’ll never forget.
0:10:19 But it was full of stories and my diary on how I did mariachi. And it really, to this day,
0:10:23 people come up and say, not only did it help them start becoming a filmmaker, but it helped
0:10:30 them start their own business. It just applied to so many things. The idea of just taking on a big
0:10:33 challenge, betting on yourself, going where no one else is. That’s very entrepreneurial stuff.
0:10:38 What’s wild, though, is I hadn’t read it since I wrote it. So when I had to suddenly do an
0:10:44 audio book for it a couple months ago, I was astounded. I’d forgotten so much of the details.
0:10:51 And I was like, now I see why it was so inspirational. It blows your mind. Because when you’re younger,
0:10:57 six months feels like six years. But now when you hear the dates, because the dates of my journal,
0:11:05 how quickly I go from clearly clueless and penniless filmmaker, making a movie, having the idea,
0:11:12 having a movie, doing it by myself, trying to sell it to Spanish home video, to instantly being the
0:11:16 toast of the town. It’s just unbelievable. You could see why people would read the book and just drop it
0:11:21 and go, I got to go make something. Because the only reason that happened is because he took action.
0:11:23 He got up and made that movie.
0:11:31 What do you hear most from that book from readers? Because one that pops up a lot from our episode,
0:11:38 because we talked about it a bit, and also stuck with me in the book, was, and I’m sure you have a
0:11:44 better way to phrase this, but basically making a list of assets, right? Not focusing on what you don’t
0:11:44 have.
0:11:45 Yeah, focus on what you do have.
0:11:50 Right. So if you got a turtle and you have a pit bull and you got a friend who’s a school bus
0:11:52 driver, it’s like, all right, we’re going to figure out how to work that into the script.
0:11:57 And it’s all point of view, right? It’s like, you can really concentrate on what you don’t have
0:12:02 in life. And that becomes your focus. And then that becomes your life. All the things you don’t
0:12:06 have, but you never get. But when you leverage what you do have, it’s all about leveraging what you do
0:12:12 have. It’s also a thing I call freedom of limitations. Like, if we had to make a movie
0:12:17 right now with this room, that’s it. It’s kind of very freeing. It’s like, okay, this is all we
0:12:21 have to work with. You can come up with a million ideas. When you can do anything, remember, we’re
0:12:22 trying to make a short film.
0:12:23 Oh, I know.
0:12:26 When you’ve got unlimited, it’s harder, is it not?
0:12:30 I have to say, that was one of my great embarrassments.
0:12:31 We’re going to talk about it.
0:12:36 We are going to talk about it because it’s exactly what we’re talking about. Because you can do
0:12:41 anything. And a lot of times when you can do anything, you can’t do anything because it’s
0:12:47 too wide. So the smaller aperture, the fact that I had very little things was a blessing. And people
0:12:52 took that lesson, applied it to business. And the whole time I’m reading this, you can hear I’m
0:12:57 laughing. And I stopped several times, many times during the book to update. I go, by the way,
0:13:05 what you just heard never happened before this and never happened against it. It’s very rare. This is
0:13:12 lightning in a bottle. And it’s like a movie. You see incredible setup, payoff, setup, payoff. Where
0:13:17 a setup, huge setup falls in my lap. Don’t even know what to do with it. It pays off in a huge way,
0:13:22 two weeks later. And then three weeks later, then four weeks later. And then you also see why,
0:13:27 like, I was really bummed I couldn’t sell the movie to Spanish Home Video. I was going to sell it for
0:13:32 $20,000 before Christmas. And the contracts weren’t through. I went home a failure. It said,
0:13:37 Merry Christmas. I didn’t sell the movie. I was really bummed. And then you see, because it’s so
0:13:44 a journal. One month later, I had an agent suddenly because of the movie. Good thing I didn’t sell it.
0:13:49 I was chasing those guys down for the contract. They could have had it for $20,000. Two months later,
0:13:50 I sell it for 10 times that.
0:13:55 incredible. And I’m the toast of the town and getting my first movie deal. I mean,
0:14:00 it’s unbelievable. When I was reading it, I was like, now I see why. Because when you’re living
0:14:05 it, you don’t know how special it is until later. 30 years later, it’s like, it still is an unbelievable
0:14:10 story. And I think it will still inspire people today. And in that example too, it makes me think
0:14:16 of advice I got from a mentor of mine at one point. And he said, sometimes you need life to save you from
0:14:21 what you want. Yes. Yes. In that instance, that’s what I really wanted that. And when something
0:14:26 doesn’t work out, we think we made a mistake. Like that’s one of my favorite stories. The keys
0:14:31 to your next success is in your failure because you followed your instinct. You got to dig in deep and
0:14:36 look. And I show you that like, I made a movie called Four Rooms. It bombed, but I took it on
0:14:42 instinct. Not because I thought it would make money. If I just be upset about it and be bummed about it,
0:14:46 like, wow, I must’ve made a wrong choice. I haven’t learned anything. But if I go sift through it,
0:14:51 the ashes of that failure, I find I got the idea for Spy Kids from that because I saw Antonio and
0:14:55 his Asian wives look like a cool international spy couple because they’re dressed in tuxedos. And I
0:14:59 thought, what do these two kids have to say? There’s five of those movies now. And then also it’s an
0:15:05 anthology and it didn’t work. But I thought instead of four stories, maybe three stories, one director,
0:15:11 not multiple directors, I’m going to try it again. Even those anthologies never work. Why would I do
0:15:15 that? Because I just did it and I saw what I could do better. And that was Sin City. Two of my biggest
0:15:20 movies came directly from a movie that you would consider a failure. So you only know
0:15:25 that by journaling, by keeping track of the things that you thought were a mistake and you realize,
0:15:31 oh, with time, that was the right instinct. But sometimes the only way across the river is to slip
0:15:35 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.
0:15:39 Yeah. And I’m sure we’ll talk about this more. When I talk to people and they say, yeah, I journal,
0:15:45 right? I’m like, you do, but you should see what Robert does. And I’m sure we’ll talk more about
0:15:50 journaling because it makes me think of one of my friend’s mother’s very sweet older lady. She was on
0:15:57 a chairlift skiing and she’s still very active. She lives in Idaho. She was chatting up the woman next
0:16:00 to her on the ski lift. She’s like, oh, what do you do? And the woman’s like, oh, I’m a swimmer.
0:16:03 And she goes, oh, me too. I’m a swimmer. It was Dara Torres, the Olympian, right? So it’s kind of
0:16:09 there’s journaling and then there’s capital J marque lights journaling, which we’ll get to. But I
0:16:15 want to ask you first, because I just experienced this. Was it yesterday? I’m time traveling because
0:16:23 there’s a whole warp with South by Southwest. But I got to see you on stage with your daughter, Rhiannon.
0:16:29 Yeah. And I thought to myself, holy shit, she’s really good, right? Like I was going to clap
0:16:35 anyway, like no matter what, obviously. But I thought to myself, wow, she’s really good.
0:16:39 I wonder how many performances she’s done. And the answer was?
0:16:43 I know. I waited till the end because I didn’t want to tell anybody. I want to make sure it went right.
0:16:49 She never, ever performed before on stage or to a crowd. Yeah.
0:16:53 But we’ll get to this thing later because I want everybody to hear this. It’s so inspiring.
0:16:59 And I’ve stumbled upon it. It’s counterintuitive parenting. The kids step up.
0:17:01 But we’ll get to that because it’s a big thing.
0:17:02 Yeah. But yeah.
0:17:05 Because it comes back to like parenting and also
0:17:06 creating a space.
0:17:07 Modeling and coaching, right?
0:17:09 And creating a space for them to flourish.
0:17:10 And creating a space for them to flourish.
0:17:14 Not just capability, but confidence into other people.
0:17:16 Yeah. I stumbled upon it.
0:17:16 Okay.
0:17:18 I’ll tell you where it started. It started on Spy Kids.
0:17:19 All right.
0:17:25 My kids were much younger than my two actors. My two actors were eight and 11, Alexa and Daryl.
0:17:30 And my kids were younger. You know, when you’re learning how to raise kids, you tend to go a
0:17:35 little easier on your kid. Not to the Spy Kids because they’re actors. I’m treating them like performers.
0:17:39 So they were having to do, there’s no kid stuntmen. They’re having to do their own stunts.
0:17:44 They’re having to do the daily, daily challenges, mind-bending challenges for these little kids
0:17:48 to be action stars. They’re like mini Tom Cruises that you’re just throwing them in. There’s no
0:17:54 training for that. And at the end of the day, I would just see them become so confident and super
0:17:55 human. The actors.
0:18:01 Even today, the actors. And I would tell myself, I need to make sure I challenge my own kids like this.
0:18:07 Because I saw them go from just regular kids into super kids over the course of those three films.
0:18:12 So I started putting my kids making movies with us. Like one of them came up with Sharkboy Lover Girl.
0:18:17 I put them in as actors, as stunt kids. And I kept thinking, I wonder if they’re going to really
0:18:22 resent me later for putting them to work at a young age because it wasn’t their passion. These two kids
0:18:27 that were in the movie, they wanted to be actors. That’s a different that they chose. But I tried it
0:18:32 anyway. It was an experiment because I thought maybe it’ll give them a cup. And boy, it is just opened up a
0:18:37 whole world. All right. So we’re going to come back to that. Yeah, it is big.
0:18:40 And I’m going to tell you some famous people that it’s inspired. And you’ll go like, oh,
0:18:44 it was directly because of something I told them. All right. All right. So we’re going to get to that.
0:18:52 Now, right next to Rhiannon, there is a huge screen. And there are other things that were
0:18:59 being launched slash announced. So what else? Oh, yeah. The reason we had a big party at my studio
0:19:06 on the back lot of my studio, which still has that huge 90,000 square foot Alita set, because I’m
0:19:11 resourceful enough to put it in a corner of my studio where I could keep it. Since 2016,
0:19:15 we built it with steel support beams so we could have forever. It’s the largest standing set in the
0:19:18 country, if not the world. No kidding. Well, because they mow them down after each movie,
0:19:23 because the next movie is coming in. But I put it in a corner of my big section of my studio so we
0:19:28 can have it to film for Mexico, for other cities. We’ve used it on every movie since then. So we had
0:19:33 our party back there to announce this new movie company that I’m doing because I realized I have
0:19:39 so many resources there. You’ve seen my studio. I’ve got that huge set. I’ve got all the vehicles,
0:19:44 every prop we’ve ever made, every costume. And usually that savings gets passed on to studios,
0:19:49 but they just piss it away. Because it’s just like they got so much overhead. So I thought,
0:19:53 let’s make a slate of action films. It’s called brass knuckle films. Just action. Because action,
0:19:58 there’s an international appetite always. In fact, if you were to ask Netflix right now what they need,
0:20:02 they would say, action, action, action. We don’t have enough action. So let’s make something that
0:20:08 everyone needs and wants. A slate of four pictures, only that fans are usually an afterthought.
0:20:13 They’re only like, right now, people are showing their movies at South by Southwest to get the fans,
0:20:16 to get their friends to go spend money on their movies for the privilege of seeing the movies.
0:20:21 What if they made money on those movies? So you, for the cost of a badge, can invest into my
0:20:26 brass knuckle films for a slate of films. That means you got four bites of the apple.
0:20:31 One of those is going to make money and sequels. And you share in all that because you’re at the ground
0:20:36 floor of development. And that’s the revolution that we’re doing. And people come up to me all the
0:20:40 time with movie ideas saying, I got an idea for you. And they tell me and they’re ready to give
0:20:45 it to me. It’s like, no, you get to come be a co-creator because one of the movies in that slate
0:20:49 is going to be picked from one of the fan investors. And even at the lowest level,
0:20:53 everyone gets to pitch us their action movie idea. And the top 20 gets to pitch it directly to me.
0:20:58 So you can be a co-creator and fan, but there’s other perks. The perks alone would get you great,
0:21:01 but it’s not crowdsourcing. It’s not Kickstarter. You’re actually an investor.
0:21:07 We’re using Republic, which is, uh, you know, can use even an unaccredited investors can come
0:21:11 invest in this. And it’s a platform, an investing platform. They’ve done it in sports and other arenas,
0:21:17 but this is now for film and my movies, especially because I’ve got all my resources to keep the budget
0:21:23 slow. Like, you know how much the original John Wick cost? No idea. 20 million. Okay. 20 million.
0:21:28 The last one was a hundred as the audience grew. So we’re making budgets between 10 and 30 million.
0:21:35 That’s like a, a lower to mid range budget, right? Right. That’s not a lot of money for the chance to
0:21:39 make something that could turn into the billion dollar franchise that it is. Yeah. We just keep
0:21:43 making bites at the apple. One of those is going to turn into that. It’s like a hundred capital.
0:21:48 I mean, it’s, it’s, and it’s so fun because the fans, people, the other thing people always ask me,
0:21:52 you want me to believe, could you kill me in your movie? I’d love to die in your movie. Can you just
0:21:57 have me die in your movie? Chop my head off, run me over, shoot me. Everyone wants to die. So that’s one of the
0:22:02 perks. So you put in enough money, you get to die on screen in a creative way. So it’s a lot of fun.
0:22:05 I miss somebody comes in and they say, Hey, I like that. I like the model a lot.
0:22:10 I want to take 90% of it. Are there kind of limits on what investors can do?
0:22:14 Yeah. This is just for the, the develop. This is true. Like, give us money. Cause we already have,
0:22:17 we can get the money for an action film. We can already fund the whole thing.
0:22:19 Yeah, sure. I mean, the international buyers alone,
0:22:22 and we could keep the domestic and sell it to all these guys.
0:22:27 You like sell the foreign rights and use that to kind of sell the foreign rights to go ahead and
0:22:31 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
0:22:35 of an independent film. We have a lot of avenues cause they just need it. This is the thing. The
0:22:40 problem is they don’t know how to make an action movie at a price because they have too much over
0:22:41 and they’re just too big. They spend so much.
0:22:47 And that’s why John Wick was an independent movie. That’s why Beekeeper wasn’t in the movie because
0:22:53 you can go make those for less, but there’s always an appetite. We’re not making dream projects or,
0:22:57 you know, art films, you know, we’re not, this is going to be just things that put food on table
0:23:03 because I want the fans to win because it’s going to be one, a great story. And two, they should,
0:23:07 they should enjoy it because they’re the ones when, when you’ve made a movie at a studio,
0:23:11 you don’t even know what you got. Yeah. Then you take it to the fans and show it to them
0:23:16 in a private screening. They give you notes and then you go, oh, we screwed that up. We got to go
0:23:20 fix that. We got to reshoot that. They’re brought in at the end and then told to go spend their money
0:23:25 on it. Yeah. It should start with the fans and as well as finish with the fans. So that’s the
0:23:29 revolutionary thing we’re doing because it’s just like rebel that I could. It’s part of my whole
0:23:36 democratizing the process, making it, removing the smoke and mirrors and letting us all enjoy that
0:23:44 process together because I’ve seen the phenomenon of creating a new label, a label on yourself,
0:23:48 a label on a business. And we’ll get to that. Cause I have it written down. You’ll see the value of
0:23:52 brass knuckle, but I’ll tell you where I did it before. Cause this is something that’s happened
0:23:57 since our last 10 years and it’s a mind blower and it ties into what the first thing you asked about
0:24:03 family. All right, sweet. So before we get there, I am so curious because you’ve written and I’m sure
0:24:11 you’ve read a lot of scripts. If you get 100, 200, 400, 500, who knows pitches?
0:24:14 Okay. Pitches, right. So you’re not getting a script.
0:24:14 No.
0:24:16 So what form does the pitch?
0:24:20 Well, we’ll give a format. It’s short. It’s like, you could be like, it should be less than
0:24:25 five minutes. So maybe two or three pages at the most, maybe one to three pages, something to tell
0:24:29 your story. And if you’ve already written, I’ve had a lot of people come and say, I have an action
0:24:33 script for you. Can I enjoy? I said, well, come be an investor and you can pitch it. I tell you,
0:24:39 I’ve sold more pitches from scripts I’d already half written or written. Cause I know more about the
0:24:43 story. I really know it. So when I go to pitch it, it’s very easy for me to tell you the story.
0:24:48 You’ve got a much better chance than someone who’s just making a pitch, but I will give you a format.
0:24:52 We’ll teach. I want to train people how to do it so that they know. So it’s kind of a film school too.
0:24:57 Can you give us just a teaser of some of the ingredients of, of a good short pitch?
0:25:01 A good pitch is anything that if you, if we could sit here right now and I could tell you a story
0:25:08 about, you know, there’s a guitar player who comes into town. He’s all you want. Music is his life.
0:25:12 And that’s all he thinks about. All he wants to do is find a place for somebody,
0:25:17 you know, to hire him. He goes into a bar in this new town that he walks into.
0:25:23 They don’t hire musicians. He leaves. Second later, a guy with a guitar case full of weapons comes in,
0:25:28 shoots the place up because he’s after the main bed honcho to leave a message.
0:25:34 So now the word gets out, find the guy in black with a guitar case full of weapons. It’s a mistaken
0:25:39 identity thing. By the end, he’ll become the guy with a guitar case full of weapons. And he becomes,
0:25:45 every movie is like a ballad, a sad, tragic ballad. He’s going to meet somebody. She’s going to help him.
0:25:49 She’s going to die. And he goes to the next town, but no longer can play the guitar because he gets
0:25:55 his hands shot. So now he has to become that thing. That’s it. That’s a pitch. But I can tell you that
0:26:00 pitch because I already made that movie. I already wrote that script. It was harder when I was first
0:26:05 just trying to figure it out. I was just taking little cards, but a pitch could be something like
0:26:10 that where I would see the potential in it and go, this one, we can still work on it. We’re going to hire
0:26:16 a writer. It’s that seed of an idea that gets people to stop and listen that you want to find.
0:26:20 That’s the lightning in the bottle. Sometimes it’s just the idea. And everyone’s got an idea,
0:26:25 just like everybody wants to get killed in the movie. So it’s like, this is how we’re going to make it fun
0:26:29 for the fans. Because who’s going to consume it at the end of the day? It’s the fans, not the zombies
0:26:34 in suits that are up there who don’t even watch these movies. I go up there, the disconnect blows my
0:26:38 mind. You go talk to some, not all executives, but you go to some studios, you can tell they don’t
0:26:43 pay to go see a movie. They don’t watch movies. They don’t love movies. It’s a business. And then
0:26:47 you go talk to the fans. I was just South by Southwest. They’re losing their minds. They tell
0:26:52 you about all the movies they’ve seen, about all the things they collect. They should be sharing in that,
0:26:55 not the executives. They’re just going to piss it away.
0:27:03 So you’re very good at hooks. So before we start recording, when we were out on the sidewalk,
0:27:06 about to come into the building, you were like, yeah, there’s this one line.
0:27:09 There’s one line at the end that I figured out. What was the line?
0:27:14 Oh, at the end. So when I told them all about this investment opportunity, at the end, I said,
0:27:22 so this is how you manifest. Because I had been talking about manifesting. They asked me the question,
0:27:26 Robert, you’re very positive, but do you have any human doubts? And I said, no. And I told them
0:27:31 why. And they were all clapping afterwards. So at the end, I said, okay, one more thing on manifesting.
0:27:36 This is how you do it. Next year, it’s our goal to come back to South by Southwest with our first
0:27:41 brass knuckle film. Now ask yourself this, if you have the opportunity to invest in being part of it
0:27:46 and pitch an idea that might be that idea, wouldn’t you rather be sitting up here with us than down
0:27:49 there in the audience? That’s how you manifest.
0:27:57 Yeah, it’s true. You hit it. You set a target. I’m talking about my old trainer. I had an old
0:28:01 trainer who’d be like, we’d be working now. And you can tell he was just making it up as he went,
0:28:06 200, 200 set up, 200 push-ups. And then we just go, go, go, go. And then, you know,
0:28:10 just picking a big number and then just hitting it. That’s kind of what you need to do. Because if you
0:28:15 aim low, you’ll hit low. But if you aim high, you might, it might go low. It might go there. And like
0:28:21 mariachi, when you read it, it went straight up. But if I hadn’t taken the action, it would never
0:28:27 have happened. So, so many people wait. That’s the discussion we had about, remember, you were
0:28:28 talking about making a short film.
0:28:33 Yep. And I said, we just got to commit to making it. We just got to go ready or not. Here we go.
0:28:37 Let’s set a date. We almost did it, but then both of our schedules, both of our schedules got
0:28:42 whacked. But you, you understood the lesson. I understood the lesson because I told somebody
0:28:46 this whole thing and he was there right where you were sitting. I think I told you somebody was right
0:28:51 here and they said, wow, everything you’re saying makes sense. You know, I’ve got a project.
0:28:57 All the pieces are actually pretty much there. I just guess I’m not ready. And I said, that’s going
0:29:03 to be on your tombstone. Here lies so-and-so. He was never ready. Why is it that art you have to be
0:29:06 ready for? In life, you didn’t know you’re going to get a flat tire. You didn’t know you’re going to
0:29:11 go to work and be fired. You didn’t know the fires are going to be raging. Every day, you’re like this,
0:29:15 you know, trying to move with the, you’re not ready. You’re not ready for anything life is
0:29:20 throwing at you, but you make, you become ready on the spot, right? Why is it that we think art and life
0:29:24 should not be the same? Why art has to be, you have to be ready before you can begin.
0:29:30 There’s no relation. They should be the same. You’re not going to be ready until you’re almost
0:29:33 done with a project because a lot of the answers you need are not going to happen until you’re on
0:29:38 the journey. And that’s what keeps most people from doing it. And so that’s why I was going to show you
0:29:43 that real time, but we are going to do it. We’re going to make a short film. You’re not going to know
0:29:47 what you’re going to make it on. And it’s going to fall in our lap because we start the process.
0:29:52 That is a huge, huge, huge lesson. You got to start it.
0:29:56 You just have to start. You got to start. I mean, in a couple of weeks, you know, I have this,
0:29:59 I don’t even know if I’ve told you about this. I have a card game I’ve been working on kind of
0:30:03 secretly for like two years. Card game. Yeah. Card game.
0:30:04 Yeah. You always love, you’re always gifting me card games.
0:30:11 Yeah. I love card games. And the reason that it happened ultimately is just booking a flight to go
0:30:18 spend time with a master game designer and deciding by the time we leave, we’re either going to have a
0:30:27 game or we will have stopped because we did a couple of, I would say B minus attempts where we didn’t
0:30:33 commit in that type of way. And we met in different places around the country and we would play test
0:30:38 different options and different concepts. And then this final trip was like, okay, look, we’re both
0:30:44 really busy. We’ve given this a few shots this time. We’re just going to pound our heads against the
0:30:51 wall. You’re aiming up there now, and we’re going to have a game or this is it. And that kicked off the
0:30:53 whole process. Now it’s going to be in thousands of stores.
0:30:57 That’s great. That’s the way that’s, you know, you used to ask me, how do you get so much done?
0:31:05 It’s like, you know, I set the bridge on fire and then I run across. Otherwise it’s not enough steak.
0:31:11 You have a way out. Like the last ones you had, you had a way out. Yeah. Y’all didn’t have that goal.
0:31:13 Yeah. You’ll take the escape route. Yeah. It’s easier.
0:31:18 But if you just have, you’ve burned the bridge, you’ve got to go. When we have a deadline,
0:31:22 it’s a blessing. Like today, I even asked you earlier yesterday, I said, do you really need it
0:31:26 by tomorrow? Cause we could push it to later. No, no, let’s do it. Yeah. So when you have a deadline,
0:31:30 you said you make it happen, you make it happen, but we tend not to do that with ourselves and it’s a
0:31:38 crippling thing. Just a quick, thanks to one of our sponsors and we’ll be right back to the show.
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0:33:11 thinking of the audio book that you just produced and the book, we have spoken over the years about
0:33:13 you writing another book.
0:33:13 Yes.
0:33:15 So what happened to that one?
0:33:16 What happened to that one?
0:33:20 You told me right after we had our talk, he says, “Did you finish that book?” Because I sounded like I was
0:33:27 almost ready. The idea was called “The Creative Life” because, you know, I gave a talk once about
0:33:32 Pro Max or something about creativity. They introduced me and they said, “Robert,
0:33:37 cinematographer, editor, composer, screenwriter.” They went through all my credits. And I got up there
0:33:42 and I said, “I feel dizzy just hearing all that stuff.” And there’s this book out. I always see it
0:33:47 in the bookstores at the airport. It’s called “The One Thing” about doing one thing. And I was thinking,
0:33:51 “Well, that doesn’t apply to me, obviously.” But then I thought, “There actually is one thing that I do when
0:34:00 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
0:34:05 anything that touches creativity is open to me. So I can paint. I can draw. I can do anything.
0:34:11 Because 90% of any one of those jobs is actually the creative part. The technical part about any
0:34:17 one of those, whether it’s music, say, 90% creative. Some of the best musicians don’t know how to read or write
0:34:22 music. That’s the technical part. So I realized that as I did all those jobs, that was the thing.
0:34:25 So I said, “I want to write a book called ‘The Creative Life’ where every chapter is about
0:34:31 raising your kids, painting, drawing, filmmaking. You’re going to see the same lesson over and over
0:34:36 because it all applies.” So that was the idea. And you asked what happened to it. It’s like,
0:34:43 “I’m going through this whole new chapter that’s so massive. I would feel dumb to put out the book
0:34:48 now because I know this is going to change all my thinking.” And it was when I turned 50, I thought,
0:34:55 “I wonder if there’s some other job I could have where I don’t have to be doing this harder work
0:35:00 as filmmaking. But the knowledge I have, there must be something. I don’t even know what jobs are out
0:35:05 there. This is the first job I ever got was making movies. I was so young. So I literally bought jobs
0:35:10 for dummies and was looking through it. No joke, because they have these little icons just to see
0:35:14 what’s even out there. I was like, “I don’t want that. I don’t want that.” It got to filmmaker and that
0:35:20 little icon is a guy with his arms up like this. And it said, “This is the best job. Get to be creative
0:35:26 with your friends, make stuff, and then just sit back and let the money roll in.” It said, “But,” it says, “But,
0:35:35 99% of film students don’t get this job. So forget that dream. Oh, clearly I got the best job.” But I used to
0:35:39 think, “Well, I guess I could keep making movies. I guess that’s been good to me. I guess I could just
0:35:46 keep making more.” But then I had to work with my kids for that Red 11 project, remember? It was one
0:35:51 where we had to do another Mariachi, another $7,000 movie, but with digital cameras and show people how
0:35:55 it was done today. We were going to make one and I made all the other filmmakers that were in our group
0:36:01 for this TV show I was doing called Rebel Without a Crew. You could only bring one person, just like I had
0:36:05 Carlos Gallardo, the main actor from Mariachi, only one person. You got to do everything. He can be your
0:36:08 sound man or he can be your cameraman, but you got to do everything. You got to edit it, you got to shoot it,
0:36:12 you got to write it, and you got two weeks. Like, I had only two weeks to do Mariachi. And I saw the
0:36:18 filmmakers, just like that thing I was saying about the kids pushing them, they’d only done short films.
0:36:22 None of them had done a feature. This is your first feature. And we’re going to document it,
0:36:27 so the documentary camera is going to be on you, like, you know, reality TV. I saw them turn superhuman
0:36:30 between the first week and the second week. Once they started shooting, they had no idea how they were
0:36:36 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
0:36:40 going. They’re already talking about their next three films. Suddenly their idea of what impossible
0:36:46 was went from that to that. And so I did that as well. I wanted to do that, but with my kid,
0:36:50 Racer, I picked one kid, my son, Racer, who hadn’t been working with me in film at all for a while.
0:36:54 I brought him to be my co-writer, my co-lighter, my sound guy, and I didn’t show him how to use the
0:36:59 sound equipment. I waited till we were about to start filming. Then I was like, “Okay, this is how
0:37:04 it works. Go.” And because we’re documented. And I wanted to show people that even without any experience,
0:37:09 you can go make a movie in two weeks with no money. And we did. And that thing ended up going to festivals,
0:37:16 even getting over to Director’s Fortnight at Cannes. People were flying us and paying us to go speak
0:37:21 about our masterclass on how we made that movie and show clips from the making of.
0:37:27 We’re making money from this little no money movie. The only reason we had to stop doing a tour,
0:37:33 we went to Columbia, we went to Sweden, we went to Paris. I mean, we were doing really well.
0:37:37 My kids were like, “Dad, you’re right. This is really weird.” I said, “Yeah, better than I thought.” We
0:37:40 only had to stop because we’re shooting “We Can Be Heroes.” But the reason I’m talking about this label,
0:37:45 what blew my mind about it is my kids… Labels you apply to yourself.
0:37:50 Yeah. Labels you apply to yourself and to just a label like a company, a fake company within your
0:37:55 realm, like Brass Knuckle. I would call that a label. I still do other things, but that has a very specific
0:38:00 target. And I’m getting all kinds of ideas just popping in my head because I started that. It’s
0:38:04 just this phenomenon, like ideas I never would have thought of before, because now it’s got a place to
0:38:08 go. Just like with yourself, there’s a label I’ll tell you about. I came about that with yourself
0:38:13 that really transformed. But my kids, I thought, “They’re going to resent me again. I’m afraid they
0:38:18 might resent me for having to do this $7,000 movie for two weeks and see how much hard work it is.”
0:38:23 Because they had their own interests. They weren’t going to want you to make movies. But I said, “I need
0:38:27 him to be in it because he’ll be a good example.” And I made my other son act in it because he made
0:38:32 those knives. I was inspired to make one of the characters a knife guy. And I asked them to do the
0:38:37 score too with me, write the score. And I thought, “They have their own interests. They’re going to work on
0:38:42 this one day and hate it. I’m prepared for that.” Instead, they came at the end of the day,
0:38:45 all excited, their eyes all bugging out of their head. And they were like, “Dad,
0:38:52 the actor didn’t show up. The script didn’t match the location at all. And when we asked you in the
0:38:57 morning, what were we going to do?” You said, “I don’t know. We’ll figure it out.” And we thought,
0:39:05 finally, the movie that stumped my dad. But then by the end, we figured it out. They’re all excited. I went,
0:39:10 oh, they don’t realize that’s the creative process. That’s every day on a movie. But it’s also every
0:39:15 day in life. It’s the same. And I realized on the making of that movie, so little of what I was
0:39:22 teaching them was filmmaking. It was all life lessons. How to take on this impossible challenge.
0:39:27 Two-man crew making a feature. I didn’t know we were going to go to Cannes. I actually didn’t
0:39:32 predict any of that. I just wanted to finish for the project. But you get blessed because of that.
0:39:38 And the label we created is because my son had come to me and said, “I wanted to draw comics,
0:39:43 but I wasn’t born in the golden age of comics.” But I am born in the golden age of technology. So
0:39:49 I’m thinking maybe instead of doing storytelling through comics, give up the drawing thing and do
0:39:53 it like with VR. So let’s start a VR company. Let’s start a company. I’ll show you how this works.
0:39:59 All these VR companies need people to buy their helmets. They need product. If I call them up and say,
0:40:04 “I have a VR company, they’ll give us money to go make them a short film.” Sure enough,
0:40:09 I just said, “Here, we all have double our names, all the kids. Let’s start a company called Double R.
0:40:13 It’s the label we made. So now we’re going to make t-shirts. We’re going to make notepads.”
0:40:17 And they loved them. They were looking at them. Because now any project, any of you have,
0:40:21 if Rhiannon has an album she wants to do, or Rebel wants to put out a knife, then we can do it through
0:40:24 Double R. It’s our company. Now, when you have a company, you have a label,
0:40:30 it’s now manifested. Now you got to do stuff to fill. You have to do stuff to put into it,
0:40:31 right? Yeah.
0:40:35 You get all these ideas. Michelle Rodriguez and Norman Reedus are in this movie called The Limit.
0:40:41 Remember that one? They made us a logo, Double R logo, big logo. It went in front of our $7,000
0:40:46 movie also. It went around the world. That same year, three projects in one year,
0:40:52 I went to Netflix to ask if they needed any movies. And they said, “We need family,
0:40:56 spy kids type thing. Can you come up with something?” I kind of came up with it in the room.
0:41:00 People are always ripping off spy kids. I should just rip off myself. Little kids have to save their
0:41:04 parents. Only what if they’re superheroes and the parents are superheroes that get captured,
0:41:09 like the Avengers get captured. Little kids with superpowers, they don’t know how to use them yet.
0:41:15 And the little girl who has no powers has to wrangle them together to work together to go save the day.
0:41:22 Simple pitch, right? I wrote it out, wrote it with my kids. We came up with all these fun,
0:41:28 special powers we’ve never seen in any movie. We took it. We sold it. It’s the biggest movie on Netflix,
0:41:33 most watched and rewatched movie in their history. Nothing can touch it because kids watch it over and
0:41:40 over and over. And that has a big, glorious, the same double R logo in front of it. And my kids were
0:41:46 just like, “Dad, this really works.” I was like, “It’s better than I thought. I was just doing it as an
0:41:51 example. I did not know it was going to put food on the table in that way.” So I’m going to do that
0:41:55 again with Brass Knuckle, but with the fans, because we’ve done that before. Because I told them,
0:42:01 “Come be a part of it because proximity is everything.” Remember I showed you that painter I went and watched
0:42:07 and how my painting changed. Even though he didn’t teach me one thing, except I saw that he just had
0:42:12 a regular brush, regular paint. He didn’t know how he was going to attack it each time. It made you go
0:42:18 like, “Oh, I thought I needed to know something. I had a mental block.” And I went and did it again.
0:42:22 And it was like, there it was. It was unbelievable. The proximity sometimes sees your loss. I tell people,
0:42:27 if you come be a part of the company, the proximity to us as filmmakers making this stuff,
0:42:31 you’re going to get 10 ideas, 20 ideas on your own. You’re going to see your own thing. You’ll be
0:42:37 part of this, but it’s almost like a masterclass without me even trying to teach you. That’s just
0:42:43 what I found by being proximity, by being around James Cameron, by being around George Lucas,
0:42:47 by being around Spielberg. They didn’t necessarily give me lessons, but just seeing how they move
0:42:52 through the world, even for just a moment in time, transforms you completely.
0:42:57 So let’s say somebody’s listening to this and those are big names out of reach for most folks.
0:43:03 But they’re equivalent in their world. They’re equivalents of people that they really admire,
0:43:08 that if they just had proximity to them, they didn’t even have to get a lesson from them.
0:43:12 And they would just, it would just change because you’re just, you know, your parents used to tell
0:43:16 you this, be careful who your peers are. That meant one thing when you were younger, it means even more
0:43:20 now when you’re older, like surround yourself with people who are heavy hitters. We talk to each other
0:43:24 all the time because it just raises our game. Remember you coming over to my house and seeing,
0:43:28 Hey, what chopper is that? Did you, you know, you’re like seeing upgrades that you can have
0:43:34 just by proximity, you pick stuff up. Can you say more about labels?
0:43:39 And so label, I’m going to give you my favorite label example. And it’s a thing I’ve realized now
0:43:44 when I did the audio book that I already knew and had forgot. People would come up to me sometimes
0:43:49 and tell me some quote from my book. And I’d be like, that’s from my book. I was smart back then.
0:43:57 What happened? But there was something I said in the book saying, stop aspiring. Stop saying you’re
0:44:02 an aspiring filmmaker. People come up to you. I’m aspiring filmmaker. The words we use are really
0:44:06 strong. You’re always going to be aspiring. You’re never going to get there. If you call yourself
0:44:10 somebody who’s on the journey, say you’re a filmmaker, make a card, make a business. I said,
0:44:17 make a business card that says, I did director, cinematographer, editor. Then what do you have
0:44:21 to do? Just like the label, you have to conform to your identity. You have to go do that stuff now.
0:44:25 And suddenly I have movies out. You go make movies because that’s what a filmmaker does.
0:44:27 What does an aspiring filmmaker do?
0:44:28 – Aspires. – Aspires.
0:44:33 – Yeah, you aspire. I knew that back then, but I’d forgotten it. The reason I remember it is,
0:44:36 okay, you always remark, “Hey, Robert, you’re always in good shape.”
0:44:41 Did I ever tell you I hate sports? I hate working out. Did I ever tell you that?
0:44:46 – I’m not sure you tell me. – All through high school, they would want me to be on the team.
0:44:50 Small school. I was so tall. Please come be on our team. I was like, I don’t know.
0:44:52 – Which sport? Football? – Any of them. Basketball,
0:44:56 football. We need players. And you’re so big. Come be on the… I was like,
0:45:00 I don’t even know how these games are played. I’ve never followed sports. I’m a filmmaker.
0:45:04 I’m an artist. I’m a musician. And there’s a line in the faculty, Elijah Wood says,
0:45:07 that’s my line. I used to tell people, I don’t think you should run unless you’re being chased.
0:45:11 I just did not love exercise at all. But then later when I was making movies,
0:45:15 my back kept going out because I was doing steady cam because I was sitting drawing for long hours.
0:45:21 My back every year would go out really bad where I needed like a walker and a quarter sun shot,
0:45:25 you know, quarter sun shots on my back. I remember Ricardo Montalban and his wheelchair at 84.
0:45:32 And I had a walker when Spike gets to my back and he goes, Robert, I’m 84. What’s your excuse?
0:45:37 You have to work out. I was like, I know, I know, but I don’t know how. I hate sports.
0:45:41 I hate working out. The next year I worked with Stallone on Spike gets three. And I said,
0:45:47 how can I get better shape so my back doesn’t keep going out? He goes, get thee a trainer.
0:45:52 Anyone who ever got anywhere physically had a trainer. I say, even you, don’t you know,
0:45:57 don’t you just go train? No. He said, no, no. I’d rather, you know, rearrange my sock drawer than go
0:46:02 work out. I was like, well, even if you even need a trainer, well, what chance do us mortal men have?
0:46:07 So I got a trainer and I would hide from him. I would pay him not to show up. I hated it.
0:46:13 I hated working out. I would feel sick when he’s coming over and I would half-ass the workouts,
0:46:18 you know, cause I hate it. So this woman, a friend of mine from Mexico, older woman,
0:46:21 my doctor told me I have to stop smoking. So I’m not smoking right now. I said,
0:46:27 you’re going to go back to smoking because your identity is a smoker. You’re saying you’re a smoker.
0:46:32 You’re going to go back. You have to change your identity. You have to say, I’m a non-smoker.
0:46:37 I’m a non-smoker. Cause then if you just identify yourself as that, you’re going to then conform
0:46:42 to your identity and you’re going to, what does a non-smoker do? They hate smoke. It makes them sick.
0:46:47 Stay away from cigarettes. All right. I’ll try that. I don’t know if it worked cause I didn’t follow up,
0:46:52 but right away I thought, Hey, I should apply that to myself. What, what the, it’s a good thing to go
0:46:56 checklist yourself every few years. Where are some places that I’m not doing that,
0:47:01 that I can change the label. So you know what I did? And you got to go 180. If you go by degrees,
0:47:06 you’re going to get anywhere. 20%, 30% bullshit. 180. Of course I hate working out. What do I say to
0:47:12 myself all the time? I hate sports. I hate working out. I hate exercise. I love food.
0:47:21 I have to change my identity. You know what I said? I’m an athlete. I’m an athlete. I’m an athlete.
0:47:27 By the next day, everything changed. What does an athlete do? Loves to work out. Makes time to work
0:47:31 out. There is no time, but you make time when you love something. You eat right because you’re an
0:47:38 athlete. As soon as your identity changes, your label, you conform to that. So that’s the power of
0:47:44 identity and the words we choose to describe ourselves. I catch people all the time describing
0:47:49 themselves and I go, you got to change that. You’re already out of the gate. You’re talking about yourself
0:47:53 in a way that’s not going to help you. Besides the aspiring, which you mentioned,
0:48:01 where people are handicapping themselves by labeling, using that term within say filmmaking,
0:48:08 are there other ways that you see people handicap themselves just in terms of how they view themselves
0:48:15 or their situation or what they have or don’t have? Are there any other common patterns that come up?
0:48:21 Common ones. I don’t know. Anything that takes you out of the game early by a belief,
0:48:26 you have. I don’t have access. Everyone has access now. You have a phone. You can make actually a story
0:48:31 on a phone or you can write. I just say, whenever I hear anyone use some kind of negative
0:48:36 connotation to something like, “Well, I want to make something, but I just don’t have the time.” It’s
0:48:40 like, there’s no time. If you’re waiting for time to have, it’s not going to happen. All the time is
0:48:47 gone. There’s no time. But we can make time. We can make time for anything that we put our mind to.
0:48:53 So don’t give me that shit. That’s like taking a hatchet and chopping off your left leg before the race.
0:48:59 You literally did this to yourself. You just hobbled yourself for no reason with these beliefs. And it’s
0:49:05 all you. You’re your own worst enemy. You’re like the one in the audience in your way. The biggest
0:49:09 obstacle in your life is you. Always. I asked this question outside because I was curious what your
0:49:14 answer was. But one of the questions that came up was, “So, Robert, you’re real positive. Do you have
0:49:15 any human doubts?”
0:49:17 I wanted to come back to that. Yeah. And your answer was no.
0:49:20 Yeah. We’ll come back to that. I just didn’t want to forget. It seemed like I could work it in here.
0:49:25 Yeah. Yeah. No. Don’t get after it. I wanted to, because I’m sure a lot of people are like, “What? No doubts?”
0:49:26 Yeah.
0:49:29 Okay. So walk us through that.
0:49:34 Yeah. So they said, “Robert, you’re real positive. Do you have any human doubts?”
0:49:38 And I said, just to give me a chance to think, because I had never heard it that way, human doubts.
0:49:44 But I said, “What do you all think?” And then I see people going like, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.”
0:49:48 Because that’s the real answer you would probably give. But I like to do counterintuitive for
0:49:55 everything. So I went, “No.” Why? Because that’s a manifestation, isn’t it? And I have no human
0:50:02 doubts. Because I know the process, too. You can’t wait to be ready. They say knowing is half the battle.
0:50:06 What’s the other half? Not knowing. I think that’s more important, because that’s where the magic is.
0:50:09 You don’t know what the other half is. Not knowing is half the battle.
0:50:14 Yeah. Not knowing is the major part of the battle. I got there to the set. I didn’t know I was
0:50:18 going to do any of it. But as soon as I saw how limited the options were,
0:50:23 suddenly it became very clear. There was only one way to do it. And if you have that confidence going
0:50:29 into each day, you shouldn’t have any doubt. You shouldn’t have any fear. A failure, my biggest
0:50:34 successes came from my failure. So why would I fear that? What doubts? I couldn’t think of any. Can you
0:50:38 think of a doubt I should have? Like, give me an example of one doubt you think, or even you,
0:50:44 what doubts would you have? I think I need to basically take the last four minutes and just
0:50:47 listen to it every morning. I just need to replay that every morning. I think it’s a good reminder.
0:50:50 Okay. But what doubts do you have? Well, I’ll tell you, I mean, and this is,
0:50:55 you know, hopefully my parents aren’t listening to this, but like, I grew up in a, in a household
0:51:02 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
0:51:07 never going to have Y because we can’t ever have Z because.
0:51:10 Did you already prove that wrong though? Yeah, no, exactly.
0:51:13 That’s all right. Now you go off your own history now instead of that history.
0:51:16 No, totally. So there’s, there’s software to overwrite.
0:51:19 Yeah. And those are formative years. So yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s hard.
0:51:22 I can’t think of any excuses that you should have.
0:51:27 What doubts would you think you would have just so I can hear? Cause then I go, okay,
0:51:31 I agree with that. I just hadn’t thought of any, the spot, it was so on the spot. I was wondering
0:51:35 what you would answer on the spotlight. You know what I appreciate about the question is how
0:51:40 effective it is at making you stumble because of the human doubts.
0:51:45 Yeah. Let’s drop the human doubts. Let’s just drop the human doubts.
0:51:49 Let’s just drop human. No, I know. I just love that. I’m like, wow, that’s a masterful judo move.
0:51:54 Have you dropped that? Doubts. What doubts do you have? They wanted to humanize you because you sound
0:51:57 like Superman when you talk, you know, a lot of times when we give these talks, everyone thinks you’re
0:52:00 Superman, but we know each other. We know that we all have
0:52:05 weaknesses and this and that, but we don’t want that. And we don’t want to manifest that.
0:52:10 So we don’t dwell. Yeah, totally. I would say that my inclination would be if I were on stage in your
0:52:15 place, I probably would have said yes. But then if we dug a little deeper into what that means to me,
0:52:18 I think it would differ from probably how a lot of people would use it. Right.
0:52:23 So I would have doubts in the sense that I don’t know how something is going to turn out,
0:52:29 but that doesn’t, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t get started. And that doesn’t mean that I
0:52:35 stop experimenting because yeah, my whole thing is like, look, for instance, like I’m launching this
0:52:40 game. People are like, what a game? Like that doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t connect to the
0:52:44 other things that you’re doing. I’m like, exactly. Because I want to see what’s behind door number
0:52:49 three. And I’m not going to know unless I do this thing that’s off menu. So what, like, what are you
0:52:54 going to do with it? What’s next? I have no idea because anything I could plan now is not going to be
0:53:01 as interesting as a lot that is going to surface. If I do well with whatever the next step is in front of
0:53:08 me, that’s it. That’s all I need to figure out. And a lot of the time you’re, as you said, you’re going
0:53:14 to get there and circumstances will have changed. The thing that was supposed to get shipped from
0:53:21 the warehouse isn’t there. And you’re like, okay. And actually, you know, side story,
0:53:25 I’ll keep it super short. And then I want to actually ask you about a name that came to mind
0:53:30 when you said the creative life, because then I thought the creative act and I thought Rick Rubin,
0:53:36 and I know you’ve met Rick Rubin. So I want to ask that. But when I had my very first presentation
0:53:43 at South by Southwest 2007, it was the launch of the four hour work week. And I had put together the
0:53:50 most incredible presentation of my life. I had rehearsed at a friend’s garage to his chihuahuas.
0:53:54 That was the only test audience I had. And if they got bored and walked away, I had to change my,
0:54:00 my presentation. That was the only fine tuning, but I was so proud of this huge deck that I put
0:54:04 together. PowerPoint. I get to the venue, my computer crashes.
0:54:10 And it’s like, well, here we are now. Now what roll up the sleeves now.
0:54:13 And it ended up being so much better than if I had used the slides,
0:54:17 it ended up being so much better because I’d rehearsed enough that I knew the material. I
0:54:21 didn’t need the visual references. That was a self doubt that I had that I wouldn’t be able
0:54:25 to give it without the slides. And then the slides went away and it was better than I could have.
0:54:29 So you might have it. And so you can have a doubt, but you’re not going to live and breathe by that.
0:54:32 You’re going to push past it really quickly because you should have fear. You should have
0:54:37 some fear going into something. Yeah. I call it fear forward. Fear forward. Yeah.
0:54:42 Fear forward. Yeah. Like have the fear, but don’t, don’t let it cripple you. Just go forward,
0:54:45 knowing you’re doing something that’s outside of your comfort zone and you’re going to reap
0:54:50 great benefits. Yeah. You might slip on the first two rocks. It might be four rooms.
0:54:53 But if you don’t look at it with a negative point of view, you turn it into a spine.
0:54:56 I think that’s an RR merch t-shirt opportunity. Yeah, that’s an RR merch t-shirt opportunity.
0:55:00 I told somebody that years ago, they went, fear forward. I like this. I guess that’s kind of catchy.
0:55:04 But I tell you, I got to tell my kids this after we did this project together. I said,
0:55:10 now you really know how it works. Because my son Racer said he was helping me with a film,
0:55:15 right? Yeah. By the end of the two weeks, they interviewed him about it. He’s waxing
0:55:20 philosophical about the creative process like he’s been doing it for a decade. Yeah. He said,
0:55:28 I never knew how my dad did El Mariachi. I mean, every day was, everything was just falling apart,
0:55:32 but we’d figure it out. Every day was figured out. But I never knew how he did that movie for no money.
0:55:36 But now I do because we just did it. Yeah. He didn’t know either. He just started. Most people
0:55:42 never start. He figured it out day by day. And now he knew it in his blood because he had just done
0:55:47 it. So I got them together and said, this was the greatest project we could have done together when you
0:55:52 work with your kids. Because they get to be in the boat with you figuring stuff out. They see you
0:55:56 trying to figure it out. And they’re figuring, they’re part of the solution. We’re going to get
0:56:04 into this. I’m going to talk about nepotism. Why anyone who says anything negative about nepotism,
0:56:07 you just get slapped in the face and kicked in the balls by their kids. It’ll blow your mind.
0:56:10 All right. We’re going to come back. We’ll get back to it. But this is the main thing. This is the main
0:56:17 thing about this is that I told them, if I ever get hit by a bus, you all know what to do now because
0:56:22 we just did it. It’s all life lessons. Yeah. You get together, you make your plan,
0:56:27 which is like your script. You make it as bulletproof as possible. So then you can go
0:56:33 do your film shoot. So you can go take action. Watch it all fucking fall apart. It’s like your
0:56:39 projector thing. And then that’s when you roll up your sleeves and go, now let’s take this chicken
0:56:45 shit and make chicken salad. And it always comes out better. It always comes out better than your
0:56:51 original plan. Every time. Wash, rinse, repeat. That’s life. You just learned the most valuable lesson
0:56:55 of life on this little microcosm of what life is, which is a movie. Because remember,
0:57:00 life and art should be the same. You’re writing a story and you’re writing your own story while
0:57:03 you’re doing it. The story of who you are and who you’re going to become and what you’re going to
0:57:08 achieve. As you’re writing a fake story, that’s why they go together. That’s why people identify with
0:57:14 stories. You’re literally, we’re writing our own story. So do you have doubts? Yeah, but I’m going to
0:57:18 write past it. I’m going to write my story to where I’m not the guy that has doubts. So that’s the power of
0:57:24 creativity and labeling. And that’s a label. Am I going to say I’m a guy who has doubts? No,
0:57:29 because then guess what? Now I have doubts. Yeah. And if there is a doubt I can identify,
0:57:34 I’m sure, like you just did, figure out a way past it right away. So that’s why I would just say blanket.
0:57:38 I don’t have any doubts because I don’t want to be the guy that has doubts. And I’m going to figure
0:57:41 out, you know, it’s kind of like you have to make your business card first that says a guy with no
0:57:47 doubts. I’ll add that to it. I have no doubts. I remember Kevin Smith, filmmaker, clerks and all that.
0:57:53 He sent me a script called Dogma. He said, I wrote this script. It’s got special effects. It’s
0:57:57 all out of my wheelhouse. I said, but you wrote it. And he goes, yeah, but it’s definitely a Robert
0:58:02 Rodriguez movie. You direct it. I go, why didn’t you want to direct it? It’s too big for me. Well,
0:58:07 now you have to make it. You fear forward. You’re doing something that pulls you out of your wheelhouse.
0:58:11 And you’re going to, he was so thankful that I told him that and that he did it, gave him the
0:58:15 permission to go do it. And it transformed his career, you know, because now he wasn’t doing
0:58:21 the comfort zone. He was now going even way, reaching way beyond. So fear forward, get out of
0:58:26 the comfort zone. That means you’re on the right track. If you don’t have fear on something you’re
0:58:30 going to do that day, probably fucking wasting your time. You’re doing something that you’re just
0:58:35 spinning your wheels. So you want to put yourself out there. That’s not the same as having doubt.
0:58:40 I don’t think, I think it’s just, it’s a, it’s a good litmus test. I have a little bit of doubt
0:58:43 that this is my daughter’s going to be able to inform tomorrow because it’s the first time
0:58:47 in front of a crowd. She may get nervous. I don’t know. She’s never seen a crowd.
0:58:51 She might step out and see the crowd and freeze. Who knows? But I don’t want to put that out there
0:58:54 because I don’t want to manifest that. I want to manifest and we’re going to have cameras filming.
0:59:00 We’re going to make this a big moment. And she rose to the occasion because she looked like a seasoned
0:59:07 vet. So Rick Rubin, his very first podcast, as far as I’m aware, was on this podcast,
0:59:14 the Tim Ferriss show ages ago. It was in his sauna. He actually, he actually didn’t think I was going to
0:59:19 say yes because he had a barrel sauna at what was Shangri-La in Malibu and ended up burning down.
0:59:25 Sadly, this is quite a few years ago now, but he said, okay, okay, we’ll do the podcast. At that time,
0:59:30 he basically did next to no media. And he said, we’ll do the podcast, but it has to be in the
0:59:34 sauna and we’re going to do the sauna and then cold plunge and sauna. And I was like, all right,
0:59:41 just sweating it out. So we did it in the sauna. Now, the one thing we neglected to consider was not
0:59:45 the temperature of the recorder because I could put that on the floor and it was fine. It was the mic.
0:59:51 So we had to wrap those in towels as we did the interview, but you got to meet Rick
0:59:57 handful of years ago. What was that like? I don’t want to even speculate. I mean,
1:00:02 I have my own guesses as to like how you guys might measure interact, but what was that like?
1:00:06 Oh, it was wonderful. He showed up at my house. Okay.
1:00:12 You know, he’s in town producing a band. I heard he wanted to meet me. So I said, yeah,
1:00:16 you can just come to the house. So he shows up at my house. So I figured, oh, he’s probably heard
1:00:21 some of my podcast stuff very similar to, you know, his creativity. We all approach it differently. We
1:00:27 all have our own theories. Like, so he shows up and he goes, I don’t know who you are or what you do
1:00:30 or anything about you, but I had a feeling I was supposed to come meet you. And I went,
1:00:36 so I said, you came to the right place. I’m going to show you my house. You know,
1:00:38 you’ve seen my crazy house. I’m going to talk about my house. I’m talking about how I
1:00:43 drew it first, envisioned it, built it. By the time I finish telling you about my house,
1:00:48 you’ll know who I am. So I go out and I give him the whole tour and he’s like, okay, okay. Yeah.
1:00:51 That was just like my house. It might’ve been the one in Malibu. That’s just like my house in
1:00:56 somewhere. And he goes, we’re the same guy. So we go outside to where my waterfall is.
1:01:00 And my phone, we sit and he puts his feet up and we just start talking. I just start,
1:01:04 he just wants to hear about it. So I start telling him what we’re talking about, all this creativity,
1:01:09 my whole spiel on it. And he’s like, yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re going on and going on and going on,
1:01:16 going on. I’m doing most of the talking. And then as we’re leaving, he said, I want to give you my book.
1:01:21 I’m about to put out a book. This book wasn’t out yet. So he ran into the car, came back out,
1:01:24 and it was just like a galley version of the book. I said, what is this? And he’ll,
1:01:28 actually, it’s pretty much everything we were just talking about is in there.
1:01:32 I was like, really? Okay. I’ll give you my books. I gave my books. The picture I have,
1:01:36 I’ll show you is him with my book in front of my house. And then he left. And then when he left,
1:01:42 I’m reading, I’m like, oh my God, I read the book. It’s so similar, but different to things that I,
1:01:49 because we all come at it from a different area, but his solutions were similar, but different because
1:01:53 it’s from a different world than mine, same questions, same kind of things. It’s that hive
1:01:58 brain. I don’t know when you, and you said this before you said, because you’re a creative, I know
1:02:04 other creatives like this, you have one foot in the magic realm. And it’s like when your foot’s in there,
1:02:08 you pick up the signal from the others. You all kind of get ideas from each other before you even
1:02:12 met. It’s why he knew to show up. And I’ve had people just show up, drawn there, known they’re
1:02:17 supposed to be there, not knowing why. It’s this kind of magical thing that when you get into the
1:02:22 creativity world, you really are tapping into the universe in a way to get your ideas. Because
1:02:25 your brain’s not smart enough. I’m not smart enough to come up with these ideas. They’re out there.
1:02:29 And everyone in every discipline has a different line for that. Like Keith Richards says,
1:02:33 I don’t come up with these riffs. They’re all floating around. I was just the first one to pull
1:02:37 it down and use it. You know, they all have their version of that, that it’s not from them. And that’s
1:02:41 the best way to think because then there’s no ego evolved. And if you have no ego, that it’s just,
1:02:46 you’re a conduit for this creative spirit to come through you. Well, then you can do anything. I can be
1:02:50 a good pipe. I just get my ego out of the way and let it come through. Because you know,
1:02:54 when you’re in a flow, you know, you start, I don’t want to write this book. And then you start writing,
1:02:58 the first few lines come out, then it starts going and you can’t even believe what’s coming out.
1:03:03 It’s because creative spirit, and my theory is, doesn’t have hands. It’s waiting for you to get
1:03:10 off your ass and pick up the pen and then it can help take over. And so always take action. That’s why
1:03:16 I say always take action. Don’t wait to be inspired. Action first, inspiration second. Because if you wait
1:03:21 to be inspired, like to make your short film, good luck. They ain’t ever coming. But if you just start
1:03:27 making the film, ideas you never in a million years would have come up with come into your head,
1:03:32 because it’s not you. It’s coming through you now. It’s like, finally, you’re going to go make that
1:03:37 film we’ve been wanting to make. Creative spirit must be very disappointed in people who don’t take action,
1:03:43 who sit there. And I tell you where I figured this out. When I was a cartoonist at 19, I had a daily
1:03:48 cartoon strip. It’d take me hours to draw it. I would have to draw a little bit, try to figure
1:03:53 out a joke. And I’d have a deadline every day. I wouldn’t get paid. I needed the money. I already
1:03:58 had two jobs. So one day I thought, I’ve got to figure out a better, easier way. I wonder if I could
1:04:05 just come up with a method where I go home, sit, and just try and picture it. Just picture it and then
1:04:10 go draw it. And I’d sit there for hours and be like, deadline’s over. Oh, shit, I got to go do this.
1:04:14 I’d have to pick up the pen and draw. And as soon as I started drawing, I would draw one drawing,
1:04:18 three others. And then I was kind of, oh, this kind of drawing kind of goes with that.
1:04:24 I put that there, and then that would be formulated. That’s the process. It’s not going to come to you
1:04:28 if you’re just sitting on your ass waiting for it to make magic. You have to physically pick up the pen,
1:04:35 or pick up the camera, or pick up the guitar. And then it’s like, thank God, because it doesn’t have
1:04:40 hands. Now I can come to you. Now let me take over. And that’s the whole magic of creativity. So you
1:04:45 shouldn’t have any doubts if you could do it. As soon as you say, wow, I don’t know how I did that.
1:04:49 I wonder if I can do it again. You just shut the pipe because your ego got in the way. You thought
1:04:55 it was you. It’s not you. It’s coming through you. So just be a clear pipe. I know that works because
1:05:01 I taught that to my kids in a class when they were younger. And right away, they each wrote a book.
1:05:07 It was unbelievable because they didn’t have anything to unlearn. They didn’t have any experience yet,
1:05:13 where we all have more doubts now because we’re older. It’s like that thing where you teach a
1:05:19 class full of grade school kids. Who can write a novel? Who can be the president? Who can do an opera?
1:05:22 Who can dance belly? They all put their hands up because they don’t know better. You keep asking them as
1:05:28 the years go on. Hands start going down. Even with no life experience, they just all stop believing
1:05:34 they’re that person without any evidence that they’re not. I always wanted to be that kid who had
1:05:39 his hands up. No matter what. Even if it was something I didn’t know how to do. Put your hand up because
1:05:44 you’re figuring it out as you go. Don’t have a doubt. Just go do it. Just go do it. Seems to be working
1:05:48 for you. It’s been working for you. Do you ever see that movie “Being There” with Peter Sellers?
1:05:55 No. He’s so naive. Yeah. He’s just a gardener. Yeah. But he gets hit by a car and he ends up in
1:06:00 Washington and everyone thinks he’s so smart because he’s just talking about the garden and they all read
1:06:09 into him. And by the end, he walks across the lake. Oh. Because he doesn’t know you can’t.
1:06:14 He doesn’t know you can’t do it. It’s the most beautiful movie you can see. Peter Sellers,
1:06:18 I think, got an Oscar for it or nomination, at least. Amazing. And it’s amazing. And you’re just like,
1:06:23 oh my God, they all think he’s this prophet. And everyone’s quoting him and doing their own version
1:06:28 of what he’s saying. But he’s just saying, when the roots are strong, the garden will flourish.
1:06:35 And everybody’s like, whoa. But that naive quality. You want to keep that naive quality.
1:06:39 That’s what got me to do Mariachi. I didn’t know it couldn’t be done. It was only till later when
1:06:43 people said, how’d you make that movie for $7,000? You know, that’s impossible. I was like, really?
1:06:48 You’re just like, it didn’t seem that hard. But if you’re telling me, I guess I just followed my nose
1:06:52 and I ended up at the top of Mount Everest somehow. I wasn’t trying to do that. But to some
1:06:58 people, it was impossible. But to me, it was just solutions I came up with to make up for what I
1:07:03 didn’t have. Yeah. What does your journaling look like these days? Or what insights have you had?
1:07:08 I hope I can inspire everybody to journal. Because it’s really weird. I go do a talk and I say,
1:07:14 how many people keep a diary or journal? It could be like a group of 400 people. I’ll see two hands.
1:07:19 Three hands. I’m like, oh my God, if I can leave you with any impression.
1:07:28 My big thing now, I tell people, this is my theory, living is reliving. Because you go to a concert and
1:07:34 people have their video cameras up and everybody says, put it away, live in the moment. Counterintuitive,
1:07:42 I say, the moment fleets. You’re not going to even remember it tomorrow. Do you even remember who was
1:07:48 standing next to you? Don’t worry, yesterday. From day to day, it just goes by. Because we see life
1:07:55 at 96 frames per second, 20K resolution, surround sound. Right now I’m looking at you, but I can see
1:07:59 there’s a glass here. I can see in the peripheral, there’s someone over here operating this thing.
1:08:07 A year from now, five, and then 10, all our three-pound meat computer can process.
1:08:11 They might have a file photo of you in a t-shirt and me in a t-shirt, because we kind of remember
1:08:16 each other that way. But the metadata will be some kind of narrative that we spoke and had a good time.
1:08:19 Yep. That’s it. That’s all you’re going to have. And when you journal,
1:08:26 I’m shocked. I was trying to figure out when I bought certain guitars, I couldn’t remember. I knew some
1:08:30 were gifted, but I couldn’t remember. I just did a word search in my journals, because I have a year-by-year
1:08:35 journal. Guitar, guitar, guitar. So I’d read, and it shocked me that, oh, wow, I thought I bought
1:08:39 this one. It was a gift from this person. How can I not remember that? This is a big guitar. This is
1:08:44 like a $10,000 guitar. How would I not remember that? And I would read a little bit of the diary
1:08:50 around it. I was floored. Have you go back 10 years, even 15 years? It’s like you’re reading
1:08:54 someone else’s journal. You’re reading someone else’s journal. And it’s like, I guess I just have
1:09:01 to take it for what it’s there. Well, my mom actually gave me a box of papers that was sitting
1:09:06 in one of the rooms in my childhood home. She said, “What do you want to do with this?” And I opened it up,
1:09:15 and in that box were printed out emails that I had sent my mom when I was 15 from Japan
1:09:20 to tell her what I was up to. And I did not remember. That was one of the most formative
1:09:27 experiences of my life. I have a lot of memories from that period. I did not remember 99% of what
1:09:31 I put in those emails. It’s got like a dehydrated version that you have to put water on to reconstruct,
1:09:36 but even then it mostly just fades away. You don’t even recognize it. So it’s so important to keep to
1:09:40 your history. But what’s your favorite jokes and your favorite things about life that you share with your
1:09:48 brothers, your family? It’s all past stuff. So living is reliving. My kids now love watching
1:09:52 the movies of them growing. I shot so much video and kept journals of all their childhood. They all
1:09:56 journal now, but they have their whole childhood because I gave them the journals of their childhood.
1:09:59 They got their whole life journaled. But I’ve been showing them home movies recently because I’ve
1:10:02 been digitizing all the old tapes. And I thought, “They’re not going to dig this. Some of this
1:10:09 shit looks like VHS.” It’s so cruddy compared to today’s HD stuff. I was showing them footage of
1:10:16 them younger. And I have tons of it. I thought later in life I could rewatch and relive their wonderful
1:10:21 childhood, right? Forget it. I don’t remember even filming this stuff. It’s like “New Adventures of.”
1:10:27 We’re watching it not knowing what’s going to happen next. And they’re watching it. I saw my son leaning
1:10:31 into the screen to see what was around the corner. I said, “You just leaned into the screen.” They said,
1:10:37 “Oh, wow. I left the living room. This is like virtual reality to me.” And I was like, “Wow, that’s
1:10:45 interesting.” Then I realized why. Compared to our memory, that’s virtual reality. Even the crappiest VHS
1:10:51 tape. You hear the sounds. You see the place. You start reformulating. They cannot stop watching it.
1:10:57 Every time they come over, we watch new fun tape. And we find classic new things that become
1:11:04 benchmarks of humor and jokes that become iconic. Reliving is living. Like my mom turned 75.
1:11:08 And I said, “We gotta do something for your 75th birthday.” And she said, “No, no, no, no. I don’t
1:11:13 want anything done.” Why not? Because nothing can top my 65th birthday. 65th? What happened then?
1:11:18 “Oh, you gave me a car. And you flew in everybody from out of town.” I was like, “Really? I don’t remember
1:11:23 that. It was only 10 years before.” I must have tape. I looked it up, found the tape, put it in. Oh my
1:11:27 God, I didn’t remember anything. So I recut the tape, took it to her. And we had a big party and I
1:11:34 showed the tape. She was crying more. Now she knows when she gets the key, what it means. She’s like,
1:11:38 “Oh my God.” I was like, “I don’t have to do anything anymore. We’ll just play the old tapes.”
1:11:45 It was more appreciated. Living is reliving because that’s when it becomes iconic. And in the moment,
1:11:50 this is all just flying by and we don’t know what’s important. It’s only by journaling that you go,
1:11:54 this person’s no longer with us. What he said changed my life. And I didn’t know. And I forgot
1:12:00 that he told me this at this time. If I had not journaled that. So if your life is worth anything,
1:12:05 write it down. Because then you’ll be surprised how much of it is more valuable than you think.
1:12:07 And you’re only going to know that by journaling.
1:12:10 What’s your process? Is it like end of day? Word document?
1:12:17 It’s like 12:12 a.m. an alarm goes off. It says journal. Because I figure by 12 at night,
1:12:25 I will finish with most bullshit that I can actually sit and do it. I’ve actually got my partner writing
1:12:30 journal now. Never kept a journal before. But because of the stuff I just said,
1:12:34 you’re starting to see the value in it. And they send me their journal too. That’s always the best.
1:12:38 If you’re a partner or else will journal. Because seeing someone else’s perspective on a big event,
1:12:41 you have to journal every day if you don’t want. But at least the big events. Valentine’s,
1:12:46 Christmas, birthday, special trip, journal. I’m going to take you on a trip with journal for me
1:12:50 and give me that as a gift. And it’s wonderful. Is it bullets, points? Is it a page?
1:12:55 Tell you what, I used to sometimes just do bullets, just like I try to write more now. Because I’ve
1:13:00 gone back. I try to write more, just more detail about what happened. Just because it’s going to be
1:13:06 gone. Now I know it goes away. It’s not going to trigger your memory. In the earlier days, if I only had
1:13:11 time to write some bullet point type stuff, I would just do that because I thought my memory,
1:13:19 no, gone, gone. It’s someone else’s journal. Just know that. Even like seven years ago,
1:13:24 before my son started writing music for me, he had told me, I found a diary and he said,
1:13:31 Rebel told me his one year, five year, and 10 year plan. It was great. And I was like, what did he
1:13:34 write? What did he tell me? I don’t remember. And I asked him, did you have it somewhere? He goes,
1:13:37 oh yeah, I have it on my phone. Oh shit, it’s not on my phone. It’s in my diary. Oh,
1:13:42 please find it and send it because now I want to know. Because your whole life changed after that.
1:13:48 I really want to know now with more interest than when you first told me. Because now we know that
1:13:55 that whatever you said is not the path that ended up. And so, yeah, journaling is so powerful and so
1:14:02 needed. Because you think you’re going to remember, it’s just a meat computer. It’s not going to remember it at
1:14:06 all. And now I just find myself having to leave myself breadcrumbs all day because my memory is
1:14:13 fading anyway, just to know what I’m doing, much less what I already did. But it does become iconic
1:14:17 and you find some really fun stuff. And if we find a video, oh my God, this is the best thing. We find
1:14:24 a video of us playing, having a great time at 2003. And the weird thing you’ll find if you videotape your
1:14:33 kids and journal, you find these weird 20 year full circle moments, you know, full circle moments. Like
1:14:38 we just started working with a studio, their favorite animation studio in Japan. They love
1:14:43 Japan. They love Japan. They’re all about Japan. Japanese knife making. They build houses with no
1:14:44 nails. My kids.
1:14:45 Oh yeah. The joiner is amazing.
1:14:48 I found the videotape first time I told them about Japan.
1:14:53 Me telling them, and I had, I taped it because I wanted to see their reaction because it was like,
1:14:58 you’re going to love this place. And you see their eyes light up and they watch it now and go,
1:15:04 that was the moment of inception. That was the moment we never forgot. And we built upon and to
1:15:08 see that is amazing. But then you go back to the journal because there’s stuff in the journal that’s
1:15:14 not on video and vice versa. And I go, wow, you know what we were doing, what I was doing while we were
1:15:19 playing all those games. I was wheeling and dealing big deals in LA for once upon a time, Mexico and
1:15:23 Cincinnati or, you know, and they see the context of what was happening in between those moments.
1:15:29 And you get this clear picture of, Oh my God, you can totally be all in as a dad and all in
1:15:34 as a businessman. And that teaches them about life. Like, wow, you can have it all. You really can.
1:15:38 You know, it just, it just helps in so many ways to document your life.
1:15:41 Do you have any other parenting hacks?
1:15:45 The biggest life hacks is just working with your kids. Like I said, I stumbled upon it,
1:15:51 but then when I saw a racer being so excited about what he learned about the creative process,
1:15:56 and then I realized everything I was teaching them was life lessons. I went from fearing that
1:16:02 they were going to resent me to realizing I’m going to make all of them work on a film with me.
1:16:05 That’s just going to be, this is what you got to do.
1:16:05 Part of the deal.
1:16:09 Part of the deal. Not so that you can become a filmmaker because you’re going to learn more
1:16:14 about life. These are life lessons and it’s the best way to do it. It’s project-based.
1:16:19 It’s challenging. So my son, when we did We Can Be Heroes, I thought, okay,
1:16:23 he’s done a few scores for me. Because he’d been playing piano since he was four. They all played
1:16:27 piano. And it was just to connect right to the left side of the brain. That’s all we gave them that
1:16:31 for. But he was our best piano player. And at the end, he did his last recital after high school was
1:16:36 finished. And he was already doing knives, Japanese knives making. And he won Forged in Fire. Oh,
1:16:41 my God. Did I tell you he won Forged in Fire? My son got on, when he was 18, got on Forged in Fire.
1:16:46 As a TV show. And won. That TV show. Out doing all these other blacksmiths. Because he’d been
1:16:52 teaching himself Japanese knife making. And I asked him, how did you win? You won $10,000. How did you,
1:16:56 what was your mindset? You were using tools you’d never even used before. They were just throwing
1:17:02 stuff at you and problem solving, creative problem solving. And he gives me this samurai answer that I,
1:17:06 that I love. He said, I convinced myself that I had already won. Somehow I won.
1:17:11 And so when I’d come up against the challenge, instead of thinking what I had to do to get past
1:17:15 the challenge, I just needed to remember what I did to get there. I was just like,
1:17:16 whoa!
1:17:19 Some musashi samurai stuff.
1:17:20 Wow! I was like, wow!
1:17:25 But again, you’ll come up with innovations when you’re thrown into the fire.
1:17:31 And so he was doing so good with the music, he composed a couple of scores for me,
1:17:35 but they were just all synth-based for Red 11, for that short film that was a VR film.
1:17:40 We can be heroes, though. That’s my bag. I do orchestral stuff. We’ll do the score for that
1:17:44 together. That way I can teach him orchestral scoring, because that’ll be the next stage.
1:17:49 He writes the first piece, not even a picture. He saw what picture I was editing. He went and wrote
1:17:54 it to me. It’s like John Williams. It was huge. It was massive. And I was like, okay, yeah,
1:17:57 sure. Let me check it out. I’ll try it to picture. I didn’t want him to see me try it to picture.
1:18:03 I put it to picture. It matched. I doubled it, tripled it. It fit this whole five-minute sequence.
1:18:08 I called him up 10 minutes later. Come back up here and watch. It hits everything perfectly. If
1:18:13 you can do more of this there, more of that there. He was stunned. I said, good news and bad news.
1:18:21 Good news is, it’s awesome. Bad news is, I can’t help you at all. I don’t know how you did this.
1:18:25 Where did you learn music theory? They don’t teach you that in piano, because I never learned
1:18:28 theory, and I was always proud of that. That’s the 10% I thought you didn’t need to know.
1:18:32 No, I learned different. Now he can manipulate music because he knows theory. He goes, oh, I learned it
1:18:36 on YouTube. I was like, well, I’ll tell you what. You’re going to have to write the whole score,
1:18:41 but I’ll help you. I’ll be your assistant. I’ll edit it. I’ll show you how you can repeat themes.
1:18:47 And he sat there, and he did it, and I could just see he was just under the gauntlet. I said, dude,
1:18:50 this is the only way to learn. Throw you in the deep end. If you get a lung full of water,
1:18:56 we’ll fish you out. And his eyes were like this big. But years later, he came back to me and said,
1:19:01 I’m so thankful you did that. My whole life changed because I didn’t know I could do it,
1:19:06 but I had no choice. He knew I could not help him. I wasn’t doing it as some kind of weird
1:19:13 teaching exercise. I said, let me see your charts. The thing you have going on in the baseline only,
1:19:17 I would do a whole score with that. How’d you come up with all this? I can’t help you.
1:19:23 And I remember the conductor said, we recorded in Vienna, stopped midway.
1:19:24 I think you sent me a video.
1:19:25 Of him conducting.
1:19:26 Yes.
1:19:30 I said, go learn on YouTube real quick how to conduct. I want you to conduct one of them
1:19:35 because I want video of you with a James Bond orchestra conducting your own piece because I
1:19:39 never got to do that. And it’s, you’re so proud when your kids can take on the challenge and you
1:19:44 see it just transforms their life. But he, the Vienna conductor stopped the score and said,
1:19:49 this is a magnificent score. I can’t believe you’re 20. He was 20 at the time. But again,
1:19:55 you throw your kids in the deep end. And I tell this to all the parents I can because it’s counterintuitive.
1:20:00 A lot of parents would say, I don’t want to push, but I tell you, if you have the opportunity to work
1:20:06 with your kids, do it because it enriches your life because you are mentoring them.
1:20:11 They’re mentoring you because they’re, they’re figuring out shit like that that you never would
1:20:16 have thought of. You’re doing a project based thing together. That’s impossible that you’re
1:20:20 all going to overcome together. You know, how many parents do you know, like try to give their kids
1:20:24 advice on, on their job and the kids just like that. You don’t, you don’t know. You’re not in my shoes.
1:20:28 You’re in their shoes. You’re all trying to figure it out together. So you’re actually useful. You’re
1:20:33 not just some Geppetto who’s worried about their kid all the time. I always say, don’t just parent,
1:20:39 partner. Because after a certain age, as soon as they’re teenagers, they replace you with their peers
1:20:43 because you become useless to them. If you want a relationship last long time, partner. Don’t parent
1:20:48 anymore. They don’t need a parent anymore. They need a partner. They need a mentor. They need an OB-1.
1:20:51 Because that’s what they look for in their life. Mentors, be their mentor.
1:20:56 Their confidence grows when they’re mentoring you back and they’re seeing their confidence soar.
1:21:01 And it’s family time. You’re checking all the boxes. I don’t even do anything anymore. I don’t
1:21:07 take any job, any assignment, unless it’s going to involve my children. Because life is so good that
1:21:11 way. You’re checking all the boxes. You’re preparing them for life. You’re learning from them. They’re
1:21:16 learning from you. And it’s family time. I was telling this to Stallone. I was having dinner with Stallone
1:21:21 and his wife. It was pre-COVID, right after COVID, something. I had just done We Can Be Heroes,
1:21:27 this movie, the biggest movie on Netflix. And I was telling my son to score. I wrote it with my kids
1:21:35 and all this. And Jennifer was like, her eyes were just wide. Like, whoa, she hit Stallone. She goes,
1:21:37 you don’t work with your daughters. You don’t work with your daughters.
1:21:43 I was like, well, man, I wouldn’t get anybody in trouble here, right? You know,
1:21:49 maybe I should reel it back a little bit. But sure enough, next year, his daughters have podcasts.
1:21:53 He would show up every once in a while to help, you know, boost some ratings and stuff. Now they have
1:21:59 a TV show. It’s family Stallone. For all of them together, working together, they live that dream.
1:22:04 And they’re just so happy. So I tell people, because they, people can’t unhear it when they
1:22:10 hear it. They just need to know someone did it and that it worked to know, oh, I have a way to try
1:22:14 that with my kids. Because I didn’t know my kids would want it to work with me. You know what happened
1:22:19 was my kid’s teacher told me, you know, your son, Racer, when he was like 15, he loves nights. We’re
1:22:23 studying nights and we’re talking about squires. And I asked, well, who would you want to apprentice
1:22:29 under? And he said, my dad. I was like, really? He’s never told me that. Did he say that?
1:22:32 He goes, yeah, he said it to your dad. I was like, wow.
1:22:33 How did that feel here?
1:22:39 It was wild. It made you, see, kids have egos too. They don’t want to just tell you that. They
1:22:43 might tell someone else, but they’re not going to tell you. So don’t assume, don’t assume they
1:22:48 don’t want to be part of your life or be part of your work. Since I’ve been working with my kids since
1:22:54 they were very young, I didn’t know it would keep going for 20 years, you know? And now it’s just
1:23:00 become the thing that we do. And they endlessly inspire me because they just have that confidence
1:23:06 built in, but we’re building a go-kart together. So I tell, I know some parents would dismiss it as
1:23:12 an opportunity like that and call it entitlement, but wow, you’re so wrong. So wrong. Let me set you
1:23:17 straight because this would be, you know, a curse on your life if you don’t at least know this. I would
1:23:22 say, and I’m curious if you agree you’re not, or if you have your own position on it. I would say
1:23:25 that if you have an opportunity to work with your children, if you’re in that position, because I
1:23:32 don’t know, maybe not all jobs adapt to that, but take it. It’s a tremendous gift to everyone involved
1:23:38 and beyond because if you refuse to do so, because you’re afraid other people will call it nepotism,
1:23:43 you are missing out the most important opportunity of your collective lives.
1:23:51 Because look, what happens as parents when we pass away? Don’t we just give everything that we created
1:23:59 to our children? Is that not entitlement? That they had no part in building? There was an opportunity
1:24:04 to build this with them so that when they inherited, they could go, “I made this with my dad.”
1:24:14 Right? So it’s like, “Oh, thanks, dad, for all this shit that I had no part of,
1:24:20 that you went and made without me being involved at all, getting that chance to have that mentorship
1:24:28 go both ways, to build something together, to have that family time together, because you were afraid
1:24:36 someone would call you up for nepotism. Thanks.” I’m having a ball and it’s inspiring everyone who’s a parent
1:24:43 to go partner instead of parent their child and have a relationship that lasts your whole life.
1:24:50 Yeah. I mean, what strikes me about it also, I mean, there’s trust fund kids or trustafarians
1:24:55 have a, have a new term. Well, it’s, it’s not exactly the same, but it gets used similarly. Nepo babies,
1:25:01 right? But the connotation of that word, I don’t think applies to you at all because at least,
1:25:07 and this is not the Merriam-Webster definition, but when I think of nepotism, there’s a sort of unearned
1:25:20 giving implied, right, right? There’s an unearned giving implied. And then there is teaching, which you
1:25:27 know, and then there is another thing I would say a step above that, which is enabling someone
1:25:32 specifically to have the confidence that they can figure it out, that they can learn, right? You
1:25:38 didn’t tell your son to go to YouTube and learn music theory, but you put him in situations or you
1:25:48 hinted at forthcoming situations that would require a lot of tap dancing and figuring things out. And if we
1:25:56 were to create some type of like Maslow’s hierarchy of working with your kids, there are different
1:26:03 things you can impart or give. And I would say the lowest level is giving someone a fish, right? Instead
1:26:10 of teaching them to fish. But then above teaching someone to fish, teaching your kids to fish is saying,
1:26:17 hey, whether it’s piano, fishing, music theory, or something that you are going to come up with on
1:26:22 your own as a solution to a problem or a challenge or a dream that I can’t even think of, I’m going to
1:26:29 put you into enough circumstances that you have the confidence you can fear forward. You have the
1:26:33 confidence that not knowing is half the battle, but you will get there.
1:26:37 You can tell them that stuff all you want, but when they’re doing it with you, they learn so
1:26:41 much better. I mean, that’s why I said, even after the couch with your hands behind you trying to come
1:26:45 up with the comic strip. It’s not going to happen. It’s not going to happen, but you can tell them all
1:26:49 that, but it’s different when they’ve lived it too. And that’s why I did the whole, if I get hit by a bus,
1:26:53 you know what to do because it’s true. Now they know it in their bones. When I, we did a talk in
1:26:58 Colombia with a, with a $7,000 movie that we did together. I mean, the boys, we went, they flew us
1:27:04 down there to go talk and everyone was in Colombia. These guys live in poverty. They were leaning
1:27:09 forward to find out how to make a movie with no money so they could get out of there. And we’re
1:27:14 talking and one woman was asking a question about screenwriting and I was giving my answer. And Racer
1:27:19 said, cause he had written the script of me. Now he wanted to stand up and say, what he’s saying is
1:27:24 really true because he had lived it already. It wasn’t, this is the stuff he’d heard before,
1:27:29 but now it really sank in because he was there. And what’s cool is if you build your family up,
1:27:33 like your team like that, you know what I hear so much now that I hadn’t probably because I’m older
1:27:38 and I’ve been around longer. A lot of people will just assume I’m too busy to do whatever project
1:27:43 I’m doing alone. So they said, yeah, we can’t wait to work with you and your team. Most people have a
1:27:49 team. My team is my kids. And it’s got more jobs. Like a video game company wanted to
1:27:54 be in partnership with me and said, well, let me tell you who my team is. All my kids are gamers.
1:27:57 I got them into games when they were really little. They know this world inside out. One of them is
1:28:03 even a game designer. That’s my team. And they’re in my house. We love this. We want to work with you.
1:28:07 And we’re going to take it to the next level because we’ve done this other project and this
1:28:11 other project. And this was the process we did these done deal. We’re doing it now. Now my kids get to
1:28:17 make a game, a real game, like a big ass game. And you get to do it together because you’ve already
1:28:20 trained them to be, and it used to be a joke when I had so many kids, I had five kids.
1:28:23 I would say, oh, yes, my future cast and crew. I would just say it as a joke. Hey,
1:28:26 it turned out to be true. They’re my cast and crew.
1:28:35 So is there anything to the story of the double R’s besides the fact that you have the double R’s?
1:28:36 Is there more to it?
1:28:41 Yeah. The double R’s was just from a family of 10 kids. My mom’s name is Rebecca and my sister’s name
1:28:47 is Rebecca. We’re the only double R’s, my mom, my sister, me. And I always just loved the alliteration
1:28:52 of that. You know, like the double R’s, it was really powerful. R and R. Rebecca Rodriguez.
1:28:58 Robert Rodriguez. So once you name the first kid with an R name, well, then the second one,
1:29:01 and then the third one, and I gave them regular middle names, so they didn’t have to be,
1:29:08 you know, so like there’s Rocket, Valentin, Rodriguez, Avellan. It can be Valentin Avellan,
1:29:13 or it can be Rocket Rodriguez, or Rayson Rodriguez, or Maximiliano Avellan. If they want to go into
1:29:18 politics and not be pro wrestlers, they can change their name. But I didn’t know they were going to
1:29:22 keep those names past childhood. They thought it was just fun kid names. Yeah. Everybody has five
1:29:27 names. One is Ro, Joaquin, Cecilio, Rodriguez. One has five names. So he can pick his identity.
1:29:30 I wanted him to just use it as a little- Every time he has to fill out a government
1:29:34 form, he’s like, oh, God damn it. I’m not going to use that. But they didn’t want to get rid of their
1:29:38 first names. They love their first names. So I thought, let’s keep, if everyone’s keeping their
1:29:43 first name, let’s own it. Double R is kind of a cool logo. What’s fun was that it just looks cool.
1:29:47 Double R. And it means all of us. And it makes this like a tribe. And it makes this all,
1:29:51 and it gave them a lot of pride. I was surprised how much pride they had in it. And they all started
1:29:55 coming up with ideas. Rick Rubin comes over and he saw them holding a picture up. And he goes,
1:30:01 R-R. I did, double R. That was my artist’s name when he was a, you know, a DJ. He was double R.
1:30:07 I was like, that’s amazing. This is one of my other favorite things that when I’ve told parents,
1:30:11 they go, I want to try that with my kids. It was something I stumbled upon. You know,
1:30:15 I was having some kind of family talk with the kids. We usually have these things we call tribe talks,
1:30:19 where you talk about anything. It’s like, like we’re a tribe. Like we help each other out.
1:30:21 They get so excited about a tribe talk. Let’s have a tribe talk.
1:30:24 And the tribe talk is like asking one another for help.
1:30:29 I just, if I have a new thing I want to talk about that’s going to affect their lives later,
1:30:33 let’s have a tribe talk about this. They’re like so excited because they learn about something that
1:30:37 I want to share with them to prepare them for life. Something that I might’ve just learned that I
1:30:42 wish I could take a time machine and tell myself, you can’t. The closest thing to it is telling your
1:30:46 children. Because I used to think any advice I’d give them, I’m afraid it might probably just go in
1:30:51 one ear and out the other because it’s not real to them yet. They probably have to live through it and
1:30:56 find their own mistakes. No, they would process it and give it back to me. And I would be like,
1:31:01 where’d you get that philosophy? You told me that. I didn’t tell it to you like that. I said,
1:31:04 I might’ve said glass is half empty or half full. Oh yeah, well, we built upon it. Well,
1:31:11 they take what you tell them and build upon it. Right? So this one was, I thought I’m going to be
1:31:16 very honest with them and tell them all the major decisions I made in the life, walk them through.
1:31:21 Cause there’s a funny scene. It came up because of a movie and we did another spike kids. There’s a scene
1:31:25 where the parents are talking about operation fireball with such memories about it. And the
1:31:30 little girl asks, what is that exactly? Oh, we beat up the bad guy. We blew up his lair and all this
1:31:34 stuff. And she’s just like, you could have done it a better way. You could have gone to him.
1:31:38 Nicely. You could have talked to him, seen his aesthetic and it plays it out. Right? So I thought,
1:31:41 I’m going to try that with my kids. I bet if I told them all the decisions I was faced with
1:31:48 that a lot of times are lose, lose, there’s no, there’s no clear way to go. And as you think 10 years
1:31:52 later, you’ll see what the real answer should have been. Nothing. There’s never clarity. Sometimes
1:31:57 I’m curious to see what they would have done with the knowledge more evolved.
1:32:04 So I walk them through. It was fascinating. It was fascinating. At every turn. Okay.
1:32:12 A or B, which way would you go? I’m not going to tell you what I did. They both suck. And do you
1:32:17 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.
1:32:24 They pick every time it was the same until one. They go, it’s a big one. They go, well,
1:32:28 if that’s the circumstances, that’s what the knowledge you have. We go, yeah, that’s all the
1:32:33 knowledge you have. I would have done what you did too. I would have left. I should have done that. I
1:32:37 didn’t. I stayed. Let me tell you what happened because I stayed. I should have done that. I knew
1:32:41 I should have done that. But I went ahead and stayed because that’s the right thing to do. I did the right
1:32:45 thing. And it blew up in my face. Watch. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
1:32:48 The right thing by external. Right thing, external, external status.
1:32:54 That anyone else counterintuitive though would say, with the evidence you have,
1:32:59 it’s counterintuitive as it sounds. It should go that way. So you picked the right thing. I should
1:33:04 have done that, but because I decided to do the right thing. You just felt so good after. And they
1:33:11 were so excited knowing now what life really is like. It’s going to throw shit at you that’s no
1:33:16 clear answer. Even with all this time, no clarity. They know that it’s a lot tougher.
1:33:22 And they’re invested because it’s you and them in a way. So I tell parents, I told, I won’t tell you,
1:33:27 but several others were like, I’m going to try that with my kids for sure. I’m going to tell my kids
1:33:32 that. I’m curious to see what they say because you want to see if they remix a better version of you.
1:33:37 But you might be surprised that it’s just as unfathomable to them to have an answer as you did.
1:33:40 Okay. Life hack. My favorite life hack. Have you seen,
1:33:44 I showed you that little spark amp, right? That I can play guitar.
1:33:45 You did in your kitchen.
1:33:50 So no time. Even when you try to make time, you can’t make consistent time. You’re supposed to
1:33:56 walk 10,000 steps for your health, especially after 50 or whatever. I have time for that. It takes an
1:34:00 hour, an hour and a half. I don’t have enough things to listen to or phone calls to make to go do that.
1:34:07 Then I love guitar. I can’t be playing guitar for a freaking hour. You listen to Tom Morello on this
1:34:12 master class. You want to get better at guitar? Play for an hour a day. If you want to get better than that,
1:34:15 more. So I started trying to do an hour a day. I couldn’t do it consistently. So I’d be like,
1:34:19 God, I want to play guitar. I have no time to walk. So I put them together. The spark amps,
1:34:23 they have some that are really small. And now they just came out with the headphones that you just put
1:34:27 it on. It’s the amp is built in and you plug in your guitar wireless. And I used to have just the
1:34:33 the one in my pocket, their older one. And I put a playlist on the backing tracks, drums and bass for
1:34:39 songs, my favorite songs that I play to. And I walk just around my house and you forget you’re even
1:34:44 there. It’s like the Angus Young workout. You know, he’s always doing that or Eddie Van Halen running
1:34:49 around. The music drives you. You don’t even, the room is gone. You’re in a stadium. You’re walking
1:34:57 across the stage. Your house is bigger than most stages walking across. I put on like an hour to an
1:35:06 hour and a half playlist. This was like 10 or 12 songs. Easy. 15,000 steps, 17,000 steps. Easy.
1:35:11 You don’t even know you did it. You don’t even remember walking. You’re so transported. You’re so
1:35:16 busy doing this that I’ll be at the end of my playlist. I’m going to keep playing. And you just
1:35:20 keep walking. That’s why you saw me in the crowd, walking through the crowd. I’m so used to playing
1:35:24 walking. You’re so used to walking. I went walking through the crowd, greeting everybody that I knew
1:35:29 instead of, I said, well, shit, I can play and walk and not have some looking, because I got that
1:35:36 training. But anyway, anyone who’s a guitarist, the best life hack, you get an hour plus practice every day.
1:35:42 I got so much better on guitar because of it. And you’re walking and you’re not even feeling it.
1:35:47 I don’t even remember doing it. Biggest life hack there. I couldn’t wait to tell you. I call it the
1:35:52 rock walk. The rock walk. Gotta do the rock walk. My friend goes out in the neighborhood with his
1:35:55 thing. He just walks around the neighborhood. When I saw you on stage with your daughter,
1:36:02 that’s the most I’ve seen you play guitar. I’ve only seen your guitars in the house. Right. But that was
1:36:07 the most actual playtime I have seen. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That’s so funny too. That’s right.
1:36:12 Because I don’t go just play songs with the Hello Kitty guitar. Yeah. Rocking the Hello Kitty. It’s a
1:36:18 good guitar. It looks great. Yeah. Robert, we’ll have to do this more than once a decade, but
1:36:25 yeah. Uh, thank you so much for all the stories and I took a ton of notes. How can people learn
1:36:31 more about brass knuckle films? Where should they go? Should they check out? There’s a brass knuckle
1:36:37 films, you know, website where you can learn all about it. Get all the updates, show you how you can
1:36:43 invest. You’ll see all the perks and things for the different levels. Get a part of it. It’s a community.
1:36:48 I think it’s really going to appeal to anyone who’s a fan of action movies, but also filmmakers,
1:36:54 but just people who are interested and people who consume. Don’t just be a consumer. Make the money
1:36:58 back. I want you to make the money so that you’re not just consuming and watching a movie. If you like
1:37:03 movies, this is the best way. I tried to figure out ever since I was a kid, how can I get paid to
1:37:06 watch movies? Because I watch movies all the time. It’s the closest thing.
1:37:13 Yeah. Brass knuckle films. Beautiful. All right, folks. We’re going to link in the
1:37:15 show notes to everything. Timed up blog session podcast. Thank you, Robert.
1:37:19 Thank you for giving me a forum to tell people that no people were here because everyone listens
1:37:24 to your thing. Because I just, just like with my book, I always wanted, as soon as I made mariachi,
1:37:29 I wanted to share it with people because I knew I would have appreciated hearing that as a filmmaker
1:37:33 who had no money from a family of 10, that it was possible because everyone made it sound like it was
1:37:37 not. So I just wanted to shout it from the mountaintop. And it’s still feeling that same
1:37:42 way as I discover things. I want, I want to tell people because it, the feedback loop is amazing.
1:37:45 You know, when people come back and tell you how they worked it into their life in their own way,
1:37:50 it inspires you all over again, inspires you even you’re like, well, you just inspired me now to go
1:37:55 try that way. So yeah, I love sharing that. Yeah. Incredibly energizing. It’s a virtuous circle.
1:38:01 And for everybody listening and watching till next time, be just a little bit kinder than is
1:38:04 necessary to others and to yourself. Thanks for tuning in.
1:38:11 Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off. And that is five bullet Friday.
1:38:15 Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun
1:38:20 before the weekend between one and a half and 2 million people subscribe to my free newsletter,
1:38:26 my super short newsletter called five bullet Friday, easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is
1:38:31 basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I’ve found
1:38:36 or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It’s kind of like my diary of cool things.
1:38:42 It often includes articles. I’m reading books. I’m reading albums, perhaps gadgets, gizmos,
1:38:47 all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast
1:38:54 guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them
1:39:00 with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it’s very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head
1:39:05 off for the weekend, something to think about. If you’d like to try it out, just go to Tim dot blog
1:39:11 slash Friday, type that into your browser, Tim dot blog slash Friday, drop in your email and you’ll
1:39:18 get the very next one. Thanks for listening. Way back in the day in 2010, I published a book called
1:39:25 The Four Hour Body, which I probably started writing in 2008. And in that book, I recommended many,
1:39:34 many, many, many things first generation continuous glucose monitor and cold exposure and all sorts of
1:39:39 things that have been tested by people from NASA and all over the place. And one thing in that book
1:39:46 was athletic greens. I did not get paid to include it. I was using it. That’s how long I’ve been using
1:39:51 what is now known as AG one. AG one is my all in one nutritional insurance. And I just packed up for
1:39:58 instance, to go off the grid for a while. And the last thing I left out on my countertop to remember
1:40:05 to take, I’m not making this up, I’m looking right in front of me is travel packets of AG one. So rather
1:40:09 than taking multiple pills or products to cover your mental clarity, gut health, immune health, energy,
1:40:15 and so on, you can support these areas through one daily scoop with AG one, which tastes great,
1:40:19 even with water, I always just have it with water. I usually take it first thing in the morning,
1:40:23 and it takes me less than two minutes in total. Honestly, it takes me less than a minute.
1:40:29 I just put in a shaker bottle, shake it up and I’m done. AG one bolsters my digestion and nutrient
1:40:35 absorption by including ingredients optimized to support a healthy gut in every scoop. AG one in
1:40:40 a single serve travel packs, which I mentioned earlier also makes for the perfect travel opinion.
1:40:45 I’ll actually be going totally off the grid, but these things are incredibly, incredibly space
1:40:49 sufficient. You could even put them in a book, frankly. I mean, they’re kind of like bookmarks.
1:40:54 After consuming this product for more than a decade, I chose to invest in AG one in 2021,
1:40:58 as I trust their no compromise approach to ingredient sourcing and appreciate the focus
1:41:05 on continuously improving one formula. They go above and beyond by testing for 950 or so contaminants and
1:41:11 impurities compared to the industry standard of 10. AG one is also tested for heavy metals and 500
1:41:18 various pesticides and herbicides. I’ve started paying a lot of attention to pesticides. That’s a
1:41:24 story for another time to make sure you’re consuming only the good stuff. AG one is also NSF certified for
1:41:29 sport. That means if you’re nothing, you can take it. The certification process is exhaustive
1:41:35 and involves the testing and verification of each ingredient and every finished batch of AG one. So they take
1:41:40 testing very seriously. There’s no better time than today to start a new healthy habit. And this is an easy
1:41:48 one. Wake up water in the shaker bottle. AG one. Boom. So take advantage of this exclusive offer for you,
1:41:55 my dear podcast listeners, a free one year supply of liquid vitamin D plus five travel packs with your subscription.
1:42:19 Listeners have heard me talk about making before you manage for years. All that means to me is when I wake
1:42:23 up, I block out three to four hours to do the most important things that are generative, creative,
1:42:30 podcasting, writing, etc. Before I get to the email and the admin stuff and the reactive stuff and
1:42:37 everyone else’s agenda for my time. For me, let’s just say I’m a writer and entrepreneur. I need to
1:42:43 focus on the making to be happy. If I get sucked into all the little bits and pieces that are constantly
1:42:50 churning, I end up feeling stressed out. And that is why today’s sponsor is so interesting. It’s been one of
1:42:56 the greatest energetic unlocks in the last few years. So here we go. I need to find people who
1:43:02 are great at managing. And that is where Cresset family office comes in. You spell it C-R-E-S-S-E-T.
1:43:09 Cresset family office. I was introduced to them by one of the top CPG investors in the world. Cresset is a
1:43:14 prestigious family office for CEOs, founders, and entrepreneurs. They handle the complex financial
1:43:21 planning, uncertain tax strategies, timely exit planning, bill pay, wires, all the dozens of
1:43:26 other parts of wealth management and just financial management that would otherwise pull me away from
1:43:31 doing what I love most, making things, mastering skills, spending time with the people I care about.
1:43:37 And over many years, I was getting pulled away from that stuff at least a few days a week and I’ve
1:43:42 completely eliminated that. So experience the freedom of focusing on what matters to you with
1:43:49 the support of a top wealth management team. You can schedule a call today at cressetcapital.com/tim.
1:43:56 That’s spelled C-R-E-S-S-E-T. Cressetcapital.com/tim to see how Cresset can help streamline your financial
1:44:04 plans and grow your wealth. That’s Cressetcapital.com/tim. And disclosure, I am a client of Cresset. There are no
1:44:08 material conflicts other than this paid testimonial. And of course, all investing involves risk,
1:44:15 including loss of principle. So, do your due diligence.
0:00:09 The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to interview world-class performers, to break down
0:00:15 how they do what they do, what are the frameworks, tools, influences, so on and so forth that have
0:00:22 helped make them who they are. My guest today is back. At long last, he is one of my most
0:00:28 requested guests for a follow-up, Robert Rodriguez. He is a film director, screenwriter,
0:00:33 producer, cinematographer, editor, and composer. He does everything, absolutely everything.
0:00:38 And to give you an idea of the genesis, while a student at the University of Texas at Austin,
0:00:44 UT Austin, that’s right here in my backyard, in 1991, Rodriguez wrote the script to his first feature
0:00:50 film while sequestered at a drug research facility as a paid subject in a clinical experiment. I’m not
0:00:57 making that up. That paycheck covered the cost of shooting his $7,000 film El Mariachi, which won the
0:01:04 Award at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival, and became the lowest budget movie ever released by a major
0:01:09 studio. If you want the full story on that, listen to our first conversation, which you can find in the
0:01:15 show notes. Rodriguez wrote about these experiences in Rebel Without a Crew, a perennial guide for the
0:01:22 independent filmmaker. Really, it is a guide to bare-bones, bootstrapped entrepreneurship of any
0:01:26 type. It’s worth reading. Then he went on to write, produce, direct, and edit a series of successful
0:01:33 films, including Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn, The Faculty, and the Spy Kids franchise, which is huge.
0:01:38 Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Frank Miller’s Sin City, We Can Be Heroes. And he’s also collaborated
0:01:44 with director James Cameron on the film adaptation of Alita, Battle Angel. His films have grossed more
0:01:51 than $1.5 billion at the box office. Then, in 2000, I suppose somewhere in the middle there, Rodriguez founded
0:01:57 Troublemaker Studios in Austin, Texas, which I’ve visited a number of times. It’s worth checking out if you
0:02:02 ever have the chance. He recently directed the Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande video, Rain On Me, and episodes of The
0:02:08 Mandalorian, and The Book of Boba Fett, and launched Brass Knuckle Films, an investable action film slate.
0:02:13 What does that mean? If you’ve ever wanted to pitch Robert Rodriguez a film idea, or get profit
0:02:19 participation in action films and sequels, he tells you all about it in this conversation. But there are
0:02:26 lots of tactical takeaways, lots of actionable bits of advice that you can use, and that is his style. He
0:02:33 had an entire dossier of things he’d been collecting over the last nine, 10 years since our last conversation
0:02:39 that he wanted to share on this podcast specifically. So, you can find him on x at x.com
0:02:47 slash Rodriguez, R-O-D-R-I-G-U-E-Z, and on Instagram slash Rodriguez at Rodriguez. He’s Rodriguez everywhere.
0:02:54 So, now, just a few words from our sponsors. We’ll get right to this very, very practical tactical
0:03:01 conversation with Robert Rodriguez. Listeners have heard me talk about making before you manage for
0:03:05 the years. All that means to me is that when I wake up, I block out three to four hours to do the most
0:03:11 important things that are generative, creative, podcasting, writing, etc. Before I get to the email
0:03:18 and the admin stuff and the reactive stuff and everyone else’s agenda for my time. For me, let’s
0:03:24 just say I’m a writer and entrepreneur, I need to focus on the making to be happy. If I get sucked
0:03:29 into all the little bits and pieces that are constantly churning, I end up feeling stressed
0:03:35 out. And that is why today’s sponsor is so interesting. It’s been one of the greatest
0:03:42 energetic unlocks in the last few years. So, here we go. I need to find people who are great at managing.
0:03:48 And that is where Cresset Family Office comes in. You spell it C-R-E-S-S-E-T. Cresset Family Office. I was
0:03:54 introduced to them by one of the top CPG investors in the world. Cresset is a prestigious family office
0:04:00 for CEOs, founders, and entrepreneurs. They handle the complex financial planning, uncertain tax
0:04:07 strategies, timely exit planning, bill pay, wires, all the dozens of other parts of wealth management,
0:04:12 just financial management that would otherwise pull me away from doing what I love most, making
0:04:18 things, mastering skills, spending time with the people I care about. And over many years, I was
0:04:23 getting pulled away from that stuff at least a few days a week, and I’ve completely eliminated that.
0:04:28 So, experience the freedom of focusing on what matters to you with the support of a top wealth
0:04:35 management team. You can schedule a call today at CressetCapital.com slash Tim. That’s spelled C-R-E-S-S-E-T.
0:04:41 CressetCapital.com slash Tim to see how Cresset can help streamline your financial plans and grow
0:04:48 your wealth. That’s CressetCapital.com slash Tim. And disclosure, I am a client of Cresset. There are
0:04:52 no material conflicts other than this paid testimonial. And of course, all investing involves
0:05:00 risk, including loss of principle. So, do your due diligence. Way back in the day, in 2010, I published
0:05:07 a book called The 4-Hour Body, which I probably started writing in 2008. And in that book, I
0:05:15 recommended many, many, many things. First-generation continuous glucose monitor and cold exposure and
0:05:21 all sorts of things that have been tested by people from NASA and all over the place. And one thing in
0:05:27 that book was Athletic Greens. I did not get paid to include it. I was using it. That’s how long I’ve
0:05:34 been using what is now known as AG1. AG1 is my all-in-one nutritional insurance. And I just packed up,
0:05:40 for instance, to go off the grid for a while. And the last thing I left out on my countertop to remember
0:05:47 to take, I’m not making this up, I’m looking right in front of me, is travel packets of AG1. So,
0:05:51 rather than taking multiple pills or products to cover your mental clarity, gut health, immune health,
0:05:58 energy, and so on, you can support these areas through one daily scoop of AG1, which tastes great,
0:06:02 even with water. I always just have it with water. I usually take it first thing in the morning,
0:06:05 and it takes me less than two minutes in total. Honestly, it takes me less than a minute.
0:06:11 I just put it in a shaker bottle, shake it up, and I’m done. AG1 bolsters my digestion and nutrient
0:06:17 absorption by including ingredients optimized to support a healthy gut in every scoop. AG1 in
0:06:23 single-serve travel packs, which I mentioned earlier, also makes for the perfect travel companion. I’ll
0:06:28 actually be going totally off the grid, but these things are incredibly, incredibly space-efficient.
0:06:31 You could even put them in a book, frankly. I mean, they’re kind of like bookmarks.
0:06:36 After consuming this product for more than a decade, I chose to invest in AG1,
0:06:41 in 2021 as I trust their no-compromise approach to ingredient sourcing and appreciate their focus
0:06:48 on continuously improving one formula. They go above and beyond by testing for 950 or so contaminants
0:06:53 and impurities compared to the industry standard of 10. AG1 is also tested for heavy metals and 500
0:07:00 various pesticides and herbicides. I’ve started paying a lot of attention to pesticides. That’s a
0:07:05 story for another time. To make sure you’re consuming only the good stuff. AG1 is also NSF
0:07:09 certified for sport. That means if you’re an athlete, you can take it. The certification
0:07:15 process is exhaustive and involves the testing and verification of each ingredient and every finished
0:07:21 batch of AG1. So they take testing very seriously. There’s no better time than today to start a new
0:07:28 healthy habit. And this is an easy one, right? Wake up, water in the shaker bottle, AG1, boom. So take
0:07:34 advantage of this exclusive offer for you, my dear podcast listeners, a free one-year supply of liquid
0:07:41 vitamin D plus five travel packs with your subscription. Simply go to drinkag1.com slash
0:07:48 Tim. That’s the number one. Drinkag1.com slash Tim for a free one-year supply of liquid vitamin D plus
0:07:55 five travel packs with your first subscription purchase. Learn more at drinkag1.com slash Tim.
0:08:01 Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.
0:08:02 Can I ask you a personal question?
0:08:05 Now would it seem an appropriate time?
0:08:10 what if I did the opposite? I’m a cybernetic organism living tissue over a metal endoskeleton.
0:08:14 The Tim Ferriss Show.
0:08:24 All right. Dr. Rodriguez, here we are again.
0:08:25 Yes.
0:08:27 It has been almost 10 years.
0:08:28 Can you believe it? 10 years.
0:08:32 And I can’t believe it’s been almost 10 years, number one.
0:08:37 My decision to go bald early was helpful in making me look somewhat similar to the way
0:08:38 I always wear a black shirt.
0:08:43 And some people may not know also when I first moved to Austin, which is coming up on eight
0:08:50 years, also nuts. I did not have any plates or silverware at my house.
0:08:56 And I invited you over for dinner, not even thinking of this. And you’re, you’re kind enough
0:09:02 to bring over. I still have it. This red plate and a couple of your like dungeon forks and
0:09:03 knives. Yeah. So thank you for that.
0:09:04 Sure. Absolutely.
0:09:12 And a lot has happened in the last 10 years and we’ve continued to hang out and talk and
0:09:17 you have a whole new bag of tricks. Our first conversation was a barn burner of an episode.
0:09:18 Yeah.
0:09:25 People were super excited by it. There’s a lot of tactical advice and you have explored a
0:09:28 lot. You have found a lot. You’ve fine tuned a lot.
0:09:33 You stumble upon new things. You stumble upon them literally, you know? So yeah, we adopt
0:09:36 them and I’ve stored them away so I can tell you about them.
0:09:36 Look at this.
0:09:39 And I’ve stored 10 years worth of stuff.
0:09:46 So we opened the vault and here we are. Let’s just start with a very broad question. I mean,
0:09:49 what are some of the things that come to mind that have happened since we last spoke?
0:09:55 Well, what’s wild is just like a month ago, we just put out an audio book for the first
0:09:59 time for Rebel Without a Crew. The book that kind of started it all.
0:10:00 And when was that published?
0:10:01 In the 90s.
0:10:02 It was like 95.
0:10:02 Yeah.
0:10:08 Because I remember Desperado, Dust Till Dawn, Four Rooms, and that book all came out within
0:10:09 four months. And my son.
0:10:10 My first four.
0:10:11 Five things.
0:10:12 It was a packed four months.
0:10:13 I’ll never forget.
0:10:19 But it was full of stories and my diary on how I did mariachi. And it really, to this day,
0:10:23 people come up and say, not only did it help them start becoming a filmmaker, but it helped
0:10:30 them start their own business. It just applied to so many things. The idea of just taking on a big
0:10:33 challenge, betting on yourself, going where no one else is. That’s very entrepreneurial stuff.
0:10:38 What’s wild, though, is I hadn’t read it since I wrote it. So when I had to suddenly do an
0:10:44 audio book for it a couple months ago, I was astounded. I’d forgotten so much of the details.
0:10:51 And I was like, now I see why it was so inspirational. It blows your mind. Because when you’re younger,
0:10:57 six months feels like six years. But now when you hear the dates, because the dates of my journal,
0:11:05 how quickly I go from clearly clueless and penniless filmmaker, making a movie, having the idea,
0:11:12 having a movie, doing it by myself, trying to sell it to Spanish home video, to instantly being the
0:11:16 toast of the town. It’s just unbelievable. You could see why people would read the book and just drop it
0:11:21 and go, I got to go make something. Because the only reason that happened is because he took action.
0:11:23 He got up and made that movie.
0:11:31 What do you hear most from that book from readers? Because one that pops up a lot from our episode,
0:11:38 because we talked about it a bit, and also stuck with me in the book, was, and I’m sure you have a
0:11:44 better way to phrase this, but basically making a list of assets, right? Not focusing on what you don’t
0:11:44 have.
0:11:45 Yeah, focus on what you do have.
0:11:50 Right. So if you got a turtle and you have a pit bull and you got a friend who’s a school bus
0:11:52 driver, it’s like, all right, we’re going to figure out how to work that into the script.
0:11:57 And it’s all point of view, right? It’s like, you can really concentrate on what you don’t have
0:12:02 in life. And that becomes your focus. And then that becomes your life. All the things you don’t
0:12:06 have, but you never get. But when you leverage what you do have, it’s all about leveraging what you do
0:12:12 have. It’s also a thing I call freedom of limitations. Like, if we had to make a movie
0:12:17 right now with this room, that’s it. It’s kind of very freeing. It’s like, okay, this is all we
0:12:21 have to work with. You can come up with a million ideas. When you can do anything, remember, we’re
0:12:22 trying to make a short film.
0:12:23 Oh, I know.
0:12:26 When you’ve got unlimited, it’s harder, is it not?
0:12:30 I have to say, that was one of my great embarrassments.
0:12:31 We’re going to talk about it.
0:12:36 We are going to talk about it because it’s exactly what we’re talking about. Because you can do
0:12:41 anything. And a lot of times when you can do anything, you can’t do anything because it’s
0:12:47 too wide. So the smaller aperture, the fact that I had very little things was a blessing. And people
0:12:52 took that lesson, applied it to business. And the whole time I’m reading this, you can hear I’m
0:12:57 laughing. And I stopped several times, many times during the book to update. I go, by the way,
0:13:05 what you just heard never happened before this and never happened against it. It’s very rare. This is
0:13:12 lightning in a bottle. And it’s like a movie. You see incredible setup, payoff, setup, payoff. Where
0:13:17 a setup, huge setup falls in my lap. Don’t even know what to do with it. It pays off in a huge way,
0:13:22 two weeks later. And then three weeks later, then four weeks later. And then you also see why,
0:13:27 like, I was really bummed I couldn’t sell the movie to Spanish Home Video. I was going to sell it for
0:13:32 $20,000 before Christmas. And the contracts weren’t through. I went home a failure. It said,
0:13:37 Merry Christmas. I didn’t sell the movie. I was really bummed. And then you see, because it’s so
0:13:44 a journal. One month later, I had an agent suddenly because of the movie. Good thing I didn’t sell it.
0:13:49 I was chasing those guys down for the contract. They could have had it for $20,000. Two months later,
0:13:50 I sell it for 10 times that.
0:13:55 incredible. And I’m the toast of the town and getting my first movie deal. I mean,
0:14:00 it’s unbelievable. When I was reading it, I was like, now I see why. Because when you’re living
0:14:05 it, you don’t know how special it is until later. 30 years later, it’s like, it still is an unbelievable
0:14:10 story. And I think it will still inspire people today. And in that example too, it makes me think
0:14:16 of advice I got from a mentor of mine at one point. And he said, sometimes you need life to save you from
0:14:21 what you want. Yes. Yes. In that instance, that’s what I really wanted that. And when something
0:14:26 doesn’t work out, we think we made a mistake. Like that’s one of my favorite stories. The keys
0:14:31 to your next success is in your failure because you followed your instinct. You got to dig in deep and
0:14:36 look. And I show you that like, I made a movie called Four Rooms. It bombed, but I took it on
0:14:42 instinct. Not because I thought it would make money. If I just be upset about it and be bummed about it,
0:14:46 like, wow, I must’ve made a wrong choice. I haven’t learned anything. But if I go sift through it,
0:14:51 the ashes of that failure, I find I got the idea for Spy Kids from that because I saw Antonio and
0:14:55 his Asian wives look like a cool international spy couple because they’re dressed in tuxedos. And I
0:14:59 thought, what do these two kids have to say? There’s five of those movies now. And then also it’s an
0:15:05 anthology and it didn’t work. But I thought instead of four stories, maybe three stories, one director,
0:15:11 not multiple directors, I’m going to try it again. Even those anthologies never work. Why would I do
0:15:15 that? Because I just did it and I saw what I could do better. And that was Sin City. Two of my biggest
0:15:20 movies came directly from a movie that you would consider a failure. So you only know
0:15:25 that by journaling, by keeping track of the things that you thought were a mistake and you realize,
0:15:31 oh, with time, that was the right instinct. But sometimes the only way across the river is to slip
0:15:35 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.
0:15:39 Yeah. And I’m sure we’ll talk about this more. When I talk to people and they say, yeah, I journal,
0:15:45 right? I’m like, you do, but you should see what Robert does. And I’m sure we’ll talk more about
0:15:50 journaling because it makes me think of one of my friend’s mother’s very sweet older lady. She was on
0:15:57 a chairlift skiing and she’s still very active. She lives in Idaho. She was chatting up the woman next
0:16:00 to her on the ski lift. She’s like, oh, what do you do? And the woman’s like, oh, I’m a swimmer.
0:16:03 And she goes, oh, me too. I’m a swimmer. It was Dara Torres, the Olympian, right? So it’s kind of
0:16:09 there’s journaling and then there’s capital J marque lights journaling, which we’ll get to. But I
0:16:15 want to ask you first, because I just experienced this. Was it yesterday? I’m time traveling because
0:16:23 there’s a whole warp with South by Southwest. But I got to see you on stage with your daughter, Rhiannon.
0:16:29 Yeah. And I thought to myself, holy shit, she’s really good, right? Like I was going to clap
0:16:35 anyway, like no matter what, obviously. But I thought to myself, wow, she’s really good.
0:16:39 I wonder how many performances she’s done. And the answer was?
0:16:43 I know. I waited till the end because I didn’t want to tell anybody. I want to make sure it went right.
0:16:49 She never, ever performed before on stage or to a crowd. Yeah.
0:16:53 But we’ll get to this thing later because I want everybody to hear this. It’s so inspiring.
0:16:59 And I’ve stumbled upon it. It’s counterintuitive parenting. The kids step up.
0:17:01 But we’ll get to that because it’s a big thing.
0:17:02 Yeah. But yeah.
0:17:05 Because it comes back to like parenting and also
0:17:06 creating a space.
0:17:07 Modeling and coaching, right?
0:17:09 And creating a space for them to flourish.
0:17:10 And creating a space for them to flourish.
0:17:14 Not just capability, but confidence into other people.
0:17:16 Yeah. I stumbled upon it.
0:17:16 Okay.
0:17:18 I’ll tell you where it started. It started on Spy Kids.
0:17:19 All right.
0:17:25 My kids were much younger than my two actors. My two actors were eight and 11, Alexa and Daryl.
0:17:30 And my kids were younger. You know, when you’re learning how to raise kids, you tend to go a
0:17:35 little easier on your kid. Not to the Spy Kids because they’re actors. I’m treating them like performers.
0:17:39 So they were having to do, there’s no kid stuntmen. They’re having to do their own stunts.
0:17:44 They’re having to do the daily, daily challenges, mind-bending challenges for these little kids
0:17:48 to be action stars. They’re like mini Tom Cruises that you’re just throwing them in. There’s no
0:17:54 training for that. And at the end of the day, I would just see them become so confident and super
0:17:55 human. The actors.
0:18:01 Even today, the actors. And I would tell myself, I need to make sure I challenge my own kids like this.
0:18:07 Because I saw them go from just regular kids into super kids over the course of those three films.
0:18:12 So I started putting my kids making movies with us. Like one of them came up with Sharkboy Lover Girl.
0:18:17 I put them in as actors, as stunt kids. And I kept thinking, I wonder if they’re going to really
0:18:22 resent me later for putting them to work at a young age because it wasn’t their passion. These two kids
0:18:27 that were in the movie, they wanted to be actors. That’s a different that they chose. But I tried it
0:18:32 anyway. It was an experiment because I thought maybe it’ll give them a cup. And boy, it is just opened up a
0:18:37 whole world. All right. So we’re going to come back to that. Yeah, it is big.
0:18:40 And I’m going to tell you some famous people that it’s inspired. And you’ll go like, oh,
0:18:44 it was directly because of something I told them. All right. All right. So we’re going to get to that.
0:18:52 Now, right next to Rhiannon, there is a huge screen. And there are other things that were
0:18:59 being launched slash announced. So what else? Oh, yeah. The reason we had a big party at my studio
0:19:06 on the back lot of my studio, which still has that huge 90,000 square foot Alita set, because I’m
0:19:11 resourceful enough to put it in a corner of my studio where I could keep it. Since 2016,
0:19:15 we built it with steel support beams so we could have forever. It’s the largest standing set in the
0:19:18 country, if not the world. No kidding. Well, because they mow them down after each movie,
0:19:23 because the next movie is coming in. But I put it in a corner of my big section of my studio so we
0:19:28 can have it to film for Mexico, for other cities. We’ve used it on every movie since then. So we had
0:19:33 our party back there to announce this new movie company that I’m doing because I realized I have
0:19:39 so many resources there. You’ve seen my studio. I’ve got that huge set. I’ve got all the vehicles,
0:19:44 every prop we’ve ever made, every costume. And usually that savings gets passed on to studios,
0:19:49 but they just piss it away. Because it’s just like they got so much overhead. So I thought,
0:19:53 let’s make a slate of action films. It’s called brass knuckle films. Just action. Because action,
0:19:58 there’s an international appetite always. In fact, if you were to ask Netflix right now what they need,
0:20:02 they would say, action, action, action. We don’t have enough action. So let’s make something that
0:20:08 everyone needs and wants. A slate of four pictures, only that fans are usually an afterthought.
0:20:13 They’re only like, right now, people are showing their movies at South by Southwest to get the fans,
0:20:16 to get their friends to go spend money on their movies for the privilege of seeing the movies.
0:20:21 What if they made money on those movies? So you, for the cost of a badge, can invest into my
0:20:26 brass knuckle films for a slate of films. That means you got four bites of the apple.
0:20:31 One of those is going to make money and sequels. And you share in all that because you’re at the ground
0:20:36 floor of development. And that’s the revolution that we’re doing. And people come up to me all the
0:20:40 time with movie ideas saying, I got an idea for you. And they tell me and they’re ready to give
0:20:45 it to me. It’s like, no, you get to come be a co-creator because one of the movies in that slate
0:20:49 is going to be picked from one of the fan investors. And even at the lowest level,
0:20:53 everyone gets to pitch us their action movie idea. And the top 20 gets to pitch it directly to me.
0:20:58 So you can be a co-creator and fan, but there’s other perks. The perks alone would get you great,
0:21:01 but it’s not crowdsourcing. It’s not Kickstarter. You’re actually an investor.
0:21:07 We’re using Republic, which is, uh, you know, can use even an unaccredited investors can come
0:21:11 invest in this. And it’s a platform, an investing platform. They’ve done it in sports and other arenas,
0:21:17 but this is now for film and my movies, especially because I’ve got all my resources to keep the budget
0:21:23 slow. Like, you know how much the original John Wick cost? No idea. 20 million. Okay. 20 million.
0:21:28 The last one was a hundred as the audience grew. So we’re making budgets between 10 and 30 million.
0:21:35 That’s like a, a lower to mid range budget, right? Right. That’s not a lot of money for the chance to
0:21:39 make something that could turn into the billion dollar franchise that it is. Yeah. We just keep
0:21:43 making bites at the apple. One of those is going to turn into that. It’s like a hundred capital.
0:21:48 I mean, it’s, it’s, and it’s so fun because the fans, people, the other thing people always ask me,
0:21:52 you want me to believe, could you kill me in your movie? I’d love to die in your movie. Can you just
0:21:57 have me die in your movie? Chop my head off, run me over, shoot me. Everyone wants to die. So that’s one of the
0:22:02 perks. So you put in enough money, you get to die on screen in a creative way. So it’s a lot of fun.
0:22:05 I miss somebody comes in and they say, Hey, I like that. I like the model a lot.
0:22:10 I want to take 90% of it. Are there kind of limits on what investors can do?
0:22:14 Yeah. This is just for the, the develop. This is true. Like, give us money. Cause we already have,
0:22:17 we can get the money for an action film. We can already fund the whole thing.
0:22:19 Yeah, sure. I mean, the international buyers alone,
0:22:22 and we could keep the domestic and sell it to all these guys.
0:22:27 You like sell the foreign rights and use that to kind of sell the foreign rights to go ahead and
0:22:31 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
0:22:35 of an independent film. We have a lot of avenues cause they just need it. This is the thing. The
0:22:40 problem is they don’t know how to make an action movie at a price because they have too much over
0:22:41 and they’re just too big. They spend so much.
0:22:47 And that’s why John Wick was an independent movie. That’s why Beekeeper wasn’t in the movie because
0:22:53 you can go make those for less, but there’s always an appetite. We’re not making dream projects or,
0:22:57 you know, art films, you know, we’re not, this is going to be just things that put food on table
0:23:03 because I want the fans to win because it’s going to be one, a great story. And two, they should,
0:23:07 they should enjoy it because they’re the ones when, when you’ve made a movie at a studio,
0:23:11 you don’t even know what you got. Yeah. Then you take it to the fans and show it to them
0:23:16 in a private screening. They give you notes and then you go, oh, we screwed that up. We got to go
0:23:20 fix that. We got to reshoot that. They’re brought in at the end and then told to go spend their money
0:23:25 on it. Yeah. It should start with the fans and as well as finish with the fans. So that’s the
0:23:29 revolutionary thing we’re doing because it’s just like rebel that I could. It’s part of my whole
0:23:36 democratizing the process, making it, removing the smoke and mirrors and letting us all enjoy that
0:23:44 process together because I’ve seen the phenomenon of creating a new label, a label on yourself,
0:23:48 a label on a business. And we’ll get to that. Cause I have it written down. You’ll see the value of
0:23:52 brass knuckle, but I’ll tell you where I did it before. Cause this is something that’s happened
0:23:57 since our last 10 years and it’s a mind blower and it ties into what the first thing you asked about
0:24:03 family. All right, sweet. So before we get there, I am so curious because you’ve written and I’m sure
0:24:11 you’ve read a lot of scripts. If you get 100, 200, 400, 500, who knows pitches?
0:24:14 Okay. Pitches, right. So you’re not getting a script.
0:24:14 No.
0:24:16 So what form does the pitch?
0:24:20 Well, we’ll give a format. It’s short. It’s like, you could be like, it should be less than
0:24:25 five minutes. So maybe two or three pages at the most, maybe one to three pages, something to tell
0:24:29 your story. And if you’ve already written, I’ve had a lot of people come and say, I have an action
0:24:33 script for you. Can I enjoy? I said, well, come be an investor and you can pitch it. I tell you,
0:24:39 I’ve sold more pitches from scripts I’d already half written or written. Cause I know more about the
0:24:43 story. I really know it. So when I go to pitch it, it’s very easy for me to tell you the story.
0:24:48 You’ve got a much better chance than someone who’s just making a pitch, but I will give you a format.
0:24:52 We’ll teach. I want to train people how to do it so that they know. So it’s kind of a film school too.
0:24:57 Can you give us just a teaser of some of the ingredients of, of a good short pitch?
0:25:01 A good pitch is anything that if you, if we could sit here right now and I could tell you a story
0:25:08 about, you know, there’s a guitar player who comes into town. He’s all you want. Music is his life.
0:25:12 And that’s all he thinks about. All he wants to do is find a place for somebody,
0:25:17 you know, to hire him. He goes into a bar in this new town that he walks into.
0:25:23 They don’t hire musicians. He leaves. Second later, a guy with a guitar case full of weapons comes in,
0:25:28 shoots the place up because he’s after the main bed honcho to leave a message.
0:25:34 So now the word gets out, find the guy in black with a guitar case full of weapons. It’s a mistaken
0:25:39 identity thing. By the end, he’ll become the guy with a guitar case full of weapons. And he becomes,
0:25:45 every movie is like a ballad, a sad, tragic ballad. He’s going to meet somebody. She’s going to help him.
0:25:49 She’s going to die. And he goes to the next town, but no longer can play the guitar because he gets
0:25:55 his hands shot. So now he has to become that thing. That’s it. That’s a pitch. But I can tell you that
0:26:00 pitch because I already made that movie. I already wrote that script. It was harder when I was first
0:26:05 just trying to figure it out. I was just taking little cards, but a pitch could be something like
0:26:10 that where I would see the potential in it and go, this one, we can still work on it. We’re going to hire
0:26:16 a writer. It’s that seed of an idea that gets people to stop and listen that you want to find.
0:26:20 That’s the lightning in the bottle. Sometimes it’s just the idea. And everyone’s got an idea,
0:26:25 just like everybody wants to get killed in the movie. So it’s like, this is how we’re going to make it fun
0:26:29 for the fans. Because who’s going to consume it at the end of the day? It’s the fans, not the zombies
0:26:34 in suits that are up there who don’t even watch these movies. I go up there, the disconnect blows my
0:26:38 mind. You go talk to some, not all executives, but you go to some studios, you can tell they don’t
0:26:43 pay to go see a movie. They don’t watch movies. They don’t love movies. It’s a business. And then
0:26:47 you go talk to the fans. I was just South by Southwest. They’re losing their minds. They tell
0:26:52 you about all the movies they’ve seen, about all the things they collect. They should be sharing in that,
0:26:55 not the executives. They’re just going to piss it away.
0:27:03 So you’re very good at hooks. So before we start recording, when we were out on the sidewalk,
0:27:06 about to come into the building, you were like, yeah, there’s this one line.
0:27:09 There’s one line at the end that I figured out. What was the line?
0:27:14 Oh, at the end. So when I told them all about this investment opportunity, at the end, I said,
0:27:22 so this is how you manifest. Because I had been talking about manifesting. They asked me the question,
0:27:26 Robert, you’re very positive, but do you have any human doubts? And I said, no. And I told them
0:27:31 why. And they were all clapping afterwards. So at the end, I said, okay, one more thing on manifesting.
0:27:36 This is how you do it. Next year, it’s our goal to come back to South by Southwest with our first
0:27:41 brass knuckle film. Now ask yourself this, if you have the opportunity to invest in being part of it
0:27:46 and pitch an idea that might be that idea, wouldn’t you rather be sitting up here with us than down
0:27:49 there in the audience? That’s how you manifest.
0:27:57 Yeah, it’s true. You hit it. You set a target. I’m talking about my old trainer. I had an old
0:28:01 trainer who’d be like, we’d be working now. And you can tell he was just making it up as he went,
0:28:06 200, 200 set up, 200 push-ups. And then we just go, go, go, go. And then, you know,
0:28:10 just picking a big number and then just hitting it. That’s kind of what you need to do. Because if you
0:28:15 aim low, you’ll hit low. But if you aim high, you might, it might go low. It might go there. And like
0:28:21 mariachi, when you read it, it went straight up. But if I hadn’t taken the action, it would never
0:28:27 have happened. So, so many people wait. That’s the discussion we had about, remember, you were
0:28:28 talking about making a short film.
0:28:33 Yep. And I said, we just got to commit to making it. We just got to go ready or not. Here we go.
0:28:37 Let’s set a date. We almost did it, but then both of our schedules, both of our schedules got
0:28:42 whacked. But you, you understood the lesson. I understood the lesson because I told somebody
0:28:46 this whole thing and he was there right where you were sitting. I think I told you somebody was right
0:28:51 here and they said, wow, everything you’re saying makes sense. You know, I’ve got a project.
0:28:57 All the pieces are actually pretty much there. I just guess I’m not ready. And I said, that’s going
0:29:03 to be on your tombstone. Here lies so-and-so. He was never ready. Why is it that art you have to be
0:29:06 ready for? In life, you didn’t know you’re going to get a flat tire. You didn’t know you’re going to
0:29:11 go to work and be fired. You didn’t know the fires are going to be raging. Every day, you’re like this,
0:29:15 you know, trying to move with the, you’re not ready. You’re not ready for anything life is
0:29:20 throwing at you, but you make, you become ready on the spot, right? Why is it that we think art and life
0:29:24 should not be the same? Why art has to be, you have to be ready before you can begin.
0:29:30 There’s no relation. They should be the same. You’re not going to be ready until you’re almost
0:29:33 done with a project because a lot of the answers you need are not going to happen until you’re on
0:29:38 the journey. And that’s what keeps most people from doing it. And so that’s why I was going to show you
0:29:43 that real time, but we are going to do it. We’re going to make a short film. You’re not going to know
0:29:47 what you’re going to make it on. And it’s going to fall in our lap because we start the process.
0:29:52 That is a huge, huge, huge lesson. You got to start it.
0:29:56 You just have to start. You got to start. I mean, in a couple of weeks, you know, I have this,
0:29:59 I don’t even know if I’ve told you about this. I have a card game I’ve been working on kind of
0:30:03 secretly for like two years. Card game. Yeah. Card game.
0:30:04 Yeah. You always love, you’re always gifting me card games.
0:30:11 Yeah. I love card games. And the reason that it happened ultimately is just booking a flight to go
0:30:18 spend time with a master game designer and deciding by the time we leave, we’re either going to have a
0:30:27 game or we will have stopped because we did a couple of, I would say B minus attempts where we didn’t
0:30:33 commit in that type of way. And we met in different places around the country and we would play test
0:30:38 different options and different concepts. And then this final trip was like, okay, look, we’re both
0:30:44 really busy. We’ve given this a few shots this time. We’re just going to pound our heads against the
0:30:51 wall. You’re aiming up there now, and we’re going to have a game or this is it. And that kicked off the
0:30:53 whole process. Now it’s going to be in thousands of stores.
0:30:57 That’s great. That’s the way that’s, you know, you used to ask me, how do you get so much done?
0:31:05 It’s like, you know, I set the bridge on fire and then I run across. Otherwise it’s not enough steak.
0:31:11 You have a way out. Like the last ones you had, you had a way out. Yeah. Y’all didn’t have that goal.
0:31:13 Yeah. You’ll take the escape route. Yeah. It’s easier.
0:31:18 But if you just have, you’ve burned the bridge, you’ve got to go. When we have a deadline,
0:31:22 it’s a blessing. Like today, I even asked you earlier yesterday, I said, do you really need it
0:31:26 by tomorrow? Cause we could push it to later. No, no, let’s do it. Yeah. So when you have a deadline,
0:31:30 you said you make it happen, you make it happen, but we tend not to do that with ourselves and it’s a
0:31:38 crippling thing. Just a quick, thanks to one of our sponsors and we’ll be right back to the show.
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0:33:11 thinking of the audio book that you just produced and the book, we have spoken over the years about
0:33:13 you writing another book.
0:33:13 Yes.
0:33:15 So what happened to that one?
0:33:16 What happened to that one?
0:33:20 You told me right after we had our talk, he says, “Did you finish that book?” Because I sounded like I was
0:33:27 almost ready. The idea was called “The Creative Life” because, you know, I gave a talk once about
0:33:32 Pro Max or something about creativity. They introduced me and they said, “Robert,
0:33:37 cinematographer, editor, composer, screenwriter.” They went through all my credits. And I got up there
0:33:42 and I said, “I feel dizzy just hearing all that stuff.” And there’s this book out. I always see it
0:33:47 in the bookstores at the airport. It’s called “The One Thing” about doing one thing. And I was thinking,
0:33:51 “Well, that doesn’t apply to me, obviously.” But then I thought, “There actually is one thing that I do when
0:34:00 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
0:34:05 anything that touches creativity is open to me. So I can paint. I can draw. I can do anything.
0:34:11 Because 90% of any one of those jobs is actually the creative part. The technical part about any
0:34:17 one of those, whether it’s music, say, 90% creative. Some of the best musicians don’t know how to read or write
0:34:22 music. That’s the technical part. So I realized that as I did all those jobs, that was the thing.
0:34:25 So I said, “I want to write a book called ‘The Creative Life’ where every chapter is about
0:34:31 raising your kids, painting, drawing, filmmaking. You’re going to see the same lesson over and over
0:34:36 because it all applies.” So that was the idea. And you asked what happened to it. It’s like,
0:34:43 “I’m going through this whole new chapter that’s so massive. I would feel dumb to put out the book
0:34:48 now because I know this is going to change all my thinking.” And it was when I turned 50, I thought,
0:34:55 “I wonder if there’s some other job I could have where I don’t have to be doing this harder work
0:35:00 as filmmaking. But the knowledge I have, there must be something. I don’t even know what jobs are out
0:35:05 there. This is the first job I ever got was making movies. I was so young. So I literally bought jobs
0:35:10 for dummies and was looking through it. No joke, because they have these little icons just to see
0:35:14 what’s even out there. I was like, “I don’t want that. I don’t want that.” It got to filmmaker and that
0:35:20 little icon is a guy with his arms up like this. And it said, “This is the best job. Get to be creative
0:35:26 with your friends, make stuff, and then just sit back and let the money roll in.” It said, “But,” it says, “But,
0:35:35 99% of film students don’t get this job. So forget that dream. Oh, clearly I got the best job.” But I used to
0:35:39 think, “Well, I guess I could keep making movies. I guess that’s been good to me. I guess I could just
0:35:46 keep making more.” But then I had to work with my kids for that Red 11 project, remember? It was one
0:35:51 where we had to do another Mariachi, another $7,000 movie, but with digital cameras and show people how
0:35:55 it was done today. We were going to make one and I made all the other filmmakers that were in our group
0:36:01 for this TV show I was doing called Rebel Without a Crew. You could only bring one person, just like I had
0:36:05 Carlos Gallardo, the main actor from Mariachi, only one person. You got to do everything. He can be your
0:36:08 sound man or he can be your cameraman, but you got to do everything. You got to edit it, you got to shoot it,
0:36:12 you got to write it, and you got two weeks. Like, I had only two weeks to do Mariachi. And I saw the
0:36:18 filmmakers, just like that thing I was saying about the kids pushing them, they’d only done short films.
0:36:22 None of them had done a feature. This is your first feature. And we’re going to document it,
0:36:27 so the documentary camera is going to be on you, like, you know, reality TV. I saw them turn superhuman
0:36:30 between the first week and the second week. Once they started shooting, they had no idea how they were
0:36:36 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
0:36:40 going. They’re already talking about their next three films. Suddenly their idea of what impossible
0:36:46 was went from that to that. And so I did that as well. I wanted to do that, but with my kid,
0:36:50 Racer, I picked one kid, my son, Racer, who hadn’t been working with me in film at all for a while.
0:36:54 I brought him to be my co-writer, my co-lighter, my sound guy, and I didn’t show him how to use the
0:36:59 sound equipment. I waited till we were about to start filming. Then I was like, “Okay, this is how
0:37:04 it works. Go.” And because we’re documented. And I wanted to show people that even without any experience,
0:37:09 you can go make a movie in two weeks with no money. And we did. And that thing ended up going to festivals,
0:37:16 even getting over to Director’s Fortnight at Cannes. People were flying us and paying us to go speak
0:37:21 about our masterclass on how we made that movie and show clips from the making of.
0:37:27 We’re making money from this little no money movie. The only reason we had to stop doing a tour,
0:37:33 we went to Columbia, we went to Sweden, we went to Paris. I mean, we were doing really well.
0:37:37 My kids were like, “Dad, you’re right. This is really weird.” I said, “Yeah, better than I thought.” We
0:37:40 only had to stop because we’re shooting “We Can Be Heroes.” But the reason I’m talking about this label,
0:37:45 what blew my mind about it is my kids… Labels you apply to yourself.
0:37:50 Yeah. Labels you apply to yourself and to just a label like a company, a fake company within your
0:37:55 realm, like Brass Knuckle. I would call that a label. I still do other things, but that has a very specific
0:38:00 target. And I’m getting all kinds of ideas just popping in my head because I started that. It’s
0:38:04 just this phenomenon, like ideas I never would have thought of before, because now it’s got a place to
0:38:08 go. Just like with yourself, there’s a label I’ll tell you about. I came about that with yourself
0:38:13 that really transformed. But my kids, I thought, “They’re going to resent me again. I’m afraid they
0:38:18 might resent me for having to do this $7,000 movie for two weeks and see how much hard work it is.”
0:38:23 Because they had their own interests. They weren’t going to want you to make movies. But I said, “I need
0:38:27 him to be in it because he’ll be a good example.” And I made my other son act in it because he made
0:38:32 those knives. I was inspired to make one of the characters a knife guy. And I asked them to do the
0:38:37 score too with me, write the score. And I thought, “They have their own interests. They’re going to work on
0:38:42 this one day and hate it. I’m prepared for that.” Instead, they came at the end of the day,
0:38:45 all excited, their eyes all bugging out of their head. And they were like, “Dad,
0:38:52 the actor didn’t show up. The script didn’t match the location at all. And when we asked you in the
0:38:57 morning, what were we going to do?” You said, “I don’t know. We’ll figure it out.” And we thought,
0:39:05 finally, the movie that stumped my dad. But then by the end, we figured it out. They’re all excited. I went,
0:39:10 oh, they don’t realize that’s the creative process. That’s every day on a movie. But it’s also every
0:39:15 day in life. It’s the same. And I realized on the making of that movie, so little of what I was
0:39:22 teaching them was filmmaking. It was all life lessons. How to take on this impossible challenge.
0:39:27 Two-man crew making a feature. I didn’t know we were going to go to Cannes. I actually didn’t
0:39:32 predict any of that. I just wanted to finish for the project. But you get blessed because of that.
0:39:38 And the label we created is because my son had come to me and said, “I wanted to draw comics,
0:39:43 but I wasn’t born in the golden age of comics.” But I am born in the golden age of technology. So
0:39:49 I’m thinking maybe instead of doing storytelling through comics, give up the drawing thing and do
0:39:53 it like with VR. So let’s start a VR company. Let’s start a company. I’ll show you how this works.
0:39:59 All these VR companies need people to buy their helmets. They need product. If I call them up and say,
0:40:04 “I have a VR company, they’ll give us money to go make them a short film.” Sure enough,
0:40:09 I just said, “Here, we all have double our names, all the kids. Let’s start a company called Double R.
0:40:13 It’s the label we made. So now we’re going to make t-shirts. We’re going to make notepads.”
0:40:17 And they loved them. They were looking at them. Because now any project, any of you have,
0:40:21 if Rhiannon has an album she wants to do, or Rebel wants to put out a knife, then we can do it through
0:40:24 Double R. It’s our company. Now, when you have a company, you have a label,
0:40:30 it’s now manifested. Now you got to do stuff to fill. You have to do stuff to put into it,
0:40:31 right? Yeah.
0:40:35 You get all these ideas. Michelle Rodriguez and Norman Reedus are in this movie called The Limit.
0:40:41 Remember that one? They made us a logo, Double R logo, big logo. It went in front of our $7,000
0:40:46 movie also. It went around the world. That same year, three projects in one year,
0:40:52 I went to Netflix to ask if they needed any movies. And they said, “We need family,
0:40:56 spy kids type thing. Can you come up with something?” I kind of came up with it in the room.
0:41:00 People are always ripping off spy kids. I should just rip off myself. Little kids have to save their
0:41:04 parents. Only what if they’re superheroes and the parents are superheroes that get captured,
0:41:09 like the Avengers get captured. Little kids with superpowers, they don’t know how to use them yet.
0:41:15 And the little girl who has no powers has to wrangle them together to work together to go save the day.
0:41:22 Simple pitch, right? I wrote it out, wrote it with my kids. We came up with all these fun,
0:41:28 special powers we’ve never seen in any movie. We took it. We sold it. It’s the biggest movie on Netflix,
0:41:33 most watched and rewatched movie in their history. Nothing can touch it because kids watch it over and
0:41:40 over and over. And that has a big, glorious, the same double R logo in front of it. And my kids were
0:41:46 just like, “Dad, this really works.” I was like, “It’s better than I thought. I was just doing it as an
0:41:51 example. I did not know it was going to put food on the table in that way.” So I’m going to do that
0:41:55 again with Brass Knuckle, but with the fans, because we’ve done that before. Because I told them,
0:42:01 “Come be a part of it because proximity is everything.” Remember I showed you that painter I went and watched
0:42:07 and how my painting changed. Even though he didn’t teach me one thing, except I saw that he just had
0:42:12 a regular brush, regular paint. He didn’t know how he was going to attack it each time. It made you go
0:42:18 like, “Oh, I thought I needed to know something. I had a mental block.” And I went and did it again.
0:42:22 And it was like, there it was. It was unbelievable. The proximity sometimes sees your loss. I tell people,
0:42:27 if you come be a part of the company, the proximity to us as filmmakers making this stuff,
0:42:31 you’re going to get 10 ideas, 20 ideas on your own. You’re going to see your own thing. You’ll be
0:42:37 part of this, but it’s almost like a masterclass without me even trying to teach you. That’s just
0:42:43 what I found by being proximity, by being around James Cameron, by being around George Lucas,
0:42:47 by being around Spielberg. They didn’t necessarily give me lessons, but just seeing how they move
0:42:52 through the world, even for just a moment in time, transforms you completely.
0:42:57 So let’s say somebody’s listening to this and those are big names out of reach for most folks.
0:43:03 But they’re equivalent in their world. They’re equivalents of people that they really admire,
0:43:08 that if they just had proximity to them, they didn’t even have to get a lesson from them.
0:43:12 And they would just, it would just change because you’re just, you know, your parents used to tell
0:43:16 you this, be careful who your peers are. That meant one thing when you were younger, it means even more
0:43:20 now when you’re older, like surround yourself with people who are heavy hitters. We talk to each other
0:43:24 all the time because it just raises our game. Remember you coming over to my house and seeing,
0:43:28 Hey, what chopper is that? Did you, you know, you’re like seeing upgrades that you can have
0:43:34 just by proximity, you pick stuff up. Can you say more about labels?
0:43:39 And so label, I’m going to give you my favorite label example. And it’s a thing I’ve realized now
0:43:44 when I did the audio book that I already knew and had forgot. People would come up to me sometimes
0:43:49 and tell me some quote from my book. And I’d be like, that’s from my book. I was smart back then.
0:43:57 What happened? But there was something I said in the book saying, stop aspiring. Stop saying you’re
0:44:02 an aspiring filmmaker. People come up to you. I’m aspiring filmmaker. The words we use are really
0:44:06 strong. You’re always going to be aspiring. You’re never going to get there. If you call yourself
0:44:10 somebody who’s on the journey, say you’re a filmmaker, make a card, make a business. I said,
0:44:17 make a business card that says, I did director, cinematographer, editor. Then what do you have
0:44:21 to do? Just like the label, you have to conform to your identity. You have to go do that stuff now.
0:44:25 And suddenly I have movies out. You go make movies because that’s what a filmmaker does.
0:44:27 What does an aspiring filmmaker do?
0:44:28 – Aspires. – Aspires.
0:44:33 – Yeah, you aspire. I knew that back then, but I’d forgotten it. The reason I remember it is,
0:44:36 okay, you always remark, “Hey, Robert, you’re always in good shape.”
0:44:41 Did I ever tell you I hate sports? I hate working out. Did I ever tell you that?
0:44:46 – I’m not sure you tell me. – All through high school, they would want me to be on the team.
0:44:50 Small school. I was so tall. Please come be on our team. I was like, I don’t know.
0:44:52 – Which sport? Football? – Any of them. Basketball,
0:44:56 football. We need players. And you’re so big. Come be on the… I was like,
0:45:00 I don’t even know how these games are played. I’ve never followed sports. I’m a filmmaker.
0:45:04 I’m an artist. I’m a musician. And there’s a line in the faculty, Elijah Wood says,
0:45:07 that’s my line. I used to tell people, I don’t think you should run unless you’re being chased.
0:45:11 I just did not love exercise at all. But then later when I was making movies,
0:45:15 my back kept going out because I was doing steady cam because I was sitting drawing for long hours.
0:45:21 My back every year would go out really bad where I needed like a walker and a quarter sun shot,
0:45:25 you know, quarter sun shots on my back. I remember Ricardo Montalban and his wheelchair at 84.
0:45:32 And I had a walker when Spike gets to my back and he goes, Robert, I’m 84. What’s your excuse?
0:45:37 You have to work out. I was like, I know, I know, but I don’t know how. I hate sports.
0:45:41 I hate working out. The next year I worked with Stallone on Spike gets three. And I said,
0:45:47 how can I get better shape so my back doesn’t keep going out? He goes, get thee a trainer.
0:45:52 Anyone who ever got anywhere physically had a trainer. I say, even you, don’t you know,
0:45:57 don’t you just go train? No. He said, no, no. I’d rather, you know, rearrange my sock drawer than go
0:46:02 work out. I was like, well, even if you even need a trainer, well, what chance do us mortal men have?
0:46:07 So I got a trainer and I would hide from him. I would pay him not to show up. I hated it.
0:46:13 I hated working out. I would feel sick when he’s coming over and I would half-ass the workouts,
0:46:18 you know, cause I hate it. So this woman, a friend of mine from Mexico, older woman,
0:46:21 my doctor told me I have to stop smoking. So I’m not smoking right now. I said,
0:46:27 you’re going to go back to smoking because your identity is a smoker. You’re saying you’re a smoker.
0:46:32 You’re going to go back. You have to change your identity. You have to say, I’m a non-smoker.
0:46:37 I’m a non-smoker. Cause then if you just identify yourself as that, you’re going to then conform
0:46:42 to your identity and you’re going to, what does a non-smoker do? They hate smoke. It makes them sick.
0:46:47 Stay away from cigarettes. All right. I’ll try that. I don’t know if it worked cause I didn’t follow up,
0:46:52 but right away I thought, Hey, I should apply that to myself. What, what the, it’s a good thing to go
0:46:56 checklist yourself every few years. Where are some places that I’m not doing that,
0:47:01 that I can change the label. So you know what I did? And you got to go 180. If you go by degrees,
0:47:06 you’re going to get anywhere. 20%, 30% bullshit. 180. Of course I hate working out. What do I say to
0:47:12 myself all the time? I hate sports. I hate working out. I hate exercise. I love food.
0:47:21 I have to change my identity. You know what I said? I’m an athlete. I’m an athlete. I’m an athlete.
0:47:27 By the next day, everything changed. What does an athlete do? Loves to work out. Makes time to work
0:47:31 out. There is no time, but you make time when you love something. You eat right because you’re an
0:47:38 athlete. As soon as your identity changes, your label, you conform to that. So that’s the power of
0:47:44 identity and the words we choose to describe ourselves. I catch people all the time describing
0:47:49 themselves and I go, you got to change that. You’re already out of the gate. You’re talking about yourself
0:47:53 in a way that’s not going to help you. Besides the aspiring, which you mentioned,
0:48:01 where people are handicapping themselves by labeling, using that term within say filmmaking,
0:48:08 are there other ways that you see people handicap themselves just in terms of how they view themselves
0:48:15 or their situation or what they have or don’t have? Are there any other common patterns that come up?
0:48:21 Common ones. I don’t know. Anything that takes you out of the game early by a belief,
0:48:26 you have. I don’t have access. Everyone has access now. You have a phone. You can make actually a story
0:48:31 on a phone or you can write. I just say, whenever I hear anyone use some kind of negative
0:48:36 connotation to something like, “Well, I want to make something, but I just don’t have the time.” It’s
0:48:40 like, there’s no time. If you’re waiting for time to have, it’s not going to happen. All the time is
0:48:47 gone. There’s no time. But we can make time. We can make time for anything that we put our mind to.
0:48:53 So don’t give me that shit. That’s like taking a hatchet and chopping off your left leg before the race.
0:48:59 You literally did this to yourself. You just hobbled yourself for no reason with these beliefs. And it’s
0:49:05 all you. You’re your own worst enemy. You’re like the one in the audience in your way. The biggest
0:49:09 obstacle in your life is you. Always. I asked this question outside because I was curious what your
0:49:14 answer was. But one of the questions that came up was, “So, Robert, you’re real positive. Do you have
0:49:15 any human doubts?”
0:49:17 I wanted to come back to that. Yeah. And your answer was no.
0:49:20 Yeah. We’ll come back to that. I just didn’t want to forget. It seemed like I could work it in here.
0:49:25 Yeah. Yeah. No. Don’t get after it. I wanted to, because I’m sure a lot of people are like, “What? No doubts?”
0:49:26 Yeah.
0:49:29 Okay. So walk us through that.
0:49:34 Yeah. So they said, “Robert, you’re real positive. Do you have any human doubts?”
0:49:38 And I said, just to give me a chance to think, because I had never heard it that way, human doubts.
0:49:44 But I said, “What do you all think?” And then I see people going like, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.”
0:49:48 Because that’s the real answer you would probably give. But I like to do counterintuitive for
0:49:55 everything. So I went, “No.” Why? Because that’s a manifestation, isn’t it? And I have no human
0:50:02 doubts. Because I know the process, too. You can’t wait to be ready. They say knowing is half the battle.
0:50:06 What’s the other half? Not knowing. I think that’s more important, because that’s where the magic is.
0:50:09 You don’t know what the other half is. Not knowing is half the battle.
0:50:14 Yeah. Not knowing is the major part of the battle. I got there to the set. I didn’t know I was
0:50:18 going to do any of it. But as soon as I saw how limited the options were,
0:50:23 suddenly it became very clear. There was only one way to do it. And if you have that confidence going
0:50:29 into each day, you shouldn’t have any doubt. You shouldn’t have any fear. A failure, my biggest
0:50:34 successes came from my failure. So why would I fear that? What doubts? I couldn’t think of any. Can you
0:50:38 think of a doubt I should have? Like, give me an example of one doubt you think, or even you,
0:50:44 what doubts would you have? I think I need to basically take the last four minutes and just
0:50:47 listen to it every morning. I just need to replay that every morning. I think it’s a good reminder.
0:50:50 Okay. But what doubts do you have? Well, I’ll tell you, I mean, and this is,
0:50:55 you know, hopefully my parents aren’t listening to this, but like, I grew up in a, in a household
0:51:02 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
0:51:07 never going to have Y because we can’t ever have Z because.
0:51:10 Did you already prove that wrong though? Yeah, no, exactly.
0:51:13 That’s all right. Now you go off your own history now instead of that history.
0:51:16 No, totally. So there’s, there’s software to overwrite.
0:51:19 Yeah. And those are formative years. So yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s hard.
0:51:22 I can’t think of any excuses that you should have.
0:51:27 What doubts would you think you would have just so I can hear? Cause then I go, okay,
0:51:31 I agree with that. I just hadn’t thought of any, the spot, it was so on the spot. I was wondering
0:51:35 what you would answer on the spotlight. You know what I appreciate about the question is how
0:51:40 effective it is at making you stumble because of the human doubts.
0:51:45 Yeah. Let’s drop the human doubts. Let’s just drop the human doubts.
0:51:49 Let’s just drop human. No, I know. I just love that. I’m like, wow, that’s a masterful judo move.
0:51:54 Have you dropped that? Doubts. What doubts do you have? They wanted to humanize you because you sound
0:51:57 like Superman when you talk, you know, a lot of times when we give these talks, everyone thinks you’re
0:52:00 Superman, but we know each other. We know that we all have
0:52:05 weaknesses and this and that, but we don’t want that. And we don’t want to manifest that.
0:52:10 So we don’t dwell. Yeah, totally. I would say that my inclination would be if I were on stage in your
0:52:15 place, I probably would have said yes. But then if we dug a little deeper into what that means to me,
0:52:18 I think it would differ from probably how a lot of people would use it. Right.
0:52:23 So I would have doubts in the sense that I don’t know how something is going to turn out,
0:52:29 but that doesn’t, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t get started. And that doesn’t mean that I
0:52:35 stop experimenting because yeah, my whole thing is like, look, for instance, like I’m launching this
0:52:40 game. People are like, what a game? Like that doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t connect to the
0:52:44 other things that you’re doing. I’m like, exactly. Because I want to see what’s behind door number
0:52:49 three. And I’m not going to know unless I do this thing that’s off menu. So what, like, what are you
0:52:54 going to do with it? What’s next? I have no idea because anything I could plan now is not going to be
0:53:01 as interesting as a lot that is going to surface. If I do well with whatever the next step is in front of
0:53:08 me, that’s it. That’s all I need to figure out. And a lot of the time you’re, as you said, you’re going
0:53:14 to get there and circumstances will have changed. The thing that was supposed to get shipped from
0:53:21 the warehouse isn’t there. And you’re like, okay. And actually, you know, side story,
0:53:25 I’ll keep it super short. And then I want to actually ask you about a name that came to mind
0:53:30 when you said the creative life, because then I thought the creative act and I thought Rick Rubin,
0:53:36 and I know you’ve met Rick Rubin. So I want to ask that. But when I had my very first presentation
0:53:43 at South by Southwest 2007, it was the launch of the four hour work week. And I had put together the
0:53:50 most incredible presentation of my life. I had rehearsed at a friend’s garage to his chihuahuas.
0:53:54 That was the only test audience I had. And if they got bored and walked away, I had to change my,
0:54:00 my presentation. That was the only fine tuning, but I was so proud of this huge deck that I put
0:54:04 together. PowerPoint. I get to the venue, my computer crashes.
0:54:10 And it’s like, well, here we are now. Now what roll up the sleeves now.
0:54:13 And it ended up being so much better than if I had used the slides,
0:54:17 it ended up being so much better because I’d rehearsed enough that I knew the material. I
0:54:21 didn’t need the visual references. That was a self doubt that I had that I wouldn’t be able
0:54:25 to give it without the slides. And then the slides went away and it was better than I could have.
0:54:29 So you might have it. And so you can have a doubt, but you’re not going to live and breathe by that.
0:54:32 You’re going to push past it really quickly because you should have fear. You should have
0:54:37 some fear going into something. Yeah. I call it fear forward. Fear forward. Yeah.
0:54:42 Fear forward. Yeah. Like have the fear, but don’t, don’t let it cripple you. Just go forward,
0:54:45 knowing you’re doing something that’s outside of your comfort zone and you’re going to reap
0:54:50 great benefits. Yeah. You might slip on the first two rocks. It might be four rooms.
0:54:53 But if you don’t look at it with a negative point of view, you turn it into a spine.
0:54:56 I think that’s an RR merch t-shirt opportunity. Yeah, that’s an RR merch t-shirt opportunity.
0:55:00 I told somebody that years ago, they went, fear forward. I like this. I guess that’s kind of catchy.
0:55:04 But I tell you, I got to tell my kids this after we did this project together. I said,
0:55:10 now you really know how it works. Because my son Racer said he was helping me with a film,
0:55:15 right? Yeah. By the end of the two weeks, they interviewed him about it. He’s waxing
0:55:20 philosophical about the creative process like he’s been doing it for a decade. Yeah. He said,
0:55:28 I never knew how my dad did El Mariachi. I mean, every day was, everything was just falling apart,
0:55:32 but we’d figure it out. Every day was figured out. But I never knew how he did that movie for no money.
0:55:36 But now I do because we just did it. Yeah. He didn’t know either. He just started. Most people
0:55:42 never start. He figured it out day by day. And now he knew it in his blood because he had just done
0:55:47 it. So I got them together and said, this was the greatest project we could have done together when you
0:55:52 work with your kids. Because they get to be in the boat with you figuring stuff out. They see you
0:55:56 trying to figure it out. And they’re figuring, they’re part of the solution. We’re going to get
0:56:04 into this. I’m going to talk about nepotism. Why anyone who says anything negative about nepotism,
0:56:07 you just get slapped in the face and kicked in the balls by their kids. It’ll blow your mind.
0:56:10 All right. We’re going to come back. We’ll get back to it. But this is the main thing. This is the main
0:56:17 thing about this is that I told them, if I ever get hit by a bus, you all know what to do now because
0:56:22 we just did it. It’s all life lessons. Yeah. You get together, you make your plan,
0:56:27 which is like your script. You make it as bulletproof as possible. So then you can go
0:56:33 do your film shoot. So you can go take action. Watch it all fucking fall apart. It’s like your
0:56:39 projector thing. And then that’s when you roll up your sleeves and go, now let’s take this chicken
0:56:45 shit and make chicken salad. And it always comes out better. It always comes out better than your
0:56:51 original plan. Every time. Wash, rinse, repeat. That’s life. You just learned the most valuable lesson
0:56:55 of life on this little microcosm of what life is, which is a movie. Because remember,
0:57:00 life and art should be the same. You’re writing a story and you’re writing your own story while
0:57:03 you’re doing it. The story of who you are and who you’re going to become and what you’re going to
0:57:08 achieve. As you’re writing a fake story, that’s why they go together. That’s why people identify with
0:57:14 stories. You’re literally, we’re writing our own story. So do you have doubts? Yeah, but I’m going to
0:57:18 write past it. I’m going to write my story to where I’m not the guy that has doubts. So that’s the power of
0:57:24 creativity and labeling. And that’s a label. Am I going to say I’m a guy who has doubts? No,
0:57:29 because then guess what? Now I have doubts. Yeah. And if there is a doubt I can identify,
0:57:34 I’m sure, like you just did, figure out a way past it right away. So that’s why I would just say blanket.
0:57:38 I don’t have any doubts because I don’t want to be the guy that has doubts. And I’m going to figure
0:57:41 out, you know, it’s kind of like you have to make your business card first that says a guy with no
0:57:47 doubts. I’ll add that to it. I have no doubts. I remember Kevin Smith, filmmaker, clerks and all that.
0:57:53 He sent me a script called Dogma. He said, I wrote this script. It’s got special effects. It’s
0:57:57 all out of my wheelhouse. I said, but you wrote it. And he goes, yeah, but it’s definitely a Robert
0:58:02 Rodriguez movie. You direct it. I go, why didn’t you want to direct it? It’s too big for me. Well,
0:58:07 now you have to make it. You fear forward. You’re doing something that pulls you out of your wheelhouse.
0:58:11 And you’re going to, he was so thankful that I told him that and that he did it, gave him the
0:58:15 permission to go do it. And it transformed his career, you know, because now he wasn’t doing
0:58:21 the comfort zone. He was now going even way, reaching way beyond. So fear forward, get out of
0:58:26 the comfort zone. That means you’re on the right track. If you don’t have fear on something you’re
0:58:30 going to do that day, probably fucking wasting your time. You’re doing something that you’re just
0:58:35 spinning your wheels. So you want to put yourself out there. That’s not the same as having doubt.
0:58:40 I don’t think, I think it’s just, it’s a, it’s a good litmus test. I have a little bit of doubt
0:58:43 that this is my daughter’s going to be able to inform tomorrow because it’s the first time
0:58:47 in front of a crowd. She may get nervous. I don’t know. She’s never seen a crowd.
0:58:51 She might step out and see the crowd and freeze. Who knows? But I don’t want to put that out there
0:58:54 because I don’t want to manifest that. I want to manifest and we’re going to have cameras filming.
0:59:00 We’re going to make this a big moment. And she rose to the occasion because she looked like a seasoned
0:59:07 vet. So Rick Rubin, his very first podcast, as far as I’m aware, was on this podcast,
0:59:14 the Tim Ferriss show ages ago. It was in his sauna. He actually, he actually didn’t think I was going to
0:59:19 say yes because he had a barrel sauna at what was Shangri-La in Malibu and ended up burning down.
0:59:25 Sadly, this is quite a few years ago now, but he said, okay, okay, we’ll do the podcast. At that time,
0:59:30 he basically did next to no media. And he said, we’ll do the podcast, but it has to be in the
0:59:34 sauna and we’re going to do the sauna and then cold plunge and sauna. And I was like, all right,
0:59:41 just sweating it out. So we did it in the sauna. Now, the one thing we neglected to consider was not
0:59:45 the temperature of the recorder because I could put that on the floor and it was fine. It was the mic.
0:59:51 So we had to wrap those in towels as we did the interview, but you got to meet Rick
0:59:57 handful of years ago. What was that like? I don’t want to even speculate. I mean,
1:00:02 I have my own guesses as to like how you guys might measure interact, but what was that like?
1:00:06 Oh, it was wonderful. He showed up at my house. Okay.
1:00:12 You know, he’s in town producing a band. I heard he wanted to meet me. So I said, yeah,
1:00:16 you can just come to the house. So he shows up at my house. So I figured, oh, he’s probably heard
1:00:21 some of my podcast stuff very similar to, you know, his creativity. We all approach it differently. We
1:00:27 all have our own theories. Like, so he shows up and he goes, I don’t know who you are or what you do
1:00:30 or anything about you, but I had a feeling I was supposed to come meet you. And I went,
1:00:36 so I said, you came to the right place. I’m going to show you my house. You know,
1:00:38 you’ve seen my crazy house. I’m going to talk about my house. I’m talking about how I
1:00:43 drew it first, envisioned it, built it. By the time I finish telling you about my house,
1:00:48 you’ll know who I am. So I go out and I give him the whole tour and he’s like, okay, okay. Yeah.
1:00:51 That was just like my house. It might’ve been the one in Malibu. That’s just like my house in
1:00:56 somewhere. And he goes, we’re the same guy. So we go outside to where my waterfall is.
1:01:00 And my phone, we sit and he puts his feet up and we just start talking. I just start,
1:01:04 he just wants to hear about it. So I start telling him what we’re talking about, all this creativity,
1:01:09 my whole spiel on it. And he’s like, yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re going on and going on and going on,
1:01:16 going on. I’m doing most of the talking. And then as we’re leaving, he said, I want to give you my book.
1:01:21 I’m about to put out a book. This book wasn’t out yet. So he ran into the car, came back out,
1:01:24 and it was just like a galley version of the book. I said, what is this? And he’ll,
1:01:28 actually, it’s pretty much everything we were just talking about is in there.
1:01:32 I was like, really? Okay. I’ll give you my books. I gave my books. The picture I have,
1:01:36 I’ll show you is him with my book in front of my house. And then he left. And then when he left,
1:01:42 I’m reading, I’m like, oh my God, I read the book. It’s so similar, but different to things that I,
1:01:49 because we all come at it from a different area, but his solutions were similar, but different because
1:01:53 it’s from a different world than mine, same questions, same kind of things. It’s that hive
1:01:58 brain. I don’t know when you, and you said this before you said, because you’re a creative, I know
1:02:04 other creatives like this, you have one foot in the magic realm. And it’s like when your foot’s in there,
1:02:08 you pick up the signal from the others. You all kind of get ideas from each other before you even
1:02:12 met. It’s why he knew to show up. And I’ve had people just show up, drawn there, known they’re
1:02:17 supposed to be there, not knowing why. It’s this kind of magical thing that when you get into the
1:02:22 creativity world, you really are tapping into the universe in a way to get your ideas. Because
1:02:25 your brain’s not smart enough. I’m not smart enough to come up with these ideas. They’re out there.
1:02:29 And everyone in every discipline has a different line for that. Like Keith Richards says,
1:02:33 I don’t come up with these riffs. They’re all floating around. I was just the first one to pull
1:02:37 it down and use it. You know, they all have their version of that, that it’s not from them. And that’s
1:02:41 the best way to think because then there’s no ego evolved. And if you have no ego, that it’s just,
1:02:46 you’re a conduit for this creative spirit to come through you. Well, then you can do anything. I can be
1:02:50 a good pipe. I just get my ego out of the way and let it come through. Because you know,
1:02:54 when you’re in a flow, you know, you start, I don’t want to write this book. And then you start writing,
1:02:58 the first few lines come out, then it starts going and you can’t even believe what’s coming out.
1:03:03 It’s because creative spirit, and my theory is, doesn’t have hands. It’s waiting for you to get
1:03:10 off your ass and pick up the pen and then it can help take over. And so always take action. That’s why
1:03:16 I say always take action. Don’t wait to be inspired. Action first, inspiration second. Because if you wait
1:03:21 to be inspired, like to make your short film, good luck. They ain’t ever coming. But if you just start
1:03:27 making the film, ideas you never in a million years would have come up with come into your head,
1:03:32 because it’s not you. It’s coming through you now. It’s like, finally, you’re going to go make that
1:03:37 film we’ve been wanting to make. Creative spirit must be very disappointed in people who don’t take action,
1:03:43 who sit there. And I tell you where I figured this out. When I was a cartoonist at 19, I had a daily
1:03:48 cartoon strip. It’d take me hours to draw it. I would have to draw a little bit, try to figure
1:03:53 out a joke. And I’d have a deadline every day. I wouldn’t get paid. I needed the money. I already
1:03:58 had two jobs. So one day I thought, I’ve got to figure out a better, easier way. I wonder if I could
1:04:05 just come up with a method where I go home, sit, and just try and picture it. Just picture it and then
1:04:10 go draw it. And I’d sit there for hours and be like, deadline’s over. Oh, shit, I got to go do this.
1:04:14 I’d have to pick up the pen and draw. And as soon as I started drawing, I would draw one drawing,
1:04:18 three others. And then I was kind of, oh, this kind of drawing kind of goes with that.
1:04:24 I put that there, and then that would be formulated. That’s the process. It’s not going to come to you
1:04:28 if you’re just sitting on your ass waiting for it to make magic. You have to physically pick up the pen,
1:04:35 or pick up the camera, or pick up the guitar. And then it’s like, thank God, because it doesn’t have
1:04:40 hands. Now I can come to you. Now let me take over. And that’s the whole magic of creativity. So you
1:04:45 shouldn’t have any doubts if you could do it. As soon as you say, wow, I don’t know how I did that.
1:04:49 I wonder if I can do it again. You just shut the pipe because your ego got in the way. You thought
1:04:55 it was you. It’s not you. It’s coming through you. So just be a clear pipe. I know that works because
1:05:01 I taught that to my kids in a class when they were younger. And right away, they each wrote a book.
1:05:07 It was unbelievable because they didn’t have anything to unlearn. They didn’t have any experience yet,
1:05:13 where we all have more doubts now because we’re older. It’s like that thing where you teach a
1:05:19 class full of grade school kids. Who can write a novel? Who can be the president? Who can do an opera?
1:05:22 Who can dance belly? They all put their hands up because they don’t know better. You keep asking them as
1:05:28 the years go on. Hands start going down. Even with no life experience, they just all stop believing
1:05:34 they’re that person without any evidence that they’re not. I always wanted to be that kid who had
1:05:39 his hands up. No matter what. Even if it was something I didn’t know how to do. Put your hand up because
1:05:44 you’re figuring it out as you go. Don’t have a doubt. Just go do it. Just go do it. Seems to be working
1:05:48 for you. It’s been working for you. Do you ever see that movie “Being There” with Peter Sellers?
1:05:55 No. He’s so naive. Yeah. He’s just a gardener. Yeah. But he gets hit by a car and he ends up in
1:06:00 Washington and everyone thinks he’s so smart because he’s just talking about the garden and they all read
1:06:09 into him. And by the end, he walks across the lake. Oh. Because he doesn’t know you can’t.
1:06:14 He doesn’t know you can’t do it. It’s the most beautiful movie you can see. Peter Sellers,
1:06:18 I think, got an Oscar for it or nomination, at least. Amazing. And it’s amazing. And you’re just like,
1:06:23 oh my God, they all think he’s this prophet. And everyone’s quoting him and doing their own version
1:06:28 of what he’s saying. But he’s just saying, when the roots are strong, the garden will flourish.
1:06:35 And everybody’s like, whoa. But that naive quality. You want to keep that naive quality.
1:06:39 That’s what got me to do Mariachi. I didn’t know it couldn’t be done. It was only till later when
1:06:43 people said, how’d you make that movie for $7,000? You know, that’s impossible. I was like, really?
1:06:48 You’re just like, it didn’t seem that hard. But if you’re telling me, I guess I just followed my nose
1:06:52 and I ended up at the top of Mount Everest somehow. I wasn’t trying to do that. But to some
1:06:58 people, it was impossible. But to me, it was just solutions I came up with to make up for what I
1:07:03 didn’t have. Yeah. What does your journaling look like these days? Or what insights have you had?
1:07:08 I hope I can inspire everybody to journal. Because it’s really weird. I go do a talk and I say,
1:07:14 how many people keep a diary or journal? It could be like a group of 400 people. I’ll see two hands.
1:07:19 Three hands. I’m like, oh my God, if I can leave you with any impression.
1:07:28 My big thing now, I tell people, this is my theory, living is reliving. Because you go to a concert and
1:07:34 people have their video cameras up and everybody says, put it away, live in the moment. Counterintuitive,
1:07:42 I say, the moment fleets. You’re not going to even remember it tomorrow. Do you even remember who was
1:07:48 standing next to you? Don’t worry, yesterday. From day to day, it just goes by. Because we see life
1:07:55 at 96 frames per second, 20K resolution, surround sound. Right now I’m looking at you, but I can see
1:07:59 there’s a glass here. I can see in the peripheral, there’s someone over here operating this thing.
1:08:07 A year from now, five, and then 10, all our three-pound meat computer can process.
1:08:11 They might have a file photo of you in a t-shirt and me in a t-shirt, because we kind of remember
1:08:16 each other that way. But the metadata will be some kind of narrative that we spoke and had a good time.
1:08:19 Yep. That’s it. That’s all you’re going to have. And when you journal,
1:08:26 I’m shocked. I was trying to figure out when I bought certain guitars, I couldn’t remember. I knew some
1:08:30 were gifted, but I couldn’t remember. I just did a word search in my journals, because I have a year-by-year
1:08:35 journal. Guitar, guitar, guitar. So I’d read, and it shocked me that, oh, wow, I thought I bought
1:08:39 this one. It was a gift from this person. How can I not remember that? This is a big guitar. This is
1:08:44 like a $10,000 guitar. How would I not remember that? And I would read a little bit of the diary
1:08:50 around it. I was floored. Have you go back 10 years, even 15 years? It’s like you’re reading
1:08:54 someone else’s journal. You’re reading someone else’s journal. And it’s like, I guess I just have
1:09:01 to take it for what it’s there. Well, my mom actually gave me a box of papers that was sitting
1:09:06 in one of the rooms in my childhood home. She said, “What do you want to do with this?” And I opened it up,
1:09:15 and in that box were printed out emails that I had sent my mom when I was 15 from Japan
1:09:20 to tell her what I was up to. And I did not remember. That was one of the most formative
1:09:27 experiences of my life. I have a lot of memories from that period. I did not remember 99% of what
1:09:31 I put in those emails. It’s got like a dehydrated version that you have to put water on to reconstruct,
1:09:36 but even then it mostly just fades away. You don’t even recognize it. So it’s so important to keep to
1:09:40 your history. But what’s your favorite jokes and your favorite things about life that you share with your
1:09:48 brothers, your family? It’s all past stuff. So living is reliving. My kids now love watching
1:09:52 the movies of them growing. I shot so much video and kept journals of all their childhood. They all
1:09:56 journal now, but they have their whole childhood because I gave them the journals of their childhood.
1:09:59 They got their whole life journaled. But I’ve been showing them home movies recently because I’ve
1:10:02 been digitizing all the old tapes. And I thought, “They’re not going to dig this. Some of this
1:10:09 shit looks like VHS.” It’s so cruddy compared to today’s HD stuff. I was showing them footage of
1:10:16 them younger. And I have tons of it. I thought later in life I could rewatch and relive their wonderful
1:10:21 childhood, right? Forget it. I don’t remember even filming this stuff. It’s like “New Adventures of.”
1:10:27 We’re watching it not knowing what’s going to happen next. And they’re watching it. I saw my son leaning
1:10:31 into the screen to see what was around the corner. I said, “You just leaned into the screen.” They said,
1:10:37 “Oh, wow. I left the living room. This is like virtual reality to me.” And I was like, “Wow, that’s
1:10:45 interesting.” Then I realized why. Compared to our memory, that’s virtual reality. Even the crappiest VHS
1:10:51 tape. You hear the sounds. You see the place. You start reformulating. They cannot stop watching it.
1:10:57 Every time they come over, we watch new fun tape. And we find classic new things that become
1:11:04 benchmarks of humor and jokes that become iconic. Reliving is living. Like my mom turned 75.
1:11:08 And I said, “We gotta do something for your 75th birthday.” And she said, “No, no, no, no. I don’t
1:11:13 want anything done.” Why not? Because nothing can top my 65th birthday. 65th? What happened then?
1:11:18 “Oh, you gave me a car. And you flew in everybody from out of town.” I was like, “Really? I don’t remember
1:11:23 that. It was only 10 years before.” I must have tape. I looked it up, found the tape, put it in. Oh my
1:11:27 God, I didn’t remember anything. So I recut the tape, took it to her. And we had a big party and I
1:11:34 showed the tape. She was crying more. Now she knows when she gets the key, what it means. She’s like,
1:11:38 “Oh my God.” I was like, “I don’t have to do anything anymore. We’ll just play the old tapes.”
1:11:45 It was more appreciated. Living is reliving because that’s when it becomes iconic. And in the moment,
1:11:50 this is all just flying by and we don’t know what’s important. It’s only by journaling that you go,
1:11:54 this person’s no longer with us. What he said changed my life. And I didn’t know. And I forgot
1:12:00 that he told me this at this time. If I had not journaled that. So if your life is worth anything,
1:12:05 write it down. Because then you’ll be surprised how much of it is more valuable than you think.
1:12:07 And you’re only going to know that by journaling.
1:12:10 What’s your process? Is it like end of day? Word document?
1:12:17 It’s like 12:12 a.m. an alarm goes off. It says journal. Because I figure by 12 at night,
1:12:25 I will finish with most bullshit that I can actually sit and do it. I’ve actually got my partner writing
1:12:30 journal now. Never kept a journal before. But because of the stuff I just said,
1:12:34 you’re starting to see the value in it. And they send me their journal too. That’s always the best.
1:12:38 If you’re a partner or else will journal. Because seeing someone else’s perspective on a big event,
1:12:41 you have to journal every day if you don’t want. But at least the big events. Valentine’s,
1:12:46 Christmas, birthday, special trip, journal. I’m going to take you on a trip with journal for me
1:12:50 and give me that as a gift. And it’s wonderful. Is it bullets, points? Is it a page?
1:12:55 Tell you what, I used to sometimes just do bullets, just like I try to write more now. Because I’ve
1:13:00 gone back. I try to write more, just more detail about what happened. Just because it’s going to be
1:13:06 gone. Now I know it goes away. It’s not going to trigger your memory. In the earlier days, if I only had
1:13:11 time to write some bullet point type stuff, I would just do that because I thought my memory,
1:13:19 no, gone, gone. It’s someone else’s journal. Just know that. Even like seven years ago,
1:13:24 before my son started writing music for me, he had told me, I found a diary and he said,
1:13:31 Rebel told me his one year, five year, and 10 year plan. It was great. And I was like, what did he
1:13:34 write? What did he tell me? I don’t remember. And I asked him, did you have it somewhere? He goes,
1:13:37 oh yeah, I have it on my phone. Oh shit, it’s not on my phone. It’s in my diary. Oh,
1:13:42 please find it and send it because now I want to know. Because your whole life changed after that.
1:13:48 I really want to know now with more interest than when you first told me. Because now we know that
1:13:55 that whatever you said is not the path that ended up. And so, yeah, journaling is so powerful and so
1:14:02 needed. Because you think you’re going to remember, it’s just a meat computer. It’s not going to remember it at
1:14:06 all. And now I just find myself having to leave myself breadcrumbs all day because my memory is
1:14:13 fading anyway, just to know what I’m doing, much less what I already did. But it does become iconic
1:14:17 and you find some really fun stuff. And if we find a video, oh my God, this is the best thing. We find
1:14:24 a video of us playing, having a great time at 2003. And the weird thing you’ll find if you videotape your
1:14:33 kids and journal, you find these weird 20 year full circle moments, you know, full circle moments. Like
1:14:38 we just started working with a studio, their favorite animation studio in Japan. They love
1:14:43 Japan. They love Japan. They’re all about Japan. Japanese knife making. They build houses with no
1:14:44 nails. My kids.
1:14:45 Oh yeah. The joiner is amazing.
1:14:48 I found the videotape first time I told them about Japan.
1:14:53 Me telling them, and I had, I taped it because I wanted to see their reaction because it was like,
1:14:58 you’re going to love this place. And you see their eyes light up and they watch it now and go,
1:15:04 that was the moment of inception. That was the moment we never forgot. And we built upon and to
1:15:08 see that is amazing. But then you go back to the journal because there’s stuff in the journal that’s
1:15:14 not on video and vice versa. And I go, wow, you know what we were doing, what I was doing while we were
1:15:19 playing all those games. I was wheeling and dealing big deals in LA for once upon a time, Mexico and
1:15:23 Cincinnati or, you know, and they see the context of what was happening in between those moments.
1:15:29 And you get this clear picture of, Oh my God, you can totally be all in as a dad and all in
1:15:34 as a businessman. And that teaches them about life. Like, wow, you can have it all. You really can.
1:15:38 You know, it just, it just helps in so many ways to document your life.
1:15:41 Do you have any other parenting hacks?
1:15:45 The biggest life hacks is just working with your kids. Like I said, I stumbled upon it,
1:15:51 but then when I saw a racer being so excited about what he learned about the creative process,
1:15:56 and then I realized everything I was teaching them was life lessons. I went from fearing that
1:16:02 they were going to resent me to realizing I’m going to make all of them work on a film with me.
1:16:05 That’s just going to be, this is what you got to do.
1:16:05 Part of the deal.
1:16:09 Part of the deal. Not so that you can become a filmmaker because you’re going to learn more
1:16:14 about life. These are life lessons and it’s the best way to do it. It’s project-based.
1:16:19 It’s challenging. So my son, when we did We Can Be Heroes, I thought, okay,
1:16:23 he’s done a few scores for me. Because he’d been playing piano since he was four. They all played
1:16:27 piano. And it was just to connect right to the left side of the brain. That’s all we gave them that
1:16:31 for. But he was our best piano player. And at the end, he did his last recital after high school was
1:16:36 finished. And he was already doing knives, Japanese knives making. And he won Forged in Fire. Oh,
1:16:41 my God. Did I tell you he won Forged in Fire? My son got on, when he was 18, got on Forged in Fire.
1:16:46 As a TV show. And won. That TV show. Out doing all these other blacksmiths. Because he’d been
1:16:52 teaching himself Japanese knife making. And I asked him, how did you win? You won $10,000. How did you,
1:16:56 what was your mindset? You were using tools you’d never even used before. They were just throwing
1:17:02 stuff at you and problem solving, creative problem solving. And he gives me this samurai answer that I,
1:17:06 that I love. He said, I convinced myself that I had already won. Somehow I won.
1:17:11 And so when I’d come up against the challenge, instead of thinking what I had to do to get past
1:17:15 the challenge, I just needed to remember what I did to get there. I was just like,
1:17:16 whoa!
1:17:19 Some musashi samurai stuff.
1:17:20 Wow! I was like, wow!
1:17:25 But again, you’ll come up with innovations when you’re thrown into the fire.
1:17:31 And so he was doing so good with the music, he composed a couple of scores for me,
1:17:35 but they were just all synth-based for Red 11, for that short film that was a VR film.
1:17:40 We can be heroes, though. That’s my bag. I do orchestral stuff. We’ll do the score for that
1:17:44 together. That way I can teach him orchestral scoring, because that’ll be the next stage.
1:17:49 He writes the first piece, not even a picture. He saw what picture I was editing. He went and wrote
1:17:54 it to me. It’s like John Williams. It was huge. It was massive. And I was like, okay, yeah,
1:17:57 sure. Let me check it out. I’ll try it to picture. I didn’t want him to see me try it to picture.
1:18:03 I put it to picture. It matched. I doubled it, tripled it. It fit this whole five-minute sequence.
1:18:08 I called him up 10 minutes later. Come back up here and watch. It hits everything perfectly. If
1:18:13 you can do more of this there, more of that there. He was stunned. I said, good news and bad news.
1:18:21 Good news is, it’s awesome. Bad news is, I can’t help you at all. I don’t know how you did this.
1:18:25 Where did you learn music theory? They don’t teach you that in piano, because I never learned
1:18:28 theory, and I was always proud of that. That’s the 10% I thought you didn’t need to know.
1:18:32 No, I learned different. Now he can manipulate music because he knows theory. He goes, oh, I learned it
1:18:36 on YouTube. I was like, well, I’ll tell you what. You’re going to have to write the whole score,
1:18:41 but I’ll help you. I’ll be your assistant. I’ll edit it. I’ll show you how you can repeat themes.
1:18:47 And he sat there, and he did it, and I could just see he was just under the gauntlet. I said, dude,
1:18:50 this is the only way to learn. Throw you in the deep end. If you get a lung full of water,
1:18:56 we’ll fish you out. And his eyes were like this big. But years later, he came back to me and said,
1:19:01 I’m so thankful you did that. My whole life changed because I didn’t know I could do it,
1:19:06 but I had no choice. He knew I could not help him. I wasn’t doing it as some kind of weird
1:19:13 teaching exercise. I said, let me see your charts. The thing you have going on in the baseline only,
1:19:17 I would do a whole score with that. How’d you come up with all this? I can’t help you.
1:19:23 And I remember the conductor said, we recorded in Vienna, stopped midway.
1:19:24 I think you sent me a video.
1:19:25 Of him conducting.
1:19:26 Yes.
1:19:30 I said, go learn on YouTube real quick how to conduct. I want you to conduct one of them
1:19:35 because I want video of you with a James Bond orchestra conducting your own piece because I
1:19:39 never got to do that. And it’s, you’re so proud when your kids can take on the challenge and you
1:19:44 see it just transforms their life. But he, the Vienna conductor stopped the score and said,
1:19:49 this is a magnificent score. I can’t believe you’re 20. He was 20 at the time. But again,
1:19:55 you throw your kids in the deep end. And I tell this to all the parents I can because it’s counterintuitive.
1:20:00 A lot of parents would say, I don’t want to push, but I tell you, if you have the opportunity to work
1:20:06 with your kids, do it because it enriches your life because you are mentoring them.
1:20:11 They’re mentoring you because they’re, they’re figuring out shit like that that you never would
1:20:16 have thought of. You’re doing a project based thing together. That’s impossible that you’re
1:20:20 all going to overcome together. You know, how many parents do you know, like try to give their kids
1:20:24 advice on, on their job and the kids just like that. You don’t, you don’t know. You’re not in my shoes.
1:20:28 You’re in their shoes. You’re all trying to figure it out together. So you’re actually useful. You’re
1:20:33 not just some Geppetto who’s worried about their kid all the time. I always say, don’t just parent,
1:20:39 partner. Because after a certain age, as soon as they’re teenagers, they replace you with their peers
1:20:43 because you become useless to them. If you want a relationship last long time, partner. Don’t parent
1:20:48 anymore. They don’t need a parent anymore. They need a partner. They need a mentor. They need an OB-1.
1:20:51 Because that’s what they look for in their life. Mentors, be their mentor.
1:20:56 Their confidence grows when they’re mentoring you back and they’re seeing their confidence soar.
1:21:01 And it’s family time. You’re checking all the boxes. I don’t even do anything anymore. I don’t
1:21:07 take any job, any assignment, unless it’s going to involve my children. Because life is so good that
1:21:11 way. You’re checking all the boxes. You’re preparing them for life. You’re learning from them. They’re
1:21:16 learning from you. And it’s family time. I was telling this to Stallone. I was having dinner with Stallone
1:21:21 and his wife. It was pre-COVID, right after COVID, something. I had just done We Can Be Heroes,
1:21:27 this movie, the biggest movie on Netflix. And I was telling my son to score. I wrote it with my kids
1:21:35 and all this. And Jennifer was like, her eyes were just wide. Like, whoa, she hit Stallone. She goes,
1:21:37 you don’t work with your daughters. You don’t work with your daughters.
1:21:43 I was like, well, man, I wouldn’t get anybody in trouble here, right? You know,
1:21:49 maybe I should reel it back a little bit. But sure enough, next year, his daughters have podcasts.
1:21:53 He would show up every once in a while to help, you know, boost some ratings and stuff. Now they have
1:21:59 a TV show. It’s family Stallone. For all of them together, working together, they live that dream.
1:22:04 And they’re just so happy. So I tell people, because they, people can’t unhear it when they
1:22:10 hear it. They just need to know someone did it and that it worked to know, oh, I have a way to try
1:22:14 that with my kids. Because I didn’t know my kids would want it to work with me. You know what happened
1:22:19 was my kid’s teacher told me, you know, your son, Racer, when he was like 15, he loves nights. We’re
1:22:23 studying nights and we’re talking about squires. And I asked, well, who would you want to apprentice
1:22:29 under? And he said, my dad. I was like, really? He’s never told me that. Did he say that?
1:22:32 He goes, yeah, he said it to your dad. I was like, wow.
1:22:33 How did that feel here?
1:22:39 It was wild. It made you, see, kids have egos too. They don’t want to just tell you that. They
1:22:43 might tell someone else, but they’re not going to tell you. So don’t assume, don’t assume they
1:22:48 don’t want to be part of your life or be part of your work. Since I’ve been working with my kids since
1:22:54 they were very young, I didn’t know it would keep going for 20 years, you know? And now it’s just
1:23:00 become the thing that we do. And they endlessly inspire me because they just have that confidence
1:23:06 built in, but we’re building a go-kart together. So I tell, I know some parents would dismiss it as
1:23:12 an opportunity like that and call it entitlement, but wow, you’re so wrong. So wrong. Let me set you
1:23:17 straight because this would be, you know, a curse on your life if you don’t at least know this. I would
1:23:22 say, and I’m curious if you agree you’re not, or if you have your own position on it. I would say
1:23:25 that if you have an opportunity to work with your children, if you’re in that position, because I
1:23:32 don’t know, maybe not all jobs adapt to that, but take it. It’s a tremendous gift to everyone involved
1:23:38 and beyond because if you refuse to do so, because you’re afraid other people will call it nepotism,
1:23:43 you are missing out the most important opportunity of your collective lives.
1:23:51 Because look, what happens as parents when we pass away? Don’t we just give everything that we created
1:23:59 to our children? Is that not entitlement? That they had no part in building? There was an opportunity
1:24:04 to build this with them so that when they inherited, they could go, “I made this with my dad.”
1:24:14 Right? So it’s like, “Oh, thanks, dad, for all this shit that I had no part of,
1:24:20 that you went and made without me being involved at all, getting that chance to have that mentorship
1:24:28 go both ways, to build something together, to have that family time together, because you were afraid
1:24:36 someone would call you up for nepotism. Thanks.” I’m having a ball and it’s inspiring everyone who’s a parent
1:24:43 to go partner instead of parent their child and have a relationship that lasts your whole life.
1:24:50 Yeah. I mean, what strikes me about it also, I mean, there’s trust fund kids or trustafarians
1:24:55 have a, have a new term. Well, it’s, it’s not exactly the same, but it gets used similarly. Nepo babies,
1:25:01 right? But the connotation of that word, I don’t think applies to you at all because at least,
1:25:07 and this is not the Merriam-Webster definition, but when I think of nepotism, there’s a sort of unearned
1:25:20 giving implied, right, right? There’s an unearned giving implied. And then there is teaching, which you
1:25:27 know, and then there is another thing I would say a step above that, which is enabling someone
1:25:32 specifically to have the confidence that they can figure it out, that they can learn, right? You
1:25:38 didn’t tell your son to go to YouTube and learn music theory, but you put him in situations or you
1:25:48 hinted at forthcoming situations that would require a lot of tap dancing and figuring things out. And if we
1:25:56 were to create some type of like Maslow’s hierarchy of working with your kids, there are different
1:26:03 things you can impart or give. And I would say the lowest level is giving someone a fish, right? Instead
1:26:10 of teaching them to fish. But then above teaching someone to fish, teaching your kids to fish is saying,
1:26:17 hey, whether it’s piano, fishing, music theory, or something that you are going to come up with on
1:26:22 your own as a solution to a problem or a challenge or a dream that I can’t even think of, I’m going to
1:26:29 put you into enough circumstances that you have the confidence you can fear forward. You have the
1:26:33 confidence that not knowing is half the battle, but you will get there.
1:26:37 You can tell them that stuff all you want, but when they’re doing it with you, they learn so
1:26:41 much better. I mean, that’s why I said, even after the couch with your hands behind you trying to come
1:26:45 up with the comic strip. It’s not going to happen. It’s not going to happen, but you can tell them all
1:26:49 that, but it’s different when they’ve lived it too. And that’s why I did the whole, if I get hit by a bus,
1:26:53 you know what to do because it’s true. Now they know it in their bones. When I, we did a talk in
1:26:58 Colombia with a, with a $7,000 movie that we did together. I mean, the boys, we went, they flew us
1:27:04 down there to go talk and everyone was in Colombia. These guys live in poverty. They were leaning
1:27:09 forward to find out how to make a movie with no money so they could get out of there. And we’re
1:27:14 talking and one woman was asking a question about screenwriting and I was giving my answer. And Racer
1:27:19 said, cause he had written the script of me. Now he wanted to stand up and say, what he’s saying is
1:27:24 really true because he had lived it already. It wasn’t, this is the stuff he’d heard before,
1:27:29 but now it really sank in because he was there. And what’s cool is if you build your family up,
1:27:33 like your team like that, you know what I hear so much now that I hadn’t probably because I’m older
1:27:38 and I’ve been around longer. A lot of people will just assume I’m too busy to do whatever project
1:27:43 I’m doing alone. So they said, yeah, we can’t wait to work with you and your team. Most people have a
1:27:49 team. My team is my kids. And it’s got more jobs. Like a video game company wanted to
1:27:54 be in partnership with me and said, well, let me tell you who my team is. All my kids are gamers.
1:27:57 I got them into games when they were really little. They know this world inside out. One of them is
1:28:03 even a game designer. That’s my team. And they’re in my house. We love this. We want to work with you.
1:28:07 And we’re going to take it to the next level because we’ve done this other project and this
1:28:11 other project. And this was the process we did these done deal. We’re doing it now. Now my kids get to
1:28:17 make a game, a real game, like a big ass game. And you get to do it together because you’ve already
1:28:20 trained them to be, and it used to be a joke when I had so many kids, I had five kids.
1:28:23 I would say, oh, yes, my future cast and crew. I would just say it as a joke. Hey,
1:28:26 it turned out to be true. They’re my cast and crew.
1:28:35 So is there anything to the story of the double R’s besides the fact that you have the double R’s?
1:28:36 Is there more to it?
1:28:41 Yeah. The double R’s was just from a family of 10 kids. My mom’s name is Rebecca and my sister’s name
1:28:47 is Rebecca. We’re the only double R’s, my mom, my sister, me. And I always just loved the alliteration
1:28:52 of that. You know, like the double R’s, it was really powerful. R and R. Rebecca Rodriguez.
1:28:58 Robert Rodriguez. So once you name the first kid with an R name, well, then the second one,
1:29:01 and then the third one, and I gave them regular middle names, so they didn’t have to be,
1:29:08 you know, so like there’s Rocket, Valentin, Rodriguez, Avellan. It can be Valentin Avellan,
1:29:13 or it can be Rocket Rodriguez, or Rayson Rodriguez, or Maximiliano Avellan. If they want to go into
1:29:18 politics and not be pro wrestlers, they can change their name. But I didn’t know they were going to
1:29:22 keep those names past childhood. They thought it was just fun kid names. Yeah. Everybody has five
1:29:27 names. One is Ro, Joaquin, Cecilio, Rodriguez. One has five names. So he can pick his identity.
1:29:30 I wanted him to just use it as a little- Every time he has to fill out a government
1:29:34 form, he’s like, oh, God damn it. I’m not going to use that. But they didn’t want to get rid of their
1:29:38 first names. They love their first names. So I thought, let’s keep, if everyone’s keeping their
1:29:43 first name, let’s own it. Double R is kind of a cool logo. What’s fun was that it just looks cool.
1:29:47 Double R. And it means all of us. And it makes this like a tribe. And it makes this all,
1:29:51 and it gave them a lot of pride. I was surprised how much pride they had in it. And they all started
1:29:55 coming up with ideas. Rick Rubin comes over and he saw them holding a picture up. And he goes,
1:30:01 R-R. I did, double R. That was my artist’s name when he was a, you know, a DJ. He was double R.
1:30:07 I was like, that’s amazing. This is one of my other favorite things that when I’ve told parents,
1:30:11 they go, I want to try that with my kids. It was something I stumbled upon. You know,
1:30:15 I was having some kind of family talk with the kids. We usually have these things we call tribe talks,
1:30:19 where you talk about anything. It’s like, like we’re a tribe. Like we help each other out.
1:30:21 They get so excited about a tribe talk. Let’s have a tribe talk.
1:30:24 And the tribe talk is like asking one another for help.
1:30:29 I just, if I have a new thing I want to talk about that’s going to affect their lives later,
1:30:33 let’s have a tribe talk about this. They’re like so excited because they learn about something that
1:30:37 I want to share with them to prepare them for life. Something that I might’ve just learned that I
1:30:42 wish I could take a time machine and tell myself, you can’t. The closest thing to it is telling your
1:30:46 children. Because I used to think any advice I’d give them, I’m afraid it might probably just go in
1:30:51 one ear and out the other because it’s not real to them yet. They probably have to live through it and
1:30:56 find their own mistakes. No, they would process it and give it back to me. And I would be like,
1:31:01 where’d you get that philosophy? You told me that. I didn’t tell it to you like that. I said,
1:31:04 I might’ve said glass is half empty or half full. Oh yeah, well, we built upon it. Well,
1:31:11 they take what you tell them and build upon it. Right? So this one was, I thought I’m going to be
1:31:16 very honest with them and tell them all the major decisions I made in the life, walk them through.
1:31:21 Cause there’s a funny scene. It came up because of a movie and we did another spike kids. There’s a scene
1:31:25 where the parents are talking about operation fireball with such memories about it. And the
1:31:30 little girl asks, what is that exactly? Oh, we beat up the bad guy. We blew up his lair and all this
1:31:34 stuff. And she’s just like, you could have done it a better way. You could have gone to him.
1:31:38 Nicely. You could have talked to him, seen his aesthetic and it plays it out. Right? So I thought,
1:31:41 I’m going to try that with my kids. I bet if I told them all the decisions I was faced with
1:31:48 that a lot of times are lose, lose, there’s no, there’s no clear way to go. And as you think 10 years
1:31:52 later, you’ll see what the real answer should have been. Nothing. There’s never clarity. Sometimes
1:31:57 I’m curious to see what they would have done with the knowledge more evolved.
1:32:04 So I walk them through. It was fascinating. It was fascinating. At every turn. Okay.
1:32:12 A or B, which way would you go? I’m not going to tell you what I did. They both suck. And do you
1:32:17 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.
1:32:24 They pick every time it was the same until one. They go, it’s a big one. They go, well,
1:32:28 if that’s the circumstances, that’s what the knowledge you have. We go, yeah, that’s all the
1:32:33 knowledge you have. I would have done what you did too. I would have left. I should have done that. I
1:32:37 didn’t. I stayed. Let me tell you what happened because I stayed. I should have done that. I knew
1:32:41 I should have done that. But I went ahead and stayed because that’s the right thing to do. I did the right
1:32:45 thing. And it blew up in my face. Watch. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
1:32:48 The right thing by external. Right thing, external, external status.
1:32:54 That anyone else counterintuitive though would say, with the evidence you have,
1:32:59 it’s counterintuitive as it sounds. It should go that way. So you picked the right thing. I should
1:33:04 have done that, but because I decided to do the right thing. You just felt so good after. And they
1:33:11 were so excited knowing now what life really is like. It’s going to throw shit at you that’s no
1:33:16 clear answer. Even with all this time, no clarity. They know that it’s a lot tougher.
1:33:22 And they’re invested because it’s you and them in a way. So I tell parents, I told, I won’t tell you,
1:33:27 but several others were like, I’m going to try that with my kids for sure. I’m going to tell my kids
1:33:32 that. I’m curious to see what they say because you want to see if they remix a better version of you.
1:33:37 But you might be surprised that it’s just as unfathomable to them to have an answer as you did.
1:33:40 Okay. Life hack. My favorite life hack. Have you seen,
1:33:44 I showed you that little spark amp, right? That I can play guitar.
1:33:45 You did in your kitchen.
1:33:50 So no time. Even when you try to make time, you can’t make consistent time. You’re supposed to
1:33:56 walk 10,000 steps for your health, especially after 50 or whatever. I have time for that. It takes an
1:34:00 hour, an hour and a half. I don’t have enough things to listen to or phone calls to make to go do that.
1:34:07 Then I love guitar. I can’t be playing guitar for a freaking hour. You listen to Tom Morello on this
1:34:12 master class. You want to get better at guitar? Play for an hour a day. If you want to get better than that,
1:34:15 more. So I started trying to do an hour a day. I couldn’t do it consistently. So I’d be like,
1:34:19 God, I want to play guitar. I have no time to walk. So I put them together. The spark amps,
1:34:23 they have some that are really small. And now they just came out with the headphones that you just put
1:34:27 it on. It’s the amp is built in and you plug in your guitar wireless. And I used to have just the
1:34:33 the one in my pocket, their older one. And I put a playlist on the backing tracks, drums and bass for
1:34:39 songs, my favorite songs that I play to. And I walk just around my house and you forget you’re even
1:34:44 there. It’s like the Angus Young workout. You know, he’s always doing that or Eddie Van Halen running
1:34:49 around. The music drives you. You don’t even, the room is gone. You’re in a stadium. You’re walking
1:34:57 across the stage. Your house is bigger than most stages walking across. I put on like an hour to an
1:35:06 hour and a half playlist. This was like 10 or 12 songs. Easy. 15,000 steps, 17,000 steps. Easy.
1:35:11 You don’t even know you did it. You don’t even remember walking. You’re so transported. You’re so
1:35:16 busy doing this that I’ll be at the end of my playlist. I’m going to keep playing. And you just
1:35:20 keep walking. That’s why you saw me in the crowd, walking through the crowd. I’m so used to playing
1:35:24 walking. You’re so used to walking. I went walking through the crowd, greeting everybody that I knew
1:35:29 instead of, I said, well, shit, I can play and walk and not have some looking, because I got that
1:35:36 training. But anyway, anyone who’s a guitarist, the best life hack, you get an hour plus practice every day.
1:35:42 I got so much better on guitar because of it. And you’re walking and you’re not even feeling it.
1:35:47 I don’t even remember doing it. Biggest life hack there. I couldn’t wait to tell you. I call it the
1:35:52 rock walk. The rock walk. Gotta do the rock walk. My friend goes out in the neighborhood with his
1:35:55 thing. He just walks around the neighborhood. When I saw you on stage with your daughter,
1:36:02 that’s the most I’ve seen you play guitar. I’ve only seen your guitars in the house. Right. But that was
1:36:07 the most actual playtime I have seen. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That’s so funny too. That’s right.
1:36:12 Because I don’t go just play songs with the Hello Kitty guitar. Yeah. Rocking the Hello Kitty. It’s a
1:36:18 good guitar. It looks great. Yeah. Robert, we’ll have to do this more than once a decade, but
1:36:25 yeah. Uh, thank you so much for all the stories and I took a ton of notes. How can people learn
1:36:31 more about brass knuckle films? Where should they go? Should they check out? There’s a brass knuckle
1:36:37 films, you know, website where you can learn all about it. Get all the updates, show you how you can
1:36:43 invest. You’ll see all the perks and things for the different levels. Get a part of it. It’s a community.
1:36:48 I think it’s really going to appeal to anyone who’s a fan of action movies, but also filmmakers,
1:36:54 but just people who are interested and people who consume. Don’t just be a consumer. Make the money
1:36:58 back. I want you to make the money so that you’re not just consuming and watching a movie. If you like
1:37:03 movies, this is the best way. I tried to figure out ever since I was a kid, how can I get paid to
1:37:06 watch movies? Because I watch movies all the time. It’s the closest thing.
1:37:13 Yeah. Brass knuckle films. Beautiful. All right, folks. We’re going to link in the
1:37:15 show notes to everything. Timed up blog session podcast. Thank you, Robert.
1:37:19 Thank you for giving me a forum to tell people that no people were here because everyone listens
1:37:24 to your thing. Because I just, just like with my book, I always wanted, as soon as I made mariachi,
1:37:29 I wanted to share it with people because I knew I would have appreciated hearing that as a filmmaker
1:37:33 who had no money from a family of 10, that it was possible because everyone made it sound like it was
1:37:37 not. So I just wanted to shout it from the mountaintop. And it’s still feeling that same
1:37:42 way as I discover things. I want, I want to tell people because it, the feedback loop is amazing.
1:37:45 You know, when people come back and tell you how they worked it into their life in their own way,
1:37:50 it inspires you all over again, inspires you even you’re like, well, you just inspired me now to go
1:37:55 try that way. So yeah, I love sharing that. Yeah. Incredibly energizing. It’s a virtuous circle.
1:38:01 And for everybody listening and watching till next time, be just a little bit kinder than is
1:38:04 necessary to others and to yourself. Thanks for tuning in.
1:38:11 Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off. And that is five bullet Friday.
1:38:15 Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun
1:38:20 before the weekend between one and a half and 2 million people subscribe to my free newsletter,
1:38:26 my super short newsletter called five bullet Friday, easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is
1:38:31 basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I’ve found
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1:38:42 It often includes articles. I’m reading books. I’m reading albums, perhaps gadgets, gizmos,
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1:39:05 off for the weekend, something to think about. If you’d like to try it out, just go to Tim dot blog
1:39:11 slash Friday, type that into your browser, Tim dot blog slash Friday, drop in your email and you’ll
1:39:18 get the very next one. Thanks for listening. Way back in the day in 2010, I published a book called
1:39:25 The Four Hour Body, which I probably started writing in 2008. And in that book, I recommended many,
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1:42:19 Listeners have heard me talk about making before you manage for years. All that means to me is when I wake
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1:44:08 material conflicts other than this paid testimonial. And of course, all investing involves risk,
1:44:15 including loss of principle. So, do your due diligence.
Robert Rodriguez is a film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, editor, and composer. Rodriguez has written, produced, directed, and edited a series of successful films including El Mariachi, Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn, the Spy Kids franchise, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Frank Miller’s Sin City, and many more. Robert recently launched Brass Knuckle Films, an investable action film slate.
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Terms & Conditions apply. APY as of 12/27/24 and is subject to change. Tim Ferriss receives cash compensation from Wealthfront Brokerage, LLC for advertising and holds a non-controlling equity interest in the corporate parent of Wealthfront Brokerage. See full disclosures here.
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