March 15, 1993 | Robert Rodriguez had just flown in from Seattle, and, boy, did he look tired.
Unshaven and bleary-eyed, the Texas-born filmmaker trundled off the airliner Thursday night, carry-on baggage in hand, just a few steps ahead of his equally weary wife. A Columbia Pictures publicist was there to greet him, and to guide him downstairs to his transportation from Houston Intercontinental Airport to the Four Seasons Hotel, his latest stop on a promotional tour.
Rodriguez took it all in stride, pausing only to express mild surprise — “Whoa!” — at the stretch limo waiting at the curb.
“Well,” he remarked before settling into his plushly upholstered seat, “enjoy it while you can, I guess.”
So far, it appears Rodriguez truly is enjoying his status as multimedia darling and Cinderella-style celebrity, even if it means racking up long hours of flight time. As the maker of El Mariachi, the ridiculously inexpensive and astonishingly accomplished action flick that earned the Audience Award at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival, he has been touring almost nonstop in recent weeks, criss-crossing the country to ballyhoo his debut feature’s platform release. And he likes it, he really likes it.
“I can’t remember what city I’m in from one day to the next,” he admitted. “And sometimes, I’m in two cities in the same day.
“But it’s been fun. Some other filmmakers, even some at Sundance, told me: ‘Oh, you’re going on a promotional tour — you’re gonna hate that, you’re gonna have to answer the same questions again and again.’ But it really hasn’t been tiring at all.
“Because you’re not telling people the same old thing they usually hear when they ask filmmakers how they made the movie. Which usually is, you know, ‘Well, it cost $6 million, we were like a big, happy family…’ I’m giving them something they don’t usually hear. And they enjoy that. And it inspires other people.”
Rodriguez smiled, but did not disagree, when told he’s likely now a role model for would-be filmmakers everywhere.
“Actually, I’m a role model for penniless filmmakers,” he said. “What I’ve done shows them that it can be done. It shows them, ‘Look, if you don’t have contacts, you don’t have a lot of money — don’t worry about it. All those other guys who told you that’s what you needed — well, it’s not true.’
“I’m taking this opportunity to tell people something that I always wanted to hear growing up, which was, ‘If you’re creative and talented, hard work will pay off if you follow your passion.’”
Certainly, it has paid off for Rodriguez, a 24-year-old San Antonio native whose award-winning movie opened Friday in Houston.
During a vacation from his studies at the University of Texas in Austin — where he and wife continue to live, far from the Hollywood bustle — Rodriguez filmed El Mariachi for $7,000 and some change, intending to recoup his investment by selling the movie directly to the Spanish-language home video market. He raised a good chunk of the budget by serving as a human guinea pig at an Austin pharmaceutical lab, and pinched pennies by serving as his own one-man production crew on location in Acuna, Mexico.
“And I really saved money by editing it on videotape, rather than on film — which, if I would have done it that way, would have cost me another $20,000.
“I discovered this accidentally — I went to video because I was going to sell it to video. But now I tell everybody that that’s the way to go. Shoot on film, transfer the film to videotape, then edit on videotape. That way, you can show your film to distributors that much easier.
“And if they like it — well, as soon as a distributor picks it up, they’re going to pay for a whole new 35 mm blowup and sound mix anyway. So, if they like it, then they will pay for the film print. And if nobody likes it, then at least you didn’t spend all that money to find that out. You can spend that money to go out and make two more movies.”
El Mariachi — a fast-paced melodrama about a musician who’s mistaken for a fugitive killer — looked good enough on video to get Rodriguez signed by a major Los Angeles talent agency. And it seemed commercial enough for Columbia Pictures to buy it, blow it up to 35 mm, slap on some English subtitles, and open it at the Telluride and Toronto film festivals.
And then came Sundance.
“I wasn’t really sure they should release it up until we won the Sundance Audience Award,” Rodriguez said. “Because the most important thing is that, no one really cares how much it cost when you come right down to it. If they don’t enjoy the movie, they don’t care, they’re not going to like it. It’s like, you see $60-million movies that you hate because the stories are bad.
“I wasn’t really sure even at the other festivals if (El Mariachi ) really played good as a story, and if people were going to enjoy it after spending money to get in and see it. But once it won (at Sundance) over movies that cost much more money, and were in English, and had bigger stars — I realized that there were people who would enjoy it if they put it out in limited release.
“But up to there, it was like, ‘Why are they even bothering? It’s just a home movie!’”
A home movie, Rodriguez noted with a laugh, that’s now being released with a Columbia Pictures logo “that cost more than my whole movie cost to make.”
After the current promotional tour, Rodriguez and his wife — Elizabeth Avellan, an associate producer on El Mariachi — plan to return to their Austin apartment. But they won’t stay there long: Next week, Rodriguez is set to “take a meeting” with the Columbia brass, to discuss plans for El Mariachi 2.
“This one will cost $5 million,” Rodriguez said. “By Hollywood standards, that’s still considered a low-budget movie. But for me…
“I can just see the ads already: ‘Five million times the action! Five million times the romance! Five million times the Mariachi!’
“Look out!”
