Robert Rodriguez names cinema’s only “perfect” film: “It’s just amazing”
Time to add another entry to the “no way can they still be that young they’ve been around forever” list, and today it’s Mexican director Robert Rodriguez, who made the neo-western El Mariachi all the way back in 1992, then followed it up with the Antonio Banderas hit Desperado a full 30 years ago, and yet somehow is only just 57.
It appears that the march of time works differently in Hollywood, or at least it’s proof that if you have a passion for something that can’t be dimmed, plus no small amount of talent, then, like Rodriguez, you can be directing major movies before your 23rd birthday. He put the wheels in motion at just 11 when he got his first video camera, and brilliantly, he was fired from recording his school’s football games because he did it in a cinematic fashion, capturing parents’ reactions and close-ups of the ball in the air.
Making short films through his university degree, he began to hone his own style and made an award-winning short in 1991, using the exposure to make El Mariachi a year later on just a $7k budget – the film eventually earning more than $2.5million when given a proper release. The success of the movie allowed for the sequel to feature Banderas, Salma Hayek and a much bigger budget when it came out in 1995. He attracted the attention of the biggest up-and-coming name in movies, Quentin Tarantino, and the pair became fast friends.
They released From Dusk Till Dawn in 1996, which Tarantino wrote and Rodriguez directed, and the vampire horror movie was a pretty big goddamn hit. He then had a quiet few years before writing and directing the adventure film Spy Kids in 2001, again starring Banderas, and then he began work on a series of dark comic book adaptations and grindhouse movies, starting with Sin City in 2005.
He directed movies like splatter horror Planet Terror and the violent Machete in 2010, before another Sin City movie four years later.
While Rodriguez has picked out his most influential films in the past, which included movies like Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, Hitchcock’s Notorious, and Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, the Texan director reserves special praise for the mafia movie that tops many film fans as the greatest of all time. He told Rotten Tomatoes: “The Godfather, because it’s about family. It’s just a perfect film. Five-act structure… It’s just amazing. Coppola just did the coolest stuff with that.”
It was an admiration that led to Rodriguez sitting down with Coppola back in 2015 for an hour-long episode of the former’s show The Director’s Chair. On it, the two discussed Coppola’s career to date, including the well-documented production struggles, casting issues, and initial reluctance to direct both The Godfather in 1972 and The Godfather Part II two years later.
Rodriguez is currently busy working on several projects, including a TV reboot of the classic 1980s rogue detective movie Cobra, which starred Sylvester Stallone in a screenplay he’d written. Intriguingly, he has also directed a film penned by John Malkovich with a very interesting premise – except the problem is that the movie, titled 100 Years, won’t be released until 2115.
Tagged as ‘the movie you’ll never see’, the content is a closely guarded secret, and the film is sealed inside a bulletproof safe.
Never Miss A Take
The Far Out Quentin Tarantino Newsletter
All the latest Quentin Tarantino content from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.