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| Birth Name(s) : Robert Rodriguez |
Date of Birth: N/A |
| Status:
Single
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Partner:
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| Profession:
Actor |
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Full Robert Rodriguez Biography
Robert Anthony Rodriguez (born June 20, 1968 in San Antonio, Texas) is a Mexican-American writer, producer, musician, and film director who is known for making profitable, crowd-pleasing independent and studio films with fairly low budgets and fast schedules by Hollywood standards. He shoots and produces many of his films in Texas and Mexico.
Rodriguez began his interest in film at age 7 when his father bought one of the first VCRs, which came with a camera. He took the camera and started to make short films with his brothers and sisters participating as the cast and crew. It helped that there were ten of them (including Robert) and that these early stages provided the crucial groundwork that would lead to Rodriguez's development as a filmmaker.
While attending St. Anthony Catholic High School, Rodriguez was commissioned to videotape the school's football games. According to his sister he was fired soon after for shooting them with a cinematic style; getting shots of parents reactions and the ball traveling through the air instead of shooting the whole play. After graduating Rodriguez went to the University of Texas where he also developed a love of cartooning. His grades were not good enough to get into the school's film program, so he invented a daily comic strip entitled Los Hooligans with many of the characters based on his siblings – in particular, one of his sisters, Maricarmen. The comic proved to be quite successful, running for three years in the student newspaper The Daily Texan while Rodriguez continued to make short films.
Rodriguez grew up shooting action and horror short films on video, and editing on two VCRs. Finally, in the fall of 1990, his entry in a local film contest earned him a spot in the university's film program where he made the award-winning 16mm short, "Bedhead." The film chronicles the amusing misadventures of a young girl whose older brother sports an incredibly tangled mess of hair that she cannot tolerate. The rest of the short film is a humorous account of how the young girl tries to fix her brother's follicle monstrosity when she discovers her telekinetic abilities. Even at this early stage, Rodriguez's trademark style began to emerge: quick cuts, intense zooms, and fast camera movements deployed with a sense of humor that offsets the action.
Rodriguez wrote and directed the film Planet Terror for the collaboration with Quentin Tarantino in their double feature Grindhouse (released in 2007). This film was a throwback to the Grindhouse exploitative cinema of the past. Grindhouse has been critically and publically acclaimed for its comedy, directing, acting, cinematography, and various other factors.
He also has a series of "Ten Minute Film School" segments on several of his DVD releases, showing aspiring filmmakers how to make good, profitable movies using cheap, inexpensive tactics. Starting with the Once Upon a Time in Mexico DVD, Rodriguez also began constructing a series called, "Ten Minute Cooking School" where he revealed his recipe for "Puerco Pilbil" (based on Cochinita Pibil, an old dish from the Yucatan), the pork that Johnny Depp's character, "Agent Sands" consumed in the film. The popularity of this series lead to the inclusion of another "Cooking School" on the 2-Disc version of the "Sin City" DVD where Rodriguez teaches the viewer how to make "Sin City Breakfast Tacos", a dish (made for his cast and crew during late-night shoots) utilizing his grandmother's tortilla recipe and different egg mixes for the filling. Rodriguez had initially planned to release a third "Cooking School" with the October 16th DVD release of "Planet Terror" but then announced on the "Film School" segment of the DVD that he would put it on the upcoming Grindhouse Theatrical DVD set instead. The Cooking School, entitled, "Texas Barbecue...from the GRAVE!", is a dish based on the "secret barbecue recipe" of "JT Hague", Jeff Fahey's character in the film.
He calls his style of making movies "Mariachi-style" (in reference to his first feature film El Mariachi) in which (according to the back cover of his book Rebel Without a Crew) "creativity, not money, is used to solve problems". No Robert Rodriguez movie has ever been budgeted at more than $40 million.
He has also worked with actor Antonio Banderas and actress Salma Hayek on a number of films:
- Banderas and Hayek were cast as the lead roles in Desperado and Once Upon a Time in Mexico of the El Mariachi trilogy.
- Both make appearances in Rodriguez's segment in Four Rooms.
- Banderas and Rodriguez collaborated for the Spy Kids trilogy. Hayek had a role in the final installment, Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over
- Hayek also had major roles in three of Rodriguez's films: Roadracers, From Dusk Till Dawn, and The Faculty
- Banderas has been promised a role in the upcoming Sin City sequels.
Rodriguez also co-directed Sin City with the original creator of the comic book series Frank Miller and is reported to do the same with the upcoming sequels. |
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