Pondering the career of Robert Rodriguez

When I originally thought about writing this piece, it was going to be a criticism of Robert Rodriguez. Had he fulfilled his potential as a filmmaker? 

His latest film, Machete Kills, looked like total schlock. Maybe it would find an audience among those who share Rodriguez's love for the grindhouse and exploitation era of 70's film, who know when a film isn't taking itself seriously and just wants to provide some fun at the movies. (Although judging from this past weekend's box office totals, that audience might not be as large as Rodriguez hoped. Or maybe even aficionados of such material don't want to pay eight to 10 dollars to see a film that aspires to be intentionally crappy.)

But after thinking about it some more, and after seeing Machete Kills over the weekend, I realized that maybe this was the wrong way to look at Rodriguez and his career. 

Asserting that Rodriguez hadn't become a so-called "great" filmmaker — along the lines of, say, his buddy Quentin Tarantino — is presuming that he had those sorts of ambitions in the first place. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. I haven't seen him express such sentiments in an interview.

Nor have I read many interviews with Rodriguez, as opposed to Tarantino, who is clearly a student of film and screenwriting, and enjoys crediting those influences when he talks to journalists. Perhaps Rodriguez is as well, but he comes across more as someone who just wants to make movies — the sorts of movies he loved as a kid — and has put himself in the creative and financial position to do just that. 

From that standpoint, Rodriguez's career is undoubtedly a tremendous success.

Maybe he can't make any movie he wants to. But the fact that Rodriguez made Machete Kills indicates that he's able to get his films produced, provided they fall within a certain budget. Of course, it helped that the first Machete made enough money — its $26.5 million box office take nearly tripled the $10.5 million cost — to arguably justify a sequel. And this was a movie spawned from a gag trailer for the first Grindhouse project with Tarantino. (Of those five fake trailers, two — the other being Hobo with a Shotgun — were made into feature-length films.)

Rodriguez already had the machinery to make the movie in place with his production company, Troublemaker Studios. Most of the effects, sound and editing work is done in-house. The idea of  Danny Trejo — one of the great bad-ass, tough-guy character actors — playing a lead role was extremely appealing. (The premise of a guy like Trejo, who doesn't have classic movie-star looks, portraying someone who gets all the ladies made it even funnier.) 

Everyone involved with these movies gets caught up in the fun of something that's a wink and not meant to be taken seriously.

Robert De Niro is no one's idea of a gun-loving, illegal immigrant-hating Texas senator, as he is in Machete. (Although De Niro hasn't shown himself to be the choosiest guy with roles in recent years.) In Machete Kills, Demian Bichir — who's been deadly serious as a cop on FX's The Bridge — seems to be having the time of his life playing an over-the-top villian with psychopathic tendencies and multiple personalities. Antonio Banderas wears bejeweled cowboy boots with extended toes that curl nearly a foot outward. 

Rodriguez has also capitalized on the opportunity to work with actors who have suffered a setback in their careers, need a revival and are thus willing to poke fun at their images, such as Lindsay Lohan, Steven Seagal, Jeff Fahey and Charlie Sheen. Who needs to reinvent himself more these days than Mel Gibson? He gets to chew up scenery as a megalomanical villain with visions of world domination. Angry Mel also gets to wear a cape in one scene and drive a car meant to look like a "Star Wars" land speeder in another. 

This is what Rodriguez has created for himself. You could say he's given himself an out with films that are deliberately campy and thus held to a lower standard. If the special effects, if the script takes unbelievable storytelling turns, if acting performances seem cheesy — hey, it was meant to be that way. It's supposed to be grindhouse schlock. You could also say he's given himself creative freedom by not having to live up to a prestigious reputation. If Steven Spielberg did a film like Machete Kills, he'd be viewed as slumming it.

Yet Rodriguez has shown some flashes of innovative, visionary filmmaking. His Sin City literally brought Frank Miller's comic-book work — with his heavy use of black inks contrasting with negative space — to life. The movie is Miller's images put in motion, a testament to digital filmmaking. Rodriguez is faithful to Miller's vision, even to a fault. (Miller's noirish dialogue doesn't necessarily translate well from comic book to screen.) He even brought Miller on as a co-director, resulting in a dispute with the Directors Guild of America. 

If you didn't read those original comic books, it's still apparent this is something you've never seen before. There's not another film out there that looks like Sin City. And Rodriguez is going to do it again. Next year, the sequel — Sin City: A Dame to Kill For — hits theaters. 

My questioning of Rodriguez's growth as a filmmaker comes from a place of love and admiration. I've been a huge fan of his from the beginning, ever since he made his first film, El Mariachi, for $7,000 and wrote a book about the experience titled Rebel Without a Crew.

If Rodriguez could do something like that, why couldn't a college kid from Michigan looking for some direction in his life and a creative outlet aspire to do the same? (Never mind that this not-so-hypothetical dreamer lacked the talent, knowledge and ambition to follow through with such a project.) Of course, the story isn't quite that simple. As his book explains, Rodriguez raised much of the money for his movie by volunteering to be a test subject for an experimental cholesterol drug. At least he didn't go into credit card debt like Kevin Smith did to make Clerks

I loved Rodriguez's first "big budget" Hollywood movie, Desperado. It was a sequel, yet also sort of a remake, to El Mariachi, featuring an aspiring musician who essentially has his life taken away from him in a tragic case of mistaken identity and then seeks revenge with a guitar case full of weapons. What I especially enjoyed about Desperado is that it felt like a comic book come to life with exaggerated action, quick cuts, and archetypal characters. 

I imagined that maybe Rodriguez could be the guy to bring Marvel or DC Comics characters to the screen and do them justice. This was before Batman and Robin killed comic book films for years, before Blade and X-Men eventually revived them and demonstrated they could be done seriously. 

But maybe it was never meant to be. Rodriguez seems far more comfortable working on his own creations than adapting material from other sources. (Sin City being an obvious exception. But perhaps he relished the opportunity to do something new with digital filmmaking in translating Miller's art to the screen.) Reportedly, his DGA dispute cost him the chance to direct A Princess of Mars, which became the massive flop John Carter. Rodriguez surely feels like he dodged a bullet on that one. 

Rodriguez went on to create the "Spy Kids" movies, which became a perhaps improbable yet wildly successful four-film franchise. That may have sidetracked his career in terms of what he wanted to do next. The "Spy Kids" films did so well that Miramax and Disney wanted more of them. Since Rodriguez could crank them out relatively quickly with his digital filmmaking techniques, he could oblige. The success of the "Spy Kids" films led to Rodriguez making other kids' films like The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lava Girl and Shorts

That had me wondering if Rodriguez had permanently gone in that direction. Given the success of those kids' films, it would be difficult to blame him for that. But while he made those "Spy Kids" films, Rodriguez also made Once Upon a Time in Mexico, a sequel to Desperado. He made Sin City. And that led to him collaborating with Tarantino and making the "Grindhouse" movie Planet Terror. Since then, Rodriguez has seemingly gone back to his roots with the "Machete" movies and the upcoming "Sin City" sequel. 

Does that slate of projects look like the workload of a director who hasn't fulfilled his potential? Looking at Rodriguez's career and filmography made me shelve the original premise for this column. Maybe Rodriguez hasn't made a capital-g "Great" film. And it seems likely that he never will.

But does it matter if Rodriguez never had those sorts of ambitions in the first place? Does he have to do what critics or fans would view as creative growth? Of course not. (I suspect that Rodriguez doesn't care if he hasn't had the career others may have envisioned for him.)

He's still the guy that made his first movie for $7,000. He's still the guy that made his first short film, Bedhead, with his brothers and sisters. The same sense of fun and energy that was in that short is in Rodriguez's bigger movies now. He just has bigger, more expensive tools to play with. And that playground is something he created entirely for himself. What could be more fulfilling than that? 

About Ian Casselberry

Ian is a writer, editor, and podcaster. You can find his work at Awful Announcing and The Comeback. He's written for Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, MLive, Bleacher Report, and SB Nation.

Quantcast