Robert Rodriguez: biography, personal life, creativity, films, photos

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

This year, one of the brightest visionaries of our time, famous for his movie hits "Spy Kids", "The Faculty", "Machete", "Sin City", "Desperate" and "From Dusk Till Dawn", turned 50 years old. Robert Rodriguez was listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the most versatile figure in cinema.

A real gem

Future master of cinema Robert Rodriguez was born in 1968 in a large and friendly Mexican family living in San Antonio, Texas. The parents of the future filmmaker were far from creative, father Cecilio sold kitchen utensils, and mother Rebecca worked as a nurse. At the same time, they treated their son's hobby very favorably. After graduation, the young man decided to enter the University of Texas and learn the basics of cinematography at the Faculty of Cinematography. However, he failed to realize his intentions, like most gifted youth from the lower strata of society.

But given that at one time Sam Raimi interrupted his studies at the university in order to create the cult "Evil Dead", Peter Jackson, without receiving an education, came up with"Alien stew", and Quentin Tarantino did not enter a higher educational institution at all, which did not prevent him from blowing up the cinema world with "Reservoir Dogs", the case of Robert Rodriguez does not seem to be an exception to the rule.

Not quality, but quantity

The filmography of Robert Rodriguez begins with a short debut project "Badhead". This creative experiment allowed the director to start working on the creation of a relatively inexpensive, but colorful Spanish-language film "The Musician". The unexpectedly budget-friendly action shot made the author widely known and launched the "Mexican Trilogy", which later included the crime thriller "Desperado" with the inimitable Antonio Banderas and the stylish spectacle "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" with the same non-stop shooting and mind-blowing chases.

Born in Texas to Mexican parents, the director has at times taken on numbers, displaying his broad Mexican-American soul at times. To raise funds for his debut feature film, he even took part in a cholesterol drug trial. In The Musician, he tried himself in almost all cinematic professions: from screenwriter and director to operator, producer, special effects master and composer.

"From Dusk Till Dawn". A movie for all times

Unlike previous films "The Musician" and "Four Rooms", director Robert Rodriguez ignores the previously undefined to the end gravitas and bombast, especially noticeable against the backgroundplot simplicity of the story being told. The stylistic excesses present in the picture are justified in terms of genre only in the scene of the final battle with vampires. Rodriguez does not lose irony throughout the creation of the tape, he could not even think that with his creation he would give the world one of the most impressive striptease scenes in the history of cinema. The role of the main vampire was invited by the beautiful Salma Hayek, already known for her "Desperate". "From Dusk Till Dawn" only confirmed the outrageous sexuality of the Mexican. By the way, in the episode where the heroes barely manage to shoot back from the vampires, the striptease scene was completely optional. But Robert Rodriguez would not forgive himself if he ordered to cut this moment.

For a friend nothing is a pity

In the 90s, Robert Rodriguez's films were created under the influence of his friendship with one of the brightest representatives of postmodernism in cinema, Quentin Tarantino. Filmmakers often worked together to create their own masterpieces. For example, Robert, for a nominal fee of one dollar, wrote the musical accompaniment for Kill Bill. Vol. 2”, Quentin, in turn, for the same fee played a couple of characters in Rodriguez’s films (“Desperate”, “From Dusk Till Dawn”). Together, the comrades composed and implemented the first almanac "Four Rooms", in collaboration they worked on the famous "City of Sins".

Between these projects, Robert Rodriguez managed to create a spy-adventure parody comedy-fiction trilogy "Spy Kids". In a trilogy filmed almostthe same methods of "family-friendly contract" as the debut masterpieces are attracted by the elements of unbridled childhood fantasy and the director's pronounced irony about the genre, which has managed to discredit itself. Moreover, the director did not particularly hide the fact that he released a series of films specifically for his growing sons, born in marriage with film producer Elizabeth Avellan. Then the couple gave birth to two more offspring and divorced in 2008.

Falls and rises

After "Sin City" because of the scandalous incident, Rodriguez voluntarily left the US Film Directors Guild. It seemed his name had sunk into oblivion. The director did not leave attempts to regain his former glory. He directed "Planet of Fear", met quite warmly. An explosive mixture of black comedy and old-school horror, almost without a plot, but full of unforgettable episodes and bright characters, was part of a kind of single film "Grindhouse" along with Quentin Tarantino's "Death Proof".

With his "Machete" Rodriguez proved to the whole world that he is a virtuoso, the number of which in Hollywood can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The hybridization of genres in the film is indicative, pure and created with luxurious slyness that newfangled crazy projects seem boring and clumsy.

Dangerous trends

Three-dimensional "Spy Kids 4D" did not show box office breakthroughs, but confirmed that Rodriguez knows how to promote family values, andin fun enough ways.

The critics called the next brainchild of the director "Machete Kills" frank trash, they were already worried about the creative fate of the director, fearing that at some point he would simply forget how to make a "normal movie", not according to the rules of trash. And this is very sad, because no one wanted to lose Rodriguez, who once gave the world "Desperate" and "Faculty", no one wanted.

In 2014, Robert Rodriguez presented to the world film community a film with the sub title "A woman worth killing for." This long-awaited sequel to "Sin City" turned out to be visually head and shoulders above the original tape, but the plot was frankly inferior to it. After a skeptical assessment of his creation, the director did not release a single film until 2018.

Triumphant return

Rodriguez's new directorial work, the multi-million dollar blockbuster Alita: Battle Angel, is now in post-production. The project was composed and produced by an outstanding filmmaker of our time - James Cameron. He is said to have been working on a painting based on a Japanese comic for twenty years. James initially brought in Rodriguez to work on the script, which was to be cut from a three-hour draft of a mass of disparate ideas and thoughts. Rodriguez brought the manuscript into a divine form, fitting the idea into the traditional one and a half hours of timing. Cameron liked his version so much that he offered Robert to take the director's chair.

In the future

The filming process of a project with a colossal budget in$200,000,000 lasted from October 2016 to February 2017. Since that time, the team of Rodriguez and Cameron has been working on a gigantic amount of special effects, the main one being the central character with her unusually large eyes. Still, of course, it is too early to predict the audience's reaction and the commercial prospects of the film, including the likelihood of sequels. But if the project “goes in”, then the revived Rodriguez will have no problems with continuations.