He didn't come looking for Hollywood, but Hollywood came looking for him (Rebel Without a Crew - Robert Rodriguez)

Member Name: TJ-Mackey

Product:	Rebel Without a Crew - Robert Rodriguez
Date:	22/07/02 (205 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Funny, informative, fascinating

Disadvantages: None

"How much did it cost again?" he asked.
"$7,000," I told him.
"Really? That's pretty good... most trailers usually cost between $20,000 and $30,000."
I paused for a moment, trying to make sense of what he had just said. Then I said, "No, the whole movie cost $7,000."


Robert Rodriguez wrote, directed and produced his debut feature film, 'El Mariachi', with a borrowed camera, no crew, and less money than a typical Hollywood actor earns in a single day. His book, 'Rebel Without a Crew', features extracts from the diary he kept during his remarkable rise from amateur filmmaker to one of the hottest prospects in Hollywood in the space of a year. Throughout, he imparts the insider-knowledge he gained from his experiences, whilst maintaining a down-to-earth sense of humour that you can't help but warm to.

Thankfully, this isn't one of the many 'how-to-make-it-in-Hollywood' style handbooks. If anything, it flies in the face of advice usually given to wannabe filmmakers. Rodriguez argues that in ten minutes, you can learn everything that a $20,000 film course could teach you and more. He himself wasn't admitted to a film class at the University of Texas until his award-winning short 'Austin Stories' beat everything that class's students had to offer. In fact, when he finally did enrol, he discovered that "a lot of the other students had never touched even a video camera, yet they wanted to be filmmakers. They spent almost $1,000 on films that didn't turn out as good as they expected, so they figured they weren't cut out for movies and would go into something else". Rodriguez shot his first movie on a super 8 camera when he was in 8th grade, and went on from there.

His impressive ten-minute short film, 'Bedhead', scooped awards at over a dozen festivals, and the prize money from these partly went towards funding the
production of 'El Mariachi'. A large chunk of the $7,000 though, was famously earned in a month-long stay in a medical research hospital, and Rodriguez's account of this experience, entitled 'I Was a Human Lab Rat', is bitingly funny. As well as the cash incentive, he also wrote the screenplay during his stay there and even recruited a fellow lab rat to play his lead villain. All in all, a very productive experience.

Less than fifty pages of 'Rebel Without a Crew' actually details the filming and post-production of the film, with a large proportion concentrating on the amazing interest shown in him by nearly all the major Hollywood studios. Although it might be hard to believe now, 'El Mariachi' actually began life as the first of three learning projects for Rodriguez, which he would sell to the Spanish home video market for a small profit (he very nearly sold it for $25,000). This would allow him to learn the basics of filmmaking in an environment where he wouldn't be thrust into the limelight too early. Once these low-budget action movies had been made, he'd then be in a position to think about making a film for a theatrical release in the United States.

Even when Rodriguez finally accepts a contract with Columbia Pictures, his doubts over the release of 'El Mariachi' are still apparent, and in hindsight it's almost laughable as he persists in believing it's a film no one would want to see. It's perhaps this honesty from Rodriguez that is one of the book's biggest strengths. There really is no sense of ego from him at all, and his frequent self-deprecating humour only reinforces this image, and makes it even more believable that anyone really can make a film. If that's not inspiration, I don't know what is.

Later diary entries follow the success of the film after the acceptance of Columbia's contract offer. Rodriguez visits the Telluride, Toronto and Sundance
film festivals, where he meets, amongst others, Roger Ebert, Quentin Tarantino and Steve Buscemi (who would later appear in 'Desperado'). However, perhaps the most surreal entry comes shortly after the theatrical release of 'El Mariachi':

"'Entertainment Tonight' came over to my apartment today to shoot a kind of 'Day in the Life' sort of thing. They are actually filming me right now, as I type this in. I'm supposed to look like I'm working. This is getting really scary."

At the end of the book is Rodriguez's 'Ten-Minute Film School', in which he gives a summary of all the advice he has given previously, covering everything from writing the screenplay to shooting the movie to cutting in the editing room. Whilst the technical aspects may be slightly outdated (computer editing is pretty standard now), in general these suggestions would be very useful to a first-time filmmaker. The original screenplay to 'El Mariachi' is also included, with selected annotations from Rodriguez where certain details need to be clarified. It's interesting to note the lack of standard screenplay formatting (he'd never written a script before) and the tracking of the number of shots required for each scene in the margin.

'Rebel Without a Crew' is a fascinating read, both as a story in itself (with Rodriguez as the 'hero') and as an account of a low-budget filmmaker succeeding in Hollywood. Even if you have no interest in filmmaking, I'd still recommend this book as a great piece of light reading, but if you do, this will undoubtedly give you plenty of inspiration.

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