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Robert Rodriguez and the Transformation of a Microbudget

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Robert Rodriguez and the Transformation of a Microbudget FROM EL MARICHI TO EL REY: ROBERT RODRIGUEZ AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF A MICROBUDGET FILMMAKER INTO A LATINO MEDIA MOGUL By Copyright 2015 Zachary Ingle Submitted to the graduate degree program in Film and Media Studies and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Chairperson _______________________________ Tamara Falicov, Ph.D. ______________________________ Michael Baskett, Ph.D. ______________________________ Germaine Halegoua, Ph.D. ______________________________ John Tibbetts, Ph.D. ______________________________ Ben Chappell, Ph.D. Date Defended: April 24, 2015 The Dissertation Committee for Zachary Ingle certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: FROM EL MARICHI TO EL REY: ROBERT RODRIGUEZ AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF A MICROBUDGET FILMMAKER INTO A LATINO MEDIA MOGUL ________________________________ Chairperson Tamara Falicov Date approved: April 24, 2015 ii ABSTRACT Studies based on a director often follow a common model, generally resorting to an overview of that director’s films and examining shared aesthetic qualities and themes. This sort of study was grounded in the auteur theory—following authorship approaches in literature—and was invested in a consistency that justified the place of film authorship as a worthy pursuit in academia. In this study, however, I examine Mexican-American filmmaker Robert Rodriguez through a discursive analysis, unencumbered to textual analysis or even a chronological approach, with a look at the media discourse, Rodriguez’s own writings and interviews, and the pertinent scholarship. His debut award-winning debut feature, El Mariachi (1992), as well as the production diary that would soon follow, Rebel Without a Crew: Or How a 23-Year-Old Filmmaker with $7,000 Became a Hollywood Player inspired a generation of filmmakers into making ultra-low (or microbudget) films. With films often released through Miramax/ Dimension, Rodriguez has continued to make films that primarily cater to action (Sin City [2005], Machete [2010]), horror (The Faculty [1998], Planet Terror [2007]), and children’s (the Spy Kids films [2001-2011], Shorts [2009]) audiences, all outside of Hollywood at his Troublemaker Studios in Austin, Texas. While still directing films, his most recent venture was founding the El Rey Network, which promotes itself as the first network for English-speaking Latinos. After a brief introduction to the auteur theory in addition to contemporary approaches to authorship that suggest a move away from text-based analyses, I consider four broad areas that point to Rodriguez’s growth from the director of the microbudget El Mariachi to his renown as the most prominent Latino media figure: social contexts (i.e., his Mexican-American identity), labor, economics, and technologies. I conclude that while Rodriguez’s career has evolved iii significantly over the last twenty-plus years of his professional career, he has steadfastly retained his adherence to his Mexican-American identity, his penchant for taking on many of the tasks of filmmaking (cinematography, editing, composing, etc.) despite having larger budgets, his parsimonious approach to budgets, and his technophilia. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would first like to thank my chair, Tamara Falicov, for being supportive of this project from the beginning. It was during her Latin American Cinema course that I discovered that there was definitely someone in our department interested in a topic like this one. She has always been encouraging, even sending me links to online articles on Rodriguez that I had missed. Other individuals read chapters or portions of chapters and provided helpful comments. Ron Wilson provided useful feedback on my dissertation prospectus and Chapter 3 while I took his Graduate Writing Seminar. Michele Levy at North Carolina A&T State University helpfully looked at my paper on Latino identity in Rodriguez’s films so that I wouldn’t make a fool of myself before presenting at my first Popular Culture Association conference in 2008. My fellow graduate student colleagues have been enormously helpful at my time here, especially the following: Juli Pitzer, Sho Ogawa, Daniel Mauro, David Sutera, Joshua Wille, Zach Saltz, Mike Van Esler, Hispano Duron, Charley Downey, Tina Louise-Reid, Amit Patel, Eric Lackey, Isley Unruh, Patrick Terry, Christina Hodel, Wes Lawson, Carol Burns, Stephanie Woell Wille, Marcus Mallard, Spencer Harkness, Carl Swanson, Courtney Sanchez, Najmeh Moradiyan Rizi, Barbel Goebel-Stolz, and Brian Faucette. A special thanks to Spencer and Joshua for information regarding filmmakers influenced by Rodriguez. Eric and Ron Wilson also informed me of excellent radio interviews with Rodriguez. Of course, I am especially thankful for those who served on my dissertation committee: Michael Baskett, John Tibbetts, Germaine Halegoua, and Ben Chappell. My time in KU’s Film and Media Studies program also could not have gone has smoothly without the assistance of Karla Conrad, the best administrative assistant a department could wish for. v The genesis of this project goes back to 2005. After finishing my Master of Divinity degree at Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary in 2003, I then worked in the Baylor University Libraries, trying to decide the next step in my education. I was considering ultimately getting a Ph.D. in film studies, but had only written one short film paper (in the one film course I had taken as an undergraduate). Working in the library offered me the opportunity to voraciously read film journals (primarily Cinema Journal and The Velvet Light Trap). I was struck by the lack of scholarship on Latino filmmakers up to that point, so I wrote a paper on Chicano identity in the films of Robert Rodriguez, which I not only used when applying to graduate schools at that time, but also presented at the 2008 Popular Culture Association meeting in San Francisco. Some of the thoughts from that early paper found their way into Chapter 2. I would like to thank Robert Reed for our late-night dialogues while working together in the library that informed my thoughts on Rodriguez, as well as for lending some of the DVDs and videos that I did not yet own. The Office of Graduate Studies graciously bestowed upon me a Summer Research Fellowship for 2013, which allowed me to devote more time to writing and researching. The School of the Arts and the Department of Film and Media Studies were also always generous in awarding travel funds to allow me to present my research at conferences. Lene Brooke was always a pleasure to work with in regards to my travel. For years I felt like the only Rodriguez scholar out there, until encountering fellow Rodriguez scholars such as Victoria Kearley (University of Southhampton), Mauricio Espinosa (Ohio State University), Christopher Gonzalez (Texas A&M University-Commerce), Nathan Koob (University of Michigan), Enrique Garcia (Middlebury College), Mirasol Enriquez (UCLA), James Donahue (SUNY-Potsdam), and Frederick Luis Aldama (Ohio State University) vi at various conferences. I am especially grateful for Mauricio’s willingness to film the “Robert Rodriguez and the Cinema of Possibilities” symposium that was held April 11, 2013 at the Ohio State University when I was unable to attend. Christopher and Frederick have been constantly supportive of my work, asking me to contribute to their special issue and edited volume, respectively, devoted to Rodriguez. Enrique organized a panel at the 2015 SCMS conference devoted to Rodriguez with us, Frederick, and Christopher. I am also grateful for Frederick’s mention of my work in his own book on Rodriguez (The Cinema of Robert Rodriguez); having publications is nice, but there is certainly a thrill when seeing others mention your work for the first time. I am also appreciative for the University Press of Mississippi and those associated with the Conversations with Filmmakers series, especially Leila Salisbury, Gerald Peary, and Valerie Jones. Salisbury, the Director of the Press, was enthusiastic about Robert Rodriguez: Interviews from the first time I discussed it with her, showing no reluctance in giving a book contract to a first-year graduate student. Charles Ramírez Berg at the University of Texas was also of enormous help and eager to converse through email while I was working on that book. Besides those who served on my dissertation committee, I would like to thank Catherine Preston from Film and Media Studies and Shawn Alexander from African and African American Studies for their faithful service and helpful remarks during my written and oral comprehensive exams. Their comments and my dialogues with them have also informed some of the thoughts of this dissertation. My family and friends were also a constant support network for me. My aunt Pam Young’s profession as a postal worker surprisingly proved fruitful, as she kept me abreast of Rodriguez articles and interviews in popular magazines. vii I am immensely grateful for all the feedback I have received as I have presented and published my work on Rodriguez. From Chapter 4, I presented a section at the Literature/Film Association in Lawrence in 2013, in addition to another portion at the 2014 KU Graduate Research Competition. A section of Chapter 5 was published in Post Script (“Robert Rodriguez’s Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over and the 3-D Resurgence”). I spoke on Rodriguez at several national conferences besides those mentioned above: the Society for Cinema and Media Studies in Boston (2012); the Western Literature Association in Lubbock, Texas in 2012; both the 2013 and 2014 Film & History conferences in Madison, Wisconsin; and the 2015 SCMS conference in Montreal. I also am thankful for the feedback I received from faculty and colleagues with my presentations at the 2012-2015 incarnations of the KU Film and Media Graduate Symposium. A certain amount of winnowing goes into any larger work such as this one, and for those wanting more on Machete, I encourage them to read my chapter “The Border Crossed Us: Machete and the Latino Threat Narrative” in Critical Approaches to Robert Rodriguez (University of Texas Press, 2015).
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