Thank you so much.
David Lynch with the
Ken's Five in San Antonio.
Tejas San Antonio,
my hometown. That's
right. Robert. Hey, thank you so
much for taking the time today
to chat about Hypnotic with us.
So for your, for your hometown
station like you mentioned,
really appreciate it.
All right, so we got about 10 minutes.
We'll just jump jump into things right here.
Excited to chat with you about Hypnotic,
which I was lucky enough to catch the work
in progress screening at at South BY.
So I was excited about that.
Yeah, that was fun.
So it I want to start by asking,
it's been 30 years since you kicked things
off with El Mariachi which Speaking of they,
they celebrated at South By
and that was fun to watch.
After all this time, Robert,
you still have a heavy hand and almost all
the aspects of the filmmaking process.
What why has that remained impot
to you to be involved in such
a degree with all your films,
even as even as the budgets gro,
including your new and hypnotic
and I just don't.
I just love all those jobs, you know?
It was it was tough when I was starting
out thinking about what I wanted to do.
I loved photography, I loved mu.
I loved drawing.
In fact, I was a cartoonist for a while,
and I thought I could either
be a cartoonist or a filmmaker.
If I'm a filmmaker,
I can draw the storyboards,
I can photograph the movie,
I can do the music for them.
I was inspired by, like, John Carpenter.
He did the music he wrote.
He directed without a movie.
I could keep all my favorite hobbies in.
So I started making movies,
and when that took off, I thoug,
I don't want to give any of these jobs up.
They're not normally done
by one person in Hollywood,
but fortunately I made mariachi first.
So when I went to make my next film for Sony,
they said, well,
you can't edit the movie
too because we never,
directors never edit their own movies.
And I said, well,
you bought Mariachi and I edit.
So they were like,
OK,
so then from
then on that was set. I could
shoot my own movie.
I could edit my own movie.
No one else was able to do that.
So I because of the precedent
I had set with Mariachi,
fortunately they bought it.
He gave me that.
Then from then on,
no one ever gave me any hassle.
And it wasn't because I thought
I was better at it or was
important to me for for a visio.
It was just I just liked all of those
jobs and they don't happen at te
same time except for this photography.
But part of me directing is me
having the camera in my hand
and being closer to the actor,
not behind a monitor.
So that does it doesn't get
in the way of the directing.
I think it enhances it.
But the other ones happen separately,
like you write and then you're done writing,
then you're shooting,
then you're done shooting,
then you're editing,
then you're done editing,
then you're doing the music and
then you start all over again.
So I like that I didn't.
If I just did one job, I'd be pretty bored.
So I liked switching it up.
So that's mainly why is because
I love all those jobs.
I I don't like giving them
up because I don't mind,
like if it's my son composing
because he's so much better tha.
I couldn't have written this sc.
So I help him, you know,
just by editing for him and
being his assistant,
keeping him fed because he's got
to write the entire score himse.
But so some of those jobs,
I don't mind giving up,
but if he were to go make another movie,
I would just take over that job again.
Because I I I prefer to just do
it because I love it. It's not.
That's really why I just love those jobs.
Absolutely.
Sony pretty much said you have .
You have us there Robert Okay.
We're at least with me when it n
when I think about my experienc.
I've been watched your films over the years.
I'm used to your films being ve,
very set piece heavy,
very audacious and the visuals.
That's the first thing I think .
But like I said when I caught
Hypnotic at South By in the
work in progress screening,
I was surprised by how twisting
the mechanics of the story is.
And I gotta,
I gotta assume I'm not the first person to
to bring that up to you about hypnotic.
What what appealed to you about
writing and making this kind of.
That movie where the screenplay
is very layered,
very dense.
I was just being such a fan of
Hitchcock movies and I had done
something like a Hitchcock movie
originally with Mariachi that ws
very much like one of his wrong,
mistaken identity type movies le
North by Northwest or The Wrong
Man When I was watching Vertigon
early 2000 and just thought, go,
there's another one with a lot of twists.
The thriller with a star in the role.
Vertigo, Psycho, Spellbound, Fr.
He's always good at these one w.
Very enticing titles.
I thought, I want to make a move
like that because I like those movies.
I'm not sure I know how to
make those movies
though, because they you have t.
You can't have the dream logic
like my movies normally have.
Like, oh, someone loses their leg and
now they have a machine gun for a leg.
And it works somehow, you know?
I was always just kind of fudged the rules.
Can't do that in a thriller,
so I knew it would be harder to write it.
But it's because I like the feeling of those
movies so much I thought it'd be worth it.
And the idea I came up with was hypnotic.
Right away the title popped
in my head and I thought,
oh maybe it's somebody cause I t
want to have to study what hypnosis is.
That's lame.
Let me go ahead and do something
beyond that where the ability yu
don't even know till the end of
the movie how strong that abiliy
is cause we keep morphing it and
and revealing new layers of it.
That actually gives you a lot me
freedom than a traditional thrir
because you can fudge the rules a lot.
And even my crew,
because we kept running out of money for the
movie because of all the COVID shutdowns,
like I said,
they they've worked with me a
long time and they're like,
Are you sure we can get away
with just the pipes and a sign
that says bank and a golf cart?
And I'm like,
yeah,
it'll make the hypnotics seem even stronger.
That's all they have to work
with. That's not what the
original idea was.
But we ran out of money.
And I think the lack of money ad
resources made the funnier and
better and more entertaining and
made the hypnotics more powerfu.
I didn't have to worry so
much about the mechanics,
but there's still some you know,
you can't reveal too much, too little.
It can't be so confusing that
it's no longer entertaining,
or that by the end people are
still scratching their head bece
there's to be confused in a gooy
and there's confused in a bad w,
and that the line is very fine.
So I didn't have enough experiee
to say I knew what that was.
I had to kind of discover it as I went
and just crossed my fingers and hope.
That people would you know all e
way to the end be be with you nt
like thrown out of it, you know.
Yeah,
absolutely. And you know given all that
since you were kind of getting out of your
comfort zone a little bit in that end,
did you think about how that mit
adjust the expectations of your audience?
Because again having watched the
screening and progress that stopped by,
I was very surprised.
I feel we could kind of get the
air feel the air in the room
be a little bit like OK, this,
this isn't exactly our your traditional
kind of Robert Rodriguez picturt
let's let's go along with and se
where see where the right takess
how how does how does the right.
In this movie,
adjust your expectations
for how it will be received.
Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't know.
But then I got, you know,
that audience particular in Aus,
They really know my movies,
cuz I'm from here. Yeah.
I think the general audience dot
always really know who directs t
or they don't really know. Filmmaker.
They don't know where I was a Ben Affleck.
Let's go see that, you know?
So I don't think they would nory
have as much expectations as yo.
You you would think people are
aware of a filmmaker enough to ,
oh this is different.
Others would be like, oh,
I saw a movie hypnotic with Ben Affleck
that was that was that was cool.
They didn't,
they don't have the preconceived ideas
like like you or that audience .
Yeah, definitely.
You can hear that audience like wondering
when's somebody going to blow ud
when's when's the extra limb going to grow
out the back of his head. But I think the
general audience would wouldn't know so.
So that didn't bother me so muc.
And then because of Aleta,
it kind of helped too that I've
already been doing movies that
are outside of my wheelhouse,
that that it would become less
of an issue than if I had done
this right in the middle.
This was Between Dusk Till
Dawn and Desperado and
and since they. Then it really
would have had Spy Kids.
It would have felt Spy Kids
was already like, wow, what bad. You know?
The more the more you keep adding variety,
the easier it gets.
But yeah, it was definitely a
different kind of movie. In fac,
I think when I first came up with it,
I thought, this is such a cool .
I should just sell it.
I should sell it because someboy
would probably pay good money
to buy it for another director.
I didn't have to affect it.
But then I just more and more
because the more I thought abou,
the more movies I made, the morI
started realizing even what it .
It's very much like.
What we do is filmmakers.
I always wanted to make a movie about
filmmaking because it still fascinates
me to see a set and then look bd
the set and see the wood back t.
I thought,
I don't want to make a movie
about filmmaking is,
and that's too Inside Baseball
kind of like that,
because that's what we do as
storytellers and filmmakers.
We create a hypnotic construct
for the audience,
for them to believe what they're
seeing is real long enough
to laugh or cry or cheer or
recommend it to their friends.
Sometimes if you do a really good job,
they love a character so much
that it becomes more real to
them than their own friends.
So that the hypnotic
construct from a filmmaker's point of view,
I thought it was interesting if we do
that in the movie and then the l
layer start peeling back and the audience
realizes they've been bad. Exac.
And then and you're you're right on top
of the last question I want to ,
you know, get we don't want to l
things too much for the audience
because there's so many fun twists and
left turns and hypnotic, but thd
things take a different percept.
We start to see some different.
Locales. And it feels very intentional
and it makes me wonder.
Makes me want to ask you,
does hypnotic represent a full
circle moment for you in any wa,
30 years after in Mariachi? Yea,
I mean, it does.
I mean, I got to use my elitist.
Even for for this very resourcey
and even though Lita said
it looks just like the town,
I made Mariachi and it's like I
got that town down in my backyad
and I get to show it, you know,
in this movie it's pretty wild.
But also just the the way we're making it.
You know, very shoot from the
hip still being as inventive as
possible to make a big movie foa
for a small for a smaller price.
That's always been my thing sine
Mariachi was to come up with a
really big idea for a for a smar
budget instead of doing a small
idea for a small budget to come
up with a big idea like Hypnoti.
Like kids are spies.
All you have to do is put sunglasses on
them and man, you can make
that thing for 5 bucks
because the idea is so big.
So big ideas are what drive my my filmmaking.
And I like having less money bee
then I get more creative freedo.
I'd rather have more creative freedom
on a big idea on a small budget.
Then a big budget movie that I't
going to have the control and freedom
to just do anything that I want
makes sense. Well, Robert, if n,
it is a creative as hell movie.
It was a great watch,
had a great time watching us South Pike.
Congratulations on it,
on it and on the upcoming releae
and I hope it finds a wide audi.
And thanks for chatting.
Thanks Dan. Appreciate it.