Analysis Of Robert Rodriquez's 'Rebel Without A Crew'

The Japanese filmmaker Akiko Izumitani once said, “If you want to be a Filmmaker, you have to endure hardship, frustration, and financial problem and if you love filmmaking more than anything, you won’t quit.” Robert Rodriquez, a man with some radical notions on life and filmmaking, embodies this willingness to overcome obstacles to follow your dream. His book Rebel without a Crew documents his experience making his first feature film from inception to completion. In particular, the making of El Mariachi (1992) contains vital lessons of learning technical and soft skills necessary to succeed in the film industry as a filmmaker. However, in a larger sense, the book displays how an amateur filmmaker from Texas went from making a $7,000 feature

From a young age, like so many other famous filmmakers, Rodriquez grew up in the movie theater. His mother would take him and his siblings to see films such as Rebecca (1940) and Spellbound (1945) for a “weekly dose of double and triple features of classic films” (Rodriguez 4). Seeing powerful imagery such as the Salvador Dali dream sequence left an indelible mark on Rodriquez, who became a kid that dreamed in motion (Rodriguez 4). In the fifth grade, Rodriquez often drew cartoons in the margins of his school textbooks to create his own animated movies (Rodriquez 4). He painstakingly created elaborate action scenes and seemingly invincible characters that would later proliferate his own oeuvre. However, despite his visual and storytelling talents, Rodriquez was a poor kid with no aptitude for math, science, and

His peers and teachers were his audience. At high school, Rodriquez would meet his future friend and collaborator Carlos Gallardo, a boarding student from Mexico. Together, they made several short films under fifteen minutes because Rodriquez learned that his audience preferred faster and shorter films. Thus, films transformed Rodriquez’s life. Now he was making the honor roll and getting straight A’s in his junior year, which he attributes to the boost his films added to his self-esteem. The validation from peers and faculty helped him into receiving a scholarship to the University of Texas at Austin, a school with a film