Analyzing El Mariachi

Written by:  Maggie Drayton & Felipe Echavarría

In 1992, at the age of 23, Robert Rodriguez set out on a mission: to produce his first feature-length film, El Mariachi. With a 20-day shooting schedule, a budget of only $7,000, a borrowed Arriflex 16mm, a tape recorder, and a Radio Shack microphone, he produced a film that made $2,040,920 in its theatrical release in the United States. After being picked up by Columbia Pictures and wining the Sundance Film Festival Audience Award, El Mariachi is now considered one of the most commercially successful micro-budget films in the history of cinema. By analyzing Rodriguez’s production, directing, and distribution approaches one can gain a further understanding of how the unimaginable became a reality for this filmmaker and how his cost saving techniques can be implemented in other productions without repeating his mistakes.

I. THE CONCEPTION

Rodriguez started with the desire of immersing himself in a feature-length production as the ultimate learning experience. For over a decade, he had been creating short films, initially with his father’s rudimentary video camera, and eventually with the equipment provided to him at University of Texas at Austin, where he gain a basic but clear understanding of the cinematic medium. Tired of making short films, Rodriguez set out on his own to produce three Spanish action feature films that he aimed to sell to the bottom feeders of the Latin American home-video market. Although on the surface it may seem that Rodriguez was making a cheap film to sell for profit, according to him the real motivation behind his venture was in fact to prepare himself for a career as a Hollywood director. He never intended for his first film, the first of his trilogy, to be released in America, let alone make 2 million in profits.

Rather than begin with a script, Rodriguez rolled with an image. The story came second to the iconic character of “The Mariachi,” an unassuming hero that is mistaken for an assassin that travels with a guitar case full of guns and other weaponry. From this concept, Rodriguez wrote an action script, typically worthy of a large budget, which he tailored to his minimal resources; a script he started and finished writing in one month, while in confinement in a drug testing facility, where he submitted himself to experimentation in order to raise money for film stock.

The screenplay tells the story of a romantic guitar player who goes from town to town looking for work in local establishments. On his arrival to the small town of Acuña he crosses paths with Azul, a recently escaped assassin seeking revenge on Moco, the town’s drug lord. Due to the fact that both characters are attached to their black guitar cases, the two figures are confused, and El Mariachi is forced to hide out in a local bar, where he finds and falls in love with Domino, the owner. This only complicates the situation because Domino is also Moco’s romantic obsession. The film culminates in a final massacre, where Domino, Azul and Moco die, and Mariachi is shot on his hand, stripping him of both his love interest, and, almost certainly, his ability to play guitar. As Mariachi rides off on a motorcycle into the sunset full of anger, he prepares the audience for Rodriguez’s proposed sequels.

Rodriguez actually attacked the writing of this feature script by developing three short films and fusing them together. “I am so used to making short films, I am having trouble writing something that can sustain 90 minutes. So what I decided to do is write a short film structure, and then repeat it three times. . . so I will repeat everything three times but add a twist to the last one. I call this Kindergarten approach to scriptwriting” wrote Rodriguez on his journal while in the drug testing facility (Rodriguez, 26). With this scheme he succeeded in creating a film that entertained on the surface, but lacked sub-textual meaning and character development.

One could argue that in El Mariachi, Rodriguez makes a comment about U.S.’s responsibility in the drug war in Latin America by casting an American as the main drug lord, and/or that the film is a metaphor for Rodriguez’s love for filmmaking that parallels Mariachi’s passion for music. However, if these are the themes that Rodriguez chose to touch upon as a scriptwriter he failed to impregnate them throughout the film. The few conceptual, political, and social references that he makes come and go but do not remain in the mind of the audience. Even the three dream sequences which pretend to introduce the audience to Mariachi’s subconscious mind, fail to clarify any concept, and serve only as transitional devises and fake premonitions rather than thematic commentary. Loneliness is the only concept or theme that appears to permeates Rodriguez’s work. It is shown through visual cues such as the self-standing door that remains from a burnt down house, the desert turtle that tries to cross the highway, the young boy that stands alone in his dream sequences, and Mariachi’s solo ride into the distance at the end of the movie. Yet, the film offers no clear insight about it. Loneliness is just a characteristic of objects and characters present in the film, rather than the center of a conceptual discourse.

Rodriguez characters are either mono or bi-dimensional. Mariachi is a romantic musician capable of becoming a killer, Moco is a killer capable of falling in love, and Domino is a femme fatale, but that is it. They are the most complex characters in the film and they only exhibit two main characteristics and/or motivations. The rest of the characters possess extremely confined identities, and have only one clear motivation for their actions. By ignoring character development, Rodriguez looses the opportunity to engage the audience on a deeper emotional level and reflect on human nature. Thus, El Mariachi appears to be merely a shoot-em-up action flick rather than a dynamic thriller – There is excitement but not suspense. The audience is entertained but learns nothing.

This however may have been sufficient for his original target market – a less-critical, action-gorged segment of Latin American audiences. But why did Americans like this film so much? In actuality, the broad American audience responded with lame enthusiasm – the film only made about 2 million at the box office, a low number for a film by Columbia Pictures’ standards. It was the insider film crowd that gave El Mariachi its glory. Film Critics such as, Roger Ebert and Todd McCarthy, Hollywood directors such as Quentin Tarantino, and Film Executives such as Chris Buchanan (Columbia) and Harvey Weinstein (Mirimax) fell in love with the film. Perhaps film savvy spectators saw something that standard audiences did not: A Parody.
Rodriguez created a movie that was a mockery of the classic Hollywood action genre. He used, overused, and abused all its conventions including slow and fast motion, disposable characters, complicated chase scenes, fake guns, liters and liters of blood, exaggerated dramatic camera movements, and the landscape of a Spaghetti Western. The overuse of such conventions, although arguably unintentional, mixed with Rodriguez’s comedic tone made this film a satire for industry professionals and movie-buffs. Furthermore, having done it with such a low budget and still being able to achieve more or less the same results of an expensive studio production exponentially increased the power of the joke.

Another prominent characteristic of the script that contributed to the success of El Marichi was that it was written to REALLY be produced. Rodriguez designed a script that he could shoot with the resources he and his friend, Carlos Gallardo, knew they would be able to obtain. “I saved money by writing the script around things I already had access to: A pit-bull, a motorcycle, two bars, a ranch…” Rodriguez stated during his premier at Sundance (Rodriguez, 173). He didn’t write the script to be passed around between agents and production companies who would eventually throw it out. He wrote a script that he was confident he could make for less than $10,000, in one town, with untrained actors, and simple special effects that he could manufacture himself. If he had created a script that required refined acting skills, elaborate FX, or inaccessible locations, El Mariachi would have never been completed, and most likely he wouldn’t have ever gotten attention in the festival circuit.

II. PRODUCTION

“Let’s see with the 25 rolls of film I bought at full price, coming out to be less than
$2,400, developing at $1,300, then the transfer to video being about 2,800… I got this movie in the can with my master tapes and everything for about $6,500” Rodriguez explains in his book Rebel without a Crew (Rodriguez, 57). If Robert Rodriguez had not spent money on film stock and laboratory procedures, the total production cost of El Mariachi would have being about $500. Although when Columbia Pictures picked up the film they expended reportedly $200,000 in transferring the print to film, remixing the sound, and doing other post-production work the $6,500 figure is a direct testament to Rodriguez’s entrepreneurial skills and cost management abilities which he employed in an approach to production that was at its time completely unheard of. He was almost a one-man crew. He was his own Director of Photography, Gaffer, Sound Recorder, Special Effects Artist, and Editor – something only possible because of his unsophisticated but clear understanding of all the creative and technical aspects of filmmaking. His only constant production partner was Carlos Gallardo, the film’s Unit Production Manager, Co-Producer, Location Scout, and lead actor who Rodriguez often lacks to give credit.

To be able to succeed with the budget he had, Rodriguez needed to work with a minimal crew. To work with a minimal crew, he needed to simplify many aspects of production. And to simplify many aspects of productions and reduce expenditures he needed to work with a minimal crew. He made a rule that he would not pay salaries or feed even one person on set because it would mean a sacrifice of useable and scarce production money. Rodriguez had to be a stickler, even with his own health and hunger. Having a small team gave him the ability to move around easily and freely. He only needed a single vehicle to move his crew, his talent, and all his equipment from one location to another. Often he will then utilize that vehicle in front of the camera. A small crew also allowed for Rodriguez to be the single creative voice throughout the entire movie. He had almost no communication delays with his production “team” because there was no one to question his artistic choices and no time spent on explanations except when directing the actors or using some of them as grips – a practice he employed when shooting most action scenes.

Rodriguez simplified many aspects of production including costumes, props, lighting setups, art direction, special effects, and the equipment package. He had the actors wear the same clothing (from their own closets) throughout the film, with the exception of Domino, who had four costume changes. This not only reduced cost and saved time but also prevented continuity problems. Due to budget constraints, Rodriguez’s lighting equipment only consisted of two 250- watt photoflood bulbs. Consequently, for exterior scenes he relied on natural sun light and for interior scenes he mainly worked with two point lighting setups. The scenes in Domino’s bar are commonly praise by cinematographers as examples of simple but effective lighting. In some instances, when lighting big interiors such as the Corona Club Bar, Rodriguez had to use the regular bulbs that were available on location and mix different color temperatures. This gave an orange tint to the scenes that did not stand out on screen. It appeared to contribute to the dusty and hot felling that was part of the overall visual style of the movie. The simplicity of his lighting setups signified a great saving of time. For the bullet shots, squibs were only used on the chest. It was the only area of the body that allowed room for mistake with his amateur special effects techniques. For props and set décor, Rodriguez made use of everything around him that he could get for free. He only bought the guitar case, everything else was borrowed. He even got a bathtub from Alfonso Aura, director from Like Water for Chocolate, who had recently shot in town and brought a bathtub for his own film.

A surprising component of Rodriguez’s production technique was the fact that he shot the film silently and recorded the sound for each scene on location as wild tracks. He did not have to pay a sound guy, because he was the sound guy. He didn’t have to wait or interrupt the flow of the project for uncontrollable ambient noises, such as airplanes, busses, people talking, etc. He did not even have to worry about masking the drone of his noisy camera or avoiding pesky boom shadows. To solve possible syncing issues, of which there were many, Rodriguez covered himself by utilizing effective and comedic insert shots, and cutting away from the character during portions of their dialogue. This ended up defining the editing style of the film that to some extent challenged classic conventions, and was later embraced by the filmmaking community. However, it is important to notice that the cut that got to the big screen when through an expensive and long process of sound mixing, ADR, and foley. It may have been more cost efficient, if possible, to have recorded good sound while shooting.

By shooting in Acuña, Mexico, a small town where Carlos Gallardo grow up and knew many people, Rodriguez had access to props, locations and untrained actors that he would have not had had he shot in the U.S. The fact that the town was somewhat unregulated allow Rodriguez to get away with shooting on streets and public places without permits and borrowing real guns from the local police department to use as props in chase scenes in the middle of the town. The size of the town allowed him to move quickly from one location to another. He even managed to gain the favor of the local media by casting both of the hosts of the town’s TV news broadcast. Such a smart “political” move helped portray him in a good light on the show several times, in turn encouraging the townspeople to support him wherever possible.
Perhaps Rodriguez smartest production movement though was to cast Gallardo, his co- producer, as Mariachi. By having a person that was entirely dedicated to the film play the lead, Rodriguez could schedule with a lot of flexibility and could always had a plan b – they could film Mariachi’s shots whenever the rest of the cast was not available.

III. Directing Approach

In El Mariachi, Rodriguez developed a rough cinematic style that was partially original
and partially defined by his production constraints. He combined cost-cutting strategies with standard camera and directing techniques of the action genre. Although El Mariachi’s visual and dramatic style is far away from cinémavérité, in many occasions Rodriguez approached his production more as an observational documentarian than as a fiction film director. The shots of real prisoners sleeping in the jail sequence and the different shots of townsfolk doing ordinary dealings that he used to transition from exterior to interiors are good examples of how Rodriguez incorporated unstaged events to his Mise-en-scène, adding realism to the film. Contrary to

Hollywood’s standard production approach, Rodriguez constructed his script and the atmosphere of his film around the locations, props, actors, and actresses he knew he could get without spending money. He built with what he had, and achieved a rough, sweaty, desolated atmosphere not by trying to replicate it on a soundstage but by immersing himself with a camera on the small, rough, sweaty, desolated town of Acuña, in north-eastern Mexico.

El Mariachi was a film whose success did not depend on the perfection of any particular aspect of production but rather on the intelligent merger of less than perfect cinematic elements. The film had enough action sequences so that it did not depend on great dramatic performances. The action sequences were intense enough to excite the audience but simple enough to be able to be produced without expensive special effects–no big explosions needed. Rather than focusing on obtaining exquisite cinematography, splendid art direction, astonishing special effects and impeccable performances, Rodriguez focused on achieving acceptable results in all these areas believing that once they were all put together they would complement and potentiate each other, proving that in filmmaking synergy is feasible–the whole can be greater than the sum of the individual parts. This approach kept him away from spending time and film stock in a search for flawlessness, a goal that due to the nature of his production was unreachable and, as he pointed out several times on the directors commentary of the movie’s DVD, unnecessary.

Rodriguez had a deep understanding of his narrative which allowed him to be flexible during production. He was his own script supervisor and was able to keep consistency between scenes. He knew well what the dramatic and clarity needs of the film were, and therefore could easily edit and rewrite the script while shooting to accommodate to the availability of props, locations and actors without hurting the overall plot and the overall style of the film.

Several times during the shoot, Rodriguez went off script to include interesting locations and visual metaphors that he found driving from one location to another. In the second sequence of the film, where the Mariachi walks on a desolate highway towards Acuña, the town where the plot unfolds, a desert turtle walks in front of him. When they meet up, the turtle close itself up on his shell while the Mariachi keeps walking. In the last scene of the film where the Marichi rides on Domino’s motorcycle into the sunset away from Acuña, the turtle reappears. Reinol Martinez, the non-professional actor that played Azul, had found it on the highway a few days before the shot. Rodriguez loved the idea of incorporating the turtle and asked him to bring it for the scene. Although the turtle was never in the script, it became a metaphor of Mariachi, a loner in the middle of a hostile land, and an iconic image of the film. Similarly, the coconut stand scene was entirely improvised. On his way back to town from where they shot the scene with the turtle, Rodriguez and Gallardo drove by the stand and fell in love with it. They stopped, got out the camera and in a few minutes shot a scene of Mariachi buying and drinking coconut milk on his way to Acuña. As they were driving home, Rodriguez realized they never got a shot of Mariachi paying for the coconut. To try to cover this mistake in post, Rodriguez included a phrase on the narration that stated that in Acuña they give free coconuts to newcomers. Such explanation may have been unnecessary to the audience but is a good example of how Rodriguez approached the making of his film with a flexible mindset.

Although Rodriguez did not draw a story board he designed his shoot carefully. He had pre-visualized all of the scenes that were in the script and studied with a video camera most locations. He only shot what he was sure he needed. For the dialog heavy scene, he decided to shoot only a few lines at a time so that his cast did not have a hard time memorizing the lines and he could focus on getting an acceptable performance for each of the lines. By moving fast on set he was able to keep up the moral of the cast and crew. He also kept the camera in one spot per each person’s dialogue. Instead of moving the camera he merely zoomed and pulled back during each take to trick the audience to believe that he had gotten much more footage of each conversation. This could be an explanation for the unusual rhythm of the dialogue in many scenes. He did not shoot the entire scene in each camera set up but rather only the sections he knew were most likely to be used. He, to some degree, edited the film in his mind before he shot it.

Rodriguez developed a strong clear and effective visual approach for El Mariachi. He used a hand held Camera for most of the scenes and made his imperfect jerky movements part of his style. He used the camera as an active narrator of the story. The camera went where Rodriguez wanted it to go, following genre conventions. POV shots and dolly-in movements towards centers of attention, which he did with a borrowed wheelchair, are part of such conventions. Sometimes if the floor wasn’t level these shots would look shaky. To compensate Rodriguez would slow down or speed up them in camera, overloading the viewers’ cognition and leading them to overlook the bumps.
One of Rodriguez great failures in the film was his work directing an untrained cast. In El Mariachi, the dialogue lacks rhythm and verisimilitude. It is extremely formal and in some instances does not make sense. This is in part because Rodriguez wrote his script originally in English and made a poor translation into Spanish, and in part because the actors where not very familiar with the lines.

V. DISTRIBUTION

Rodriguez was just as unconventional with his distribution approach as he was with his
production. Even though he intended El Mariachi for the Mexican home-video market, he knew that he wouldn’t just settle there. He realized that while shopping around for Spanish distribution companies he might as well get the film out to a few US companies and spread the word, or at least put his name out there. The results of his efforts were completely unexpected, and proved that one must exhibit a knowledge if the cinematic medium in conjunction with entrepreneurial persistence and vision to be successful in the micro-budget indie-film world.

Rodriguez started by going to LA with Carlos and meeting with five different yet equally as apathetic Mexican-American distributors. What Rodriguez did, that is commendable, and also invaluable in today’s faceless world of technology, is sold himself with the film, and not in the traditional way that writer/directors sell themselves attached to future projects and promises (this would come later). To his distributor meetings Rodriguez brought multiple videos that featured his award-winning short, “Bedhead,” with a fast paced trailer for El Mariachi, and ONLY ONE copy of his actual finished product. By doing this Rodriguez forced distributors to sit down with him and watch the film, allowing him to read their reactions, and adjust his pitch of El Mariachi. If they wanted him to leave the film, he said no, and left them with nothing but an apparition of what they could have had representing their company. Rodriguez inevitably sparked a lot more interest with this method than if he were to have just sent each distributor a copy of the film without personal interaction or explanation.

Rodriguez’s big break started when he thought he sold the film to Mex-American, a Latin distribution company, for $25,000 (10,000 for US and 15,000 for Mexican rights). He was able to negotiate this price for the film because he told the CEO, who liked the film, that he made it for $70,000. Although this contract was never signed because the company ultimately tried to steal the money for the Mexican portion of the distribution, the trip did get him acquainted with the LA lifestyle. While still mulling over the failing partnership, Rodriguez, on a whim, researched and contacted Robert Newman at ICM (International Creative Management), an established LA talent agency, whom he was supposed to meet at a seminar earlier in the year. Newman uncharacteristically responded to “Bedhead” and the Mariachi trailer almost immediately. He saw promise in Rodriguez and wanted to see the entire film. Rodriguez who was not even planning to screen the film to American audiences didn’t even have a subtitled version. Working in his usual expedient style, Rodriguez added the titles in less than three weeks and got the film back to ICM who was eagerly awaiting its arrival according to Rebel Without a Crew. Long story short, they loved it. This is just the first mile on the road to distribution for El Mariachi, however a secret to getting yourself noticed lies between the lines of this anecdote. Rodriguez didn’t just go to Hollywood with a single feature film, he went with a marketable demo reel that consisted of two things that are sometimes overlooked in today’s market by young filmmakers but are undoubtedly important and enjoyable; the art of short film and the “blow your mind trailer.” If Rodriguez had just thrust El Mariachi in the hands of executives and asked that they watch his $7,000 feature, they may have laughed in his face. By showing them “Bedhead” and the trailer, he proved to them that he was an innovative filmmaker with an admirable amount of success in the festival circuit. It also gave them a taste of El Mariachi that left them wanting more. The suspense of wanting to see the entire movie, gave Rodriguez success in the beginning, but continued to fuel the fire until its final theatrical release.

Rodriguez made a very intelligent choice by signing with ICM at such a young age (did he have much of a choice?), because even though El Mariachi had somewhat of a mind of its own when it came to attracting audiences, ICM created an initial buzz that kept Hollywood talking, until every studio executive had heard of Rodriguez and seen the film. Thus started a small bidding war for the rights to El Mariachi, which grossly exceeded the original 25,000 dollar offer that never came to fruition with Mex-American. Ultimately Rodriguez, with ICM’s guidance, decided to go with Columbia/Tristar Pictures who offered $150,000 for the distribution rights, 25% of Mariachi’s video sales, and a contract to write/direct 2 more potential films and a possible remake, for which he would be paid handsomely for a first time director. Although this deal was considerably larger than Rodriguez ever anticipated, some argue that if he had kept the film on the table a little longer he could have sold it to Harvey Weinstein at Mirimax for almost double. Weinstein even admits this to Rodriguez while premiering his film at Sundance.

After signing with Columbia, and spending countless hours and twenty times the budget of the actual production reediting and transferring the film to 35mm, Rodriguez created a final cut of the film that was studio acceptable. He considered this process completely unnneccesary at the time and stated that he would have rather shelved the film and done a remake, than had this premier as his first piece of work. Obviously at the time, he did not understand how Marachi represented a parody of the Hollywood system and would be widely accepted and even loved by critics and studio executives alike for this characteristic. ICM however did recognize this potential, and wasted no time propelling Mariachi into the festival circuit, where it would achieve its largest most positive response.

Most audiences do not understand how agents and studios can manipulate this independent film world. They only see that Robert Rodriguez and his $7,000 microbudget feature, won the Audience Award at Sundance, but they don’t know how it got there. They assume that Rodriguez made it to the top by competing against thousands of films, including Woo’s Hard Boiled and Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, in one of the toughest selection processes known filmmakers around the globe. In reality Rodriguez probably would have never gotten to his position as an opening film at Telluride or sold out screenings at Sundance, without the marketing tactics of his agency. And one may wonder if he would have even won that Audience Award if he wasn’t given the opportunity to get on stage prior to the screening and implore viewers to vote for him. Rodriguez commented, “I also asked the audience to please vote for this movie, because I truly couldn’t think of anything funnier than seeing this movie win something” (Rodriguez, 178). The audience agreed and voted for the film as a way of subconsciously empowering the independent filmmaker in all of us.

After Rodriguez’s success at most of the major US festivals it was no surprise that Columbia would release his film theatrically. They decided on a limited release in 90 selected theaters, and even though it only made 2 million it was more than Rodriguez had ever thought possible, and still a triumph in the eyes of the studio. Success in the theater was in large part due to the marketing campaign of both Columbia and Rodriguez, which included a large promotion tour prior to the release. Although most of the interviews, tv spots, and articles were pre-planned Rodriguez’s business mind understood that the more publicity the better the release. He therefore scheduled a few of his own interviews along the way by calling into radio shows like Howard Stern and accepting public popularity. The one promotional outlet that the studio and Rodriguez missed was the Hispanic Market. Although there were Telemundo interviews while in Miami, and an outreach to the Latin community in Texas, very little money was spent on reaching beyond these areas. This could have potentially raised another million dollars in box office sales. This is just speculation however, because it is questionable if native Spanish speakers would have seen beyond the kitchy action film conventions and innovative cinematography, and look more at the unnatural dialogue of untrained actors and an inexperienced script writer. Regardless the Rodriguez’s labor of love and practice went on to become a cult movie and made 1.5 million in video sales within the first years after its release, and jumpstarted his directorial career.

V. CONCLUSION
Robert Rodriguez tried and succeeded in launching a career with a micro-budget film. The chances of this happening again to an unknown young director still exist, but the filmmaking world in which El Mariachi appeared is now 19 years past. In order to do what Rodriguez did, one would have to accommodate to a changed world of viewers and technology, a world where film stock is no longer needed and has been replaced partially by digital format, a world with a much more sophisticated audience that may not react as well to an unintended parody and a mediocre script.