AN UN-ORIGINAL ‘SIN’
Robert Rodriguez doesn’t just write and direct such dazzling-looking movies as “Sin City” and “Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D.” He does everything but serve lunch to the crew, working as an editor, director of photography, special effects supervisor and even composer.
He told The New York Post about the upcoming “Sin City” director’s cut DVD and his next project with his friend Quentin Tarantino, who served as guest director of one segment on “Sin City.”
What’s cool on the “Sin City” DVD?
There’s two of them. The first one [out last week] is sort of the standard bare-bones one. The real one I’m still putting together. We shot all the material from three different “Sin City” books knowing I would have to take stuff out to make it flow as a single feature. The second disc will have all three stories separated with their own title cards. Each is like a 45-, 50-minute movie, so it’s got its full length put back in. It could be a total of an extra 20 to 30 minutes.”
Then there’ll be a 20-minute film school [featurette] about how I did the lighting and the special effects and all the green-screen stuff. There’s also an 18-minute uninterrupted take when Quentin’s there directing and it feels like you’re sitting there on the set.
You direct, edit, write and produce your films. Why take on so many roles?
You just love your material so much you just want to be hands-on and give it all that tender loving care. [The jobs] are all different and they all pull at different parts of your creativity and it’s all going towards the master project. You try to make it as personal as you can especially in this day and age where movies have just gotten so much bigger. You go in the other direction, making it as homemade as you can.
How do you direct actors in a digitally enhanced movie?
They totally trust you if you prove to them that you know what you’re doing. It’s also very freeing for them. You just present to them in the context that it’s like theater. They’re gonna be on a blank stage with a few minimal props. And the rest is imagined. That they can relate to very easily.
You make films for Miramax, but Bob and Harvey Weinstein are leaving to start a new company. Will you go with them?
Yeah, they just give us that freedom when I go to them and say, “I got a movie I want to do; it’s really strange, it’s all the stuff you’re not supposed to do,” they say good, go do it. It’s just that simple.
What are you working on for your next project?
I’m doing another crazy movie with Quentin for the Weinstein company called “Grindhouse.” It’s a double-feature horror film. He directs one, and I direct the other, and we have fake trailers in between. It’s like a late-’60s, early-’70s exploitation double feature. We’re writing it right now over at Quentin’s house. We watch old movies, old horror-thriller exploitation movies, and get lots of ideas. We’re gonna be shooting it in the fall.
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