Robert Rodriguez

Machete is not expendable!

I heard her complimenting the first Machete in the press. So I called her and asked if she was interested in acting, because I wanted to write a role for her, being a fan of her as a performer and an artist. And she said that she had studied acting first, and was open to giving it a try, and she had always wanted to be in one of my movies. So I wrote her a role, and she came in and killed it.

I wanted to create a Road Warrior type character that went from town to town having adventures with a guitar case of weapons. I knew that would be too expensive for my first film, so I decided to do a prequel on the guy who became that character.

It's very time consuming to use real blood, especially if you get it on people's warddrobes, so we use a lot of digital blood. There's not as much real blood on-set anymore.

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein! It's actually really scary and funny.

I loved the whole process, having so much control over the look of the film by utilizing green screen. It was very new back then, nobody was doing digital green screen.

It's bigger, it's better, the cast is incredible, the characters are some of the favorites returning and new ones as well. And it's been shot in 3-D. So visually, it will top the first one.

Red Apple is part of a line of fake products that Quentin and I use alternately in our movies. He has Red Apple cigarettes and Big Kahuna burgers, and I have things like Chango Beer to take the place of real products.

Grindhouse 2? No, but you will see some Grindhouse influence in Machete Kills.

The El Rey network is going great. We softlaunch in December and will be full-blown by January. We will premiere our Dusk Till Dawn television series in March.

There are bloopers on the DVDs...

No news on Predators 2 yet. We'd still love to do one.

Thank you! Well we finished filming in March, so it was never going to come in October, we held that date to move Machete Kills there.

It was always planned to have it come out next year after the FX were finished.

Someone asked

Hey Robert, welcome to reddit! I've been feeling like a real Mexican't lately. Do you have any words of advice or inspiration that will help me get back to Mexican status? Not even kidding about this.

they deleted their comment. But here is my reply:

Hate to say this but it is also helpful advice. The biggest obstacle you will ever face, your biggest roadblock, your greatest enemy in accomplishing your goals, your biggest naysayer, is yourself. Nobody can keep you from getting where you want to get or need to get like yourself. The negative voices we face come more fiercely and furiously from within ourselves. It seems like its outward forces a lot of times, but on close honest scrutiny it comes from within. I've been there, a LOT. But believe me, it can be overcome. Once you truly believe you can do anything (and you need to start building piles of evidence through both big and small endeavors) you will almost magically be able to do anything and everything.