Robert Rodriguez Discusses How a 1995 Flop Paved the Way for Sin City and Spy Kids

      Robert Rodriguez's career has been primarily defined by remarkable successes, beginning with his very low-budget feature El Mariachi, which was produced for $7,000 and became a significant hit. When he encountered a rare setback a few years later, he transformed that experience into two of his most notable triumphs: the Spy Kids series and Sin City.

      Rodriguez is highly regarded for his insights into independent filmmaking, largely due to El Mariachi, which he originally created with the ambition of breaking into the low-budget Mexican home video market. A former cartoonist at the University of Texas at Austin, where he gained recognition for his acclaimed 1991 short “Bedhead,” he financed El Mariachi by participating in medical studies and filmed it in a highly efficient manner in the northern Mexican border town of Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila.

      This film is credited with kickstarting the independent film boom of the 1990s, has been included in the National Film Registry for preservation by the Library of Congress, and has been acknowledged by the Guinness World Records as the lowest-budget film to gross $1 million at the box office.

      Rodriguez subsequently made two sequels to El Mariachi, both featuring Antonio Banderas, and met Quentin Tarantino on the festival circuit when both El Mariachi and Tarantino’s 1992 film Reservoir Dogs were receiving acclaim. The two directors collaborated on several projects, including 1996’s From Dusk till Dawn and 2007’s Grindhouse, which presented a double feature of Rodriguez’s Planet Terror and Tarantino’s Death Proof.

      However, their initial collaboration that reached theaters was unsuccessful.

      Recently, Rodriguez shared on The Joe Rogan Experience that Tarantino invited him to be part of Four Rooms with the premise: “Hey, I’m making a movie called Four Rooms. Four different directors. You have to use the bellhop. It’s New Year’s Eve. You’re in a hotel. You can’t leave your hotel room. Are you in?”

      Rodriguez signed on right away, although he later realized, if he had done more research, that anthology films usually do not perform well at the box office. He pointed to the financial failure of 1989’s New York Stories, which flopped despite involving shorts from renowned directors like Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and Woody Allen. (Notably, New York Stories also marked the film debuts of Kirsten Dunst and Adrien Brody, who would later win two Best Actor Oscars.)

      Released in 1995, Four Rooms remains an intriguing curiosity from the mid-90s due to its interesting mix of talent: each segment is directed by Tarantino, Rodriguez, Allison Anders, and Alexandre Rockwell. The cast includes Tim Roth, a standout from Tarantino’s 1994 film Pulp Fiction, along with Madonna, Jennifer Beals, Paul Calderon, Ione Skye, Marissa Tomei, and others.

      Similar to New York Stories, it did not resonate in theaters. Nevertheless, Rodriguez mentioned to Rogan that two significant outcomes emerged from it.

      In his segment of Four Rooms, Banderas and Tamlyn Tomita portray a couple who give a tip to the bellhop to care for their children. Seeing the couple in formal attire made Rodriguez think, “They look like a stylish international spy duo. What if they were spies? And their little kids who can barely tie their shoes are unaware of it? Then they get taken hostage, and the kids must rescue them?”

      This concept evolved into Spy Kids, a franchise that ultimately grossed $550 million.

      Additionally, Rodriguez decided to revisit the anthology format—this time with “three stories instead of four” and “one director instead of several.” This led to the creation of his captivating 2005 film Sin City, based on graphic novels by Frank Miller. It was another hit, earning around $160 million, and led to a sequel, 2014’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, which did not match the original's success.

      Thus, two franchises emerged from Four Rooms.

      Rodriguez remarked to Rogan that “Sin City and Spy Kids directly came from what one might consider a failure if you focus solely on the failure.”

      He explained that the key takeaway is to “reflect on something you felt strongly about, that didn’t succeed, and sift through the remnants of it. You may discover that you’ve already achieved success from it without realizing… or you may find something that will unlock your success.”

      Main image: Jessica Alba as Nancy and Nick Stahl as Ethan Roark Jr. in Sin City, directed by Robert Rodriguez. Miramax Films.

      Editor’s note: Corrects the spelling of Rogan.