One of the most surprising debut films is ‘El Mariachi’, Robert Rodriguez’s debut film, and not because of the film itself, but because of how its director raised the money to make it: he became a human guinea pig.
Robert Rodriguez was born in San Antonio, Texas on June 20, 1968. Of Chicano origin, he always wanted to direct films, so after finishing his film studies at the University of Texas, he tried to work in film, as a technician or director, with no results. He soon realized that if he wanted to direct a film, he would have to finance it himself. But neither he nor his family had the resources to do so, so he managed to quickly get enough money to produce and write a feature film.
To this end, he volunteered as a patient for a well-paid clinical experiment on his body at a medical research laboratory in New Mexico. While he was hospitalized for several weeks at the facility, he took the opportunity to write the script. It was ‘El Mariachi’, which would eventually become a trilogy. Rodriguez was 24 years old at the time.
The film cost the $7,000 Rodriguez received for his contribution to science. He spent the money mainly on buying a good camera with many features, which would allow him to film without problems. The plot followed a Mariachi, a peaceful man who only wants to play his guitar to continue his family tradition. When he arrives in Acuña, a town on the Mexican border with the United States, looking for work, he does so at the same time as a gunman who always dresses in black and carries a guitar case full of weapons, and who has escaped from prison to collect an old bill from a gringo drug dealer who lives in Acuña. Not everything is bad for the mariachi, since he meets the owner of a bar, who gives him shelter in exchange for playing. The drug dealer and his men, who confuse the mariachi with the gunman, will begin a relentless hunt throughout the city to kill him and get his guitar case. Faced with the persecution he is subjected to, the Mariachi is forced to kill or be killed and become, much to his regret, a gunman. Attracted by the owner of the bar, kidnapped by the drug dealer, the mariachi will go to the ranch willing to rescue her no matter what the cost.
Once he had acquired the camera, he had no more money left for anything else, so Robert Rodriguez decided that in addition to writing the script and directing the film, he would also be the editor, musician, camera operator and sound engineer. He also got friends who were actors such as Carlos Gallardo, Consuelo Gómez and Jaime de Hoyos to work for free, in exchange for receiving their salaries when the film made a profit. To do this, he planned to target the film for the Latin American home video market, convinced that he would make money. However, once the film was finished, Columbia liked it enough to buy and distribute the film and pay off its debts. ‘El mariachi’ became the lowest-budget film ever distributed by a major label, as well as the first American film released in Spanish by a multinational.
The film tells the story of a musician’s loss of certain values until he becomes a gunfighter, on a path that is always downward. The film was presented at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the audience award. It was released in the United States and Mexico in September 1992. A few months later, in February 1993, it was selected by the Berlin Film Festival for a special session. It was released in Spain on September 24, 1993.
‘El Mariachi’ has had two sequels in which the main character was played by Antonio Banderas: ‘Desperado’ (1993), which is actually a remake of ‘El Mariachi’. The third installment of the trilogy was titled El Mexicano and was filmed in 2003.
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