Debut
He volunteered as a patient for a well-paid clinical experiment at a medical research lab in New Mexico.
One of the most surprising directorial debuts is ‘El mariachi’, Robert Rodriguez’s directorial debut, and not because of the film itself, but because of how its director got 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 movies, so after completing his film studies at the University of Texas, he tried to work in movies as a technician or director with null results. He soon realized that if he wanted to direct a movie he would have to finance it himself. But neither he nor his family had the resources for it, so he managed to quickly raise enough money to allow him 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 medical research laboratories in New Mexico. While he was hospitalized for several weeks in the facility, he took the opportunity to write the script. It was ‘El mariachi’, which would eventually become a trilogy. Rodriguez was then 24 years old.
The film cost the $7,000 Rodriguez received for his contribution to science. The money was spent mainly on buying a good camera with many features, which would allow him to shoot without problems. The plot followed a Mariachi, a peaceful man who only wants to play his guitar to carry on his family’s tradition. When he arrives in Acuña, a town on the Mexican border with the United States, in search of 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 account 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 a roof over his head in exchange for playing. The dealer and his men, who confuse the mariachi with the gunman, will start a relentless hunt throughout the city to kill him and get his guitar case. Faced with the persecution to which he is subjected, the Mariachi is forced to kill or be killed and become, much to his chagrin, a gunman. Attracted by the owner of the bar, kidnapped by the trafficker, the mariachi will go to his ranch willing to rescue her at any cost.
Once he bought the camera, he has no money left for more, so Robert Rodriguez decides that in addition to writing the script and directing the film, he will also be the editor, the musician, the camera operator and the person in charge of sound. In addition, he gets interpreter friends such as Carlos Gallardo, Consuelo Gómez or Jaime de Hoyos to work without pay, in exchange for receiving his salary when the benefits film. For this, he plans to allocate the film to the Latin American home video market, convinced that he was going to make money. However, with the film finished Columbia liked it enough to buy and distribute the film and pay off the debts. ‘El mariachi’ becomes the lowest budget film ever distributed by a major, as well as the first American film released in Spanish by a multinational.
The film recounted the process of the loss of certain values of a musician until he became a gunman, on a path that was always going down. The film is presented at the Sundance Festival, where it wins the audience award. It premiered in the United States and Mexico in September 1992. A few months later, in February 1993, it was selected by the Berlin Festival for a special session. In Spain it opens 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 shot in 2003.
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