“I started off as an actor and actually the only training I’ve ever done has been as an actor. I always knew that that would be one of my biggest strengths…dealing with actors, and writing the characters and getting the best of them and being able to talk actor talk.”– Quentin Tarantino
This past July, as soon as El Rey Network founder Robert Rodriguez completed his participation in the Television Critics Association (TCA) press panel for El Rey’s new series, Matador he gleefully launches into a discussion about The Directors Chair, his mano a mano interview series with notable directors, focusing on the world of filmmaking. His debut interview with Guillermo Del Toro aired July 30. But what has Rodriguez particularly excited today is his two-part session with his frequent collaborator, Quentin Tarantino, which airs Wednesday, August 13 (Vol. 1) and August 27 (Vol. 2) at 9pm (ET/PT) on the El Rey Network.
Rodriguez exclaims, “I’ve been preparing for this interview for 22 years. I have footage of Tarantino going back that far. And I’ve kept study journals that were just a continuation of my book, Rebel Without a Crew. I can say things down to the date and time he said things that turned out ten years later to come true or that would surprise people that he’s forgotten. I have video footage of all kinds of stuff from his first time we did a panel discussion together too. When he was writing Pulp Fiction, I was writing Desperado in the same offices next to each other.”
Rodriguez’s fluency in the world of Tarantino could almost be likened to worshipful stalking, including Rodriguez informally videotaping his friend reading and acting out scenes from early drafts of Kill Bill nine years before it was made, followed by Tarantino’s videotaped reading from a more polished script six years later. Rodriguez believes he is delving into a creative process that no one else would be able to do on an interview show like this.
“A lot of it is coming from me having an overview of someone’s career, having knowledge of things I still don’t know the answer to. I sort of want to probe their minds, kind of like a detective, to piece together why they got where they are. I have been friends with Guillermo del Toro since he began. But it was only through that televised conversation—distilled from a three-hour interview—that I truly learned who he is, the kind of decisions he made early on and the ones he continues to make.”
Rodriguez points out that he talks a lot about failure, a subject that elicits strong responses from the directors he interviews. He affirms that is usually the most important film in a director’s cannon because it informs how they work from then on. He reveals, “That’s when you can really structure together their creative story. So, a lot of it are things that I generally want to know that I also know it would be useful to an audience.
“It is very inspiring to an audience to hear some of these revelations that no one has heard before, things that previously only I was privy to, that I can pinpoint and say, ‘This happened then. Why?’ And, then, it really shows the process and the mystery of the process and how nobody knows really how something can turn out. But in hindsight, we can piece it together. As for me, I am so glad I kept such thorough diaries and that I have such connections with a lot of the filmmakers.”
El Rey Network Presents: The Director’s Chair is produced by Troublemaker Studios and Skip Film in association with FactoryMade Ventures. Executive producers are Robert Rodriguez, Skip Chaisson, John Fogelman and Cristina Patwa.
El Rey Network is a new 24-hour English language network founded by filmmaker Robert Rodriguez. Curated by Rodriguez and his artistic collective, the network’s action-packed content is anchored by original signature dramas, feature films, grindhouse genre, cult classic action, and horror/sci-fi.
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