The biography of Robert Rodriguez reads like an aspiring film maker’s dream. After spending his childhood making Super-8 home movies, the director made a budget feature length flick that caused a bidding war in Hollywood.

Since then, Rodriguez has made some of the most inventive movies seen in decades. Total Film sat down with him to go over his bio and find out why he’s still the golden boy of the movie industry.

It's tempting to view Once Upon A Time in Mexico as a return to your roots. Is that a correct assumption?

Robert Rodriguez: It's right to some degree. To the public it seems like the right thing, but actually I was making movies like Spy Kids before Mariachi, so Spy Kids was a return to my roots!

This was a return to my artificial roots, a return to a very strange series. While I was making Desperado, Quentin [Tarantino] came to the set to shoot his scene and he said: “This is great; this is your Dollars trilogy! Mariachi's like A Fistful of Dollars, Desperado's For A Few Dollars More, you got a chance to make a Dollars trilogy!

“But now you gotta do the epic, now you gotta do The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. And you gotta call it Once Upon A Time in Mexico!”

So it was Tarantino's idea, originally?

Rodriguez: Yeah, but I said to him, "Let's just get through this movie, and then I'll go on and do other things."

Years later, the studio kept calling and saying, "Hey, let's do another Desperado." So I said, "Well, if we do another one it has to be really epic, and it has to be called Once Upon A Time In Mexico..."

So I started writing it. I thought, "If it's The Good, The Bad and the Ugly of the series, it's gonna have to be more epic and have multiple characters." And the first character I started writing was Johnny Depp's CIA agent...

Who's clearly the best thing in it…

Rodriguez: Yeah, probably the best-written part was his. I thought it'd be fun to have someone who's really mean and nasty and vile.

Then he does this big change in the second half, and becomes this very iconic action guy. So it was fun. You could make him as vile as you wanted because you knew he was gonna end up being almost sympathetic, in a way.

Johnny Depp as an action guy - we must have you to thank for his Pirates of the Caribbean appearance, then...

Rodriguez: Well, at one point he was doing a scene where he had to spin around and shoot a guy in the head. I could see he was really getting into it. And I said, "I didn't think you liked to do action." He said, "You converted me."

So, yeah, I think I converted him on this movie. 'Cos like a month later, he signed up for Pirates of the Caribbean.

Despite going for a more epic feel, you still made Mexico for less than $30 million. Why is it so important for you to make movies for so little money?

Rodriguez: I like not having that money hose to wash away the challenges. If you don't have the money, instead of thinking, "How am I going to spend $120 million today?" You're thinking, "How am I going to make this movie good?"

Is it true that when you came to do Spy Kids 2, Miramax offered you a bigger budget than you had on Spy Kids and you turned it down?

Rodriguez:  [Miramax boss] Harvey Weinstein said, "You have to spend $60 million on the next movie, because the first one cost $36 million."
I knew what he meant: make it bigger and better, which I intended to do. And it was already going to be that - but for the same budget. Even though it had twice as many effects.

How do you manage to make your films so cheap?

Rodriguez: I just take on a few more jobs, and that really saves a lot of time and money. Also that makes things feel more homemade, more personal, and I can really put myself into every job.

You can't pay someone enough to have that kind of passion because for them it's another day. But you're dreaming about it each night.

Sounds like you're obviously influenced by the new generation of independent filmmakers...

Rodriguez: Yeah. It was really Steven Soderbergh with sex, lies and videotape... It made sense how he did it and I can relate to it. Spike Lee, too - his work got me thinking about being able to pull it off.

What do you think of these guys who go out and spend $100 million on a movie?

Rodriguez: I think it's just reverse thinking. It makes no sense. You get a chance to do a movie and you figure, "Well, let's try and get as much money as we can from the studio so I have the best chance of making the best movie."

But it's always the wrong move. Because the more money you have, the studio's all over you, questioning everything you're doing.

It's such a hassle to shoot with the system that Hollywood's created. That's why most directors only make one movie every three or four years.

So you mean to say you've never had any nasty run-ins with interfering studio heads?

Rodriguez: No, it's been great. 'Cos the first movie I did was El Mariachi. So from then on, I've done my own shit. You have a licence to kill: you just go in there and say, "I want this much money and I'm going to do it this way," and that's that.

It's so inexpensive, there's no fight. They'll let you do whatever you want.

What about The Faculty, though? That must have involved some compromise with the studio...

Rodriguez: It wasn't compromise. I made a deal with Miramax that said, "You green light four of my scripts and I'll do a fifth movie of your choice." And their choice was The Faculty.

It was a Kevin Williamson movie, and I got to work with him and learn about his process. It was also a way to try out Austin, Texas. I wanted to shoot more movies in Austin. Plus I wanted to try out more effects, I wanted to learn effects.

So no, I don't feel it's really all my movie - that's why I didn't put 'A Film by Robert Rodriguez'. But I certainly enjoyed making it, and I enjoyed finding new talent. You know, giving Elijah Wood the part, and Josh Hartnett - that was his first movie.

Have you reached a point in your career now when actors want to work with you because you're Robert Rodriguez?

Rodriguez: Yeah, it becomes much easier. Especially when actors see you're someone who has a lot of control over what they do. That's a big draw.

People also love working on my movies because they know I shoot them very quickly. They're not there for months doing nothing.

That's how I got Harvey Keitel to work for me on From Dusk Till Dawn. He saw Four Rooms and he said, "How did you get that performance out of Antonio Banderas? I want to work with you."

What made you think of casting George Clooney, who was then best known as ER's Dr Ross, to play mean bastard Seth Gecko in From Dusk Till Dawn?

Rodriguez: I saw him on ER and I thought, "He's just a soft doctor." Then I saw him on a talk show, brooding 'cos he didn't like the host. I thought, "That's the guy right there."

So I called him over and met him. He rode in on a Harley. He was like a man's man. I thought: "This is the guy! He's not the soft doctor!" That's why I gave him the role.

That must have been an exciting time.

Rodriguez: Yeah, it was a cool time. I'd love to do something else with Quentin that bends genres like that. You know, I was originally gonna do the second half in 3-D!

I told Quentin about it and he said: "That's a great idea!" But when I looked into the cameras, they were those old film cameras, it was still like the Jaws 3-D system, and we abandoned that whole idea.

Of course, you've done your 3-D movie now - Spy Kids 3-D. Do you think you've started a new trend?

Rodriguez: I dunno, it'd be cool. But you can't just put it in as a gimmick. People would get very tired of that. It should be part of the story, and I can't really think of a story that would be conducive to 3-D being that much a part of it.

Is it true you turned down directing Spider-Man?

Rodriguez: No, I went and asked when James Cameron had it. I said, "You're never going to make that movie, you're stuck in legal bounds. If you don't make it I'd love to do it. That would be like the one big movie I would consider doing."

So are you a big Spider-Man fan?

Rodriguez: No, but I knew it was like the last big superhero franchise that hadn't been done 'cos of all the legal entanglement. I thought that would be fun. I'd been offered Superman Lives and Planet Of The Apes, which I almost did with Cameron producing.

And those kind of movies are hard to do, they're just work. All these people watching you: "I thought that Spider-Man was supposed to look like..." I'm never having anyone tell me that about my movies. "Hey, Mariachi isn't supposed to be wearing brown, man, he's supposed to be wearing black!"

You can never please everybody. They're gonna be bitching and moaning. You don't need that hassle. It just takes away your creativity when you have to be a slave to the legacy or to the fans. I turned down X-Men and things like that, too.

Speaking of creativity, you regularly direct, produce, script, shoot, edit and even score your own movies. Would you describe yourself as an auteur?

Rodriguez: I don't know, it's a strange thing. I've just always made 'em this way. Mariachi I did that way out of necessity because I couldn't afford a crew. I just loved it so much, it didn't feel like work.

You ask any director what their favourite movie was to work on, and they'll always say their first movie, because that's before they got bogged down by the system. I never wanted that to happen. It's not that I really feel like an auteur, it feels more like...  It's just practical movie-making. It makes sense to do it that way.

You learned how to score orchestrally for Spy Kids 2. Learned anything else new recently?

Rodriguez: It's not new, but I did pick the saxophone back up again. I hadn't played since I was 12. That's a lot of fun. [Laughs]

So I'm learning it again and it's like, "Well, I'm better than I was before because I've met so many saxophone players since then who I've learned tricks from."

So should we expect a more jazzy score for your next movie?

Rodriguez: There's actually some saxophone in Spy Kids 3-D. It's more a bluesy kind of nasty saxophone, though.

What are you planning next?

Rodriguez: I'm planning a thriller that I might do later in the year, and I'm doing a CG animated movie. I started on it a couple of weeks ago and it could come out as early as next year. I can't say what it's about, but it's a really cool idea. It's my best idea, I think.

A CG animated movie for less than $40 million?

Rodriguez: Yeah. Do it for $30 million. And just do it quickly, you know? I'm excited about it...