Known for his guerilla approach to filmmaking, getting shit done efficiently and under budget, Robert Rodriguez is a multi-faceted creator with a passion for championing aspiring artists into the industry. He’s a writer, director, cinematographer, editor, do-it-all auteur and while many filmmakers of his stature may lose sight of those early adventures—those movies practically strung together with gum, tape and popsicle sticks— Rodriguez has never forgotten those roots and humble beginnings always putting a stake in the lessons it’s taught him along the way. This is exactly why his latest project, the $7,000-budgeted “Red 11” is arguably the filmmaker’s most personal endeavor to date, acting as the manifestation of Rodriguez’s continued passion for mentorship and teaching.
Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of his made-on-a-shoestring-budget filmmaking debut “El Mariachi,” which launched his career, Rodriguez wanted to challenge himself by creating a new film made for no more than $7,000 as a way to inspire young artists intimidated by the daunting task of filmmaking on a micro-budget. Heavily involving both his sons, Racer and Rebel, the experimental project serves as part masterclass, and part family bonding exercise, as Rodriguez takes the real-life story of how he sold his body for medical research to pay for “El Mariachi” and flips it into “Red 11,” a heightened grindhouse suspense thriller (should we expect any less?).
It’s important to note that “Red 11” did not initially start out as a feature-length narrative, in fact, its intended purpose was to be used as a teaching tool that would be paired with his in-depth docuseries depicting the grassroots of filmmaking. As the filmmaker himself explained during his SXSW masterclass, “The Robert Rodriguez Film School,” the combination of “Red 11” with his docuseries was supposed to serve as an updated and visual iteration of his influential diary “Rebel Without a Crew.” The concept was to document his collaboration with his son Racer, using him as a conduit for aspiring filmmakers as he took the plunge into movie making. It wasn’t until the project began to progress that the idea began to round itself out into a fully rendered narrative.
And so, to view “Red 11” as just another Robert Rodriguez film is a bit unfair and defeats the purpose of what he was working to accomplish and set out to do all these years. As an instructional, hands-on workshop, “Red 11” clearly illustrates what one can accomplish when they stop worrying about what they don’t have and create with what resources are available to them–allowing the creativity to flow and ultimately fuel the project. Rodriguez is a resourceful problem solver at heart, and perhaps one of his greatest lessons is to try and teach people to think inventively. The greatest irony of the entire film is how it (and unintentionally as Rodriguez pointed out) functions as an allegory for the director’s filmmaking school of thought illuminating his own personal journey.
There are characters such as Score, the most obvious, who is literally composing music for every scenario the protagonists find themselves in, making for some meta humor that sometimes overstays its welcome. Then there’s Red 11 himself (Roby Attal playing a fictional Robert Rodriguez) who dreams of making it big as a filmmaker. His journey eventually takes him to the foot of a pharmaceutical company looking to extract his abilities for mass production which can be read as big budget studios looking to siphon Rodriguez’s creativity for profit. This experiment can essentially be boiled down into one line uttered by the Head Doc (Steve Brudniak) of the research facility, “Your shirt keeps changing, but you never do,” putting forth the notion that Rodriguez may have gotten older and perfected his craft, but the director is still of the same mindset he had when making films for roughly $7,000, and no amount of studio influence can change how he approaches the basics of fundamentally visual storytelling.
As a film, “Red 11” isn’t revolutionary, but it’s a manic, surreal journey into the creative process of Robert Rodriguez that serves as a nice allegory to the director’s own observations on filmmaking. It’s a grindhouse thriller with that signature Rodriguez style but plays as more of an enlightening proof of concept more than anything else. The narrative is convoluted and often gets bogged down by its on-the-nose meta-commentary, but that’s ok, and not really the point of this exercise. When paired with his invaluable docuseries, Rodriguez provides a new generation of filmmakers with the roadmap for how they too can become that same inventive and imaginative rebel on the fringes still marching to the beat of his own drum.