I'm worth 25 Percent of Robert Rodriguez

That's my theory anyway

Can you imagine if your job and the industry that you work in gave you a number that moved up and down every week and was an indicator of your popularity at work? And everyone you work with could see that number at any time? You’re an architect and there’s a website where you can log in at any given moment and it would tell you that you are the 108,009^th “best” architect? Terrifying? Exciting? Fun? Stupid? Sure. All of it. For all the times I’ve heard a variation of the idea, “Show Business is like high school, but with money,” I can name you a student at Harvard-Westlake High School who would say, “I think Harvard-Westlake is High School with Show Business money.”

You don’t have to imagine what I just described because in my business, this exists. It’s called the Starmeter, and it’s a feature of having an IMDBPro subscription. Which costs money. Unless you’re super cool and a really big part of show business like I am, and then they gift you a subscription. I’m that cool. But I’m not THAT cool. I mean, I get a free sub, but don’t worry, I haven’t let that go to my head. That’s why I’m cool.

What’s my Starmeter number? Glad you asked. It’s 239,770. A bummer I didn’t write this at the end of April, when it would have been at 69,014.

Who’s the tops? Number one today is Matthew Goode. The top writer is Wes Anderson at 15, followed by legend Mel Brooks at 16. Actors beat writers. Big time producers beat writers. Let’s look at who is Hollywood’s TOP LATINX person.

Ana De Armas. Numero Dos. Top Latino Writer? Guillermo Del Toro. Numero 638. But let’s talk about number 1,794 on the charts. Robert Rodriguez. I think he’s amazing. From his first movie, he has been innovating and finding ways to make the movies he wants, the way he wants and to do it outside of the Hollywood system. “El Mariachi,” “Desperado,” “Spy Kids,” “From Dusk Till Dawn.” I met him once. Long ago. I was in Austin for a film and TV festival and I was on a couple of panels and got invited to the VIP dinner/reception, and in he walked, wearing his signature cowboy hat. I think I had just gotten my first show on the air and was feeling good about the prospects of possibly making a living at doing this. We shook hands, I said what an inspiration he was, and we went to our assigned seats. Robert is continuing to innovate and find ways to make things his way. The latest move he’s made is this website…

https://republic.com/rodriguez

He’s crowd funding for his new company, where he says: “I’m creating a new action label, Brass Knuckle Films, where I will develop my next set of movies with you—action film fans—as co-investors and collaborators.” For various amounts pledged, you will be able to invest in the slate of movies he’s going to make, and for a certain amount, you can pitch him your idea for an action movie. There are also ways of skipping the first round of submissions by pledging a higher amount. There’s a process and rounds, but someone is going to get their movie made by this new company, and Robert even tosses out the possibility that, “I might even direct the chosen film.” Smart choice to not say he’s for sure doing it, but the door is open for him if he wants.

Robert achieved his funding goal of $2,000,000 for this new company by the end date of May 16^th. And that’s AMAZING and AWESOME.

It speaks to the passion of making original movies. Something I can’t believe needs to become an evangelical cause. But we’re here now. Original ideas without any underlying intellectual property (IP) like a book, or an old movie or TV show that is being rebooted or reimagined, are not something a lot of the companies are into doing right now.

There are a couple of show ideas I have ready to go out with right now, and my producing partner has been calling around testing the waters on making the appointments for me to go pitch, and buyers are anxious about committing to something without any IP attached to it. My producing partner said she had just gone out on several pitch meetings with an original idea from a pretty big movie writer wanting to go into TV, a writer with a big movie coming out right now, and they couldn’t fine one buyer. “We’re just not doing a lot of things without IP attached right now,” was the feedback from most places.

What do you do? If you say, “Okay, let’s go get a book, or get the rights to an older movie,” you are now competing with all kinds of studios and production companies to get these things. And most of the good books are already snatched up before they even hit the shelves at your local bookstore by agents and managers and producers that have access to these things before most writers do. Well Robert Rodriguez is doing crowd funding to raise money to build a company that is going to make original action films and he got 2,000,000 dollars to do it. That’s one way.

You’re saying, “What does this have to do with the Hollywood popularity machine? The Starmeter?” Glad you asked and thank you for playing along and being the bridge to the next part of this experiment.

If Robert Rodriguez can raise a cool 2 million bucks, I say I’m worth 25 percent of Robert Rodriguez in the Hollywood system and therefore COULD raise 500,000 dollars to make something.

How can I scientifically prove this? Because we know that Hollywood is a science and that all research and testing that is done on any movie or TV show is foolproof and therefore every movie and TV show is a hit, as long as you do what the science of research tells you. That’s etched in stone. Let’s science!

My last math class was in 1987. I got a C. I can see what your next question is.

“If Robert Rodriguez is currently the 1,794^th most popular person in Hollywood right now, and you, The Most Important Chicano in Hollywood That You Don’t Know About, are the 239,770^th most popular person in Hollywood right now, MY math says you’re worth seven and a half percent of Robert Rodriguez. That’s only $149,600 bucks, dude.”

Wow, you really are good at math. Thank you for that. But let’s talk about another HUGE currency in Hollywood – awards. Hollywood loves giving awards to people. It lets us know the work we do matters and when you line up all the awards on top of the baby grand piano that’s in your piano room in your Malibu beach house, they look really sharp. And they say, “Other people think what I do matters.” Which is the most important thing, you know. What other people think of you.

Side note, it is super hard to keep a grand piano in tune near the ocean because of the weather. Humidity or salt or something, I’m not sure. The last science class I took was in 1986.

So for awards, Robert Rodriguez is a member of The Texas Hall of Fame. I’m a brand new inductee of The Sabino High School Hall of Fame and will be accepting that honor in person in September. Robert won The Sundance Audience Prize for his breakout movie, “El Mariachi.” I have won The Imagen Norman Lear Writer Award for a lifetime of making TV. Has Robert been nominated for an EMMY? Sadly, no. “Boba Fett” did not get him there. I’ve been nominated three times and won TWICE. And those are PRIME TIME Emmys, which I’m told are slightly larger than local Emmys and also come with a burner phone hidden in the base of the trophy that allows you one phone call to the head of a studio. Oscar nominations? Zero for each of us. Scientifically, I would say that gains me a few percentage points on the previous math that you insisted on doing to blow my theory out of the water. Let’s call that the OLD MATH, and what I just ran down with awards we’ll call the NEW MATH.

By the NEW MATH, I’d say we’ll double it and now that puts me at 15 percent of Robert Rodriguez.

At this point, I’m willing to admit the whole idea here is dumb to be trying to figure out what I’m worth versus what Robert is worth. I would also say that a lot of Hollywood is dumb ideas being grabbed onto as life rafts while the mid-budget adult drama movie sinks into the ocean.

Of course, the best way to prove this is to crowd fund for a project that I want to do. And see if I can raise…doing the math now, on my fingers, hold on… $300,000! Whew, that was touch and go, but I did it twice to make sure I was doing it right.

But should I? Also, should I feel bad comparing myself to someone who does a totally different type of thing than I do and the only real common thing we have is that we’re both Latino? Should I pledge $1,000 to Robert’s Brass Knuckle Productions to get on the waitlist to see if any funder drops out, so I can just pitch him my idea directly and maybe we join forces and then we ride off into the sunset together? Him on a motorcycle with a skull gas tank, me in my 1964 Lincoln Continental? Is a pitch meeting worth $1,000? Is that how an agent could do their own crowd funding? “A thousand bucks per pitch meeting, kid.” Readers know in my world, agents always say, “kid,” after everything. In any event, stay tuned for more on this topic in the coming weeks.

The larger point here, for me, is there are new ways of doing things in this time we’re in. And it pays to explore them, and not be stuck in the old ways. Which is hard if you’re a veteran and have mostly done things the old ways. I think because I teach, because I keep curiosity as one of my compass points, it is easier for me to move forward and try new things than some other contemporaries. That’s what makes me -

The Most Important Chicano In Hollywood That You Don’t Know About
(currently worth 15 percent of Robert Rodriguez)

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Andy Pages (Cuba) and Kike Hernandez (Puerto Rico) Safe At Home

Here’s a picture of the place I go when I want to relax, feel one with the universe and let the cares of the day go. Where the players of the game have one main goal – to be Safe At Home. There’s a lot of L.A. that doesn’t feel safe at home right now. When I was at the ball park last night, hours after ICE had shown up and wanted to come into the parking lot before the game, and been turned away by the Dodgers, I had a chance to talk to some of the people I see every time I go there. The security guards, the wait staff, ushers. They were all nervous. Worried that the Stadium workers might not show up for work because of ICE being at the stadium. What worried them wasn’t that they were undocumented, because they all were documented. What worried them is that right now, there are people being detained without proof, just rounding them up and sorting it out later. Which I suppose is the point. To make everyone scared. When all everyone wants is the same thing a baseball player wants, to be Safe At Home.

And here’s a place where everyone was safe at home. With ASU and The Sidney Poitier Film School, we sold out two theaters on Wednesday night to screen a movie that doesn’t often get shown, Spanish Language Dracula. Made at the same time as the Bela Legosi Dracula, on the same sets, shot at night with Spanish speaking actors, it’s an amazing movie. I got to talk to Horror historian Justina Bonilla and it felt so good to make that night happen for ASU students, film camp families, and the folks in Norwalk and L.A. ASU has a charter that says among other things that we have a, “fundamental responsibility for the economic, social, cultural and overall health of the communities we serve.” That was in evidence at Milagro Cinemas. Stay tuned.