oh wow - Robert Rodruigez on his next film (after Spy Kids 2):

O: It didn't do that well (Ed: Desperado) when it first came out, did it?

RR: No. People sense that it was just a movie way ahead of its time, and if people had kept making those kinds of Latin genre movies, it would be huge business today. But no one ever followed up on that; it just kind of came out, and more people caught on to it later. So I told the studio, "Okay, I'll make one, but it's gotta be epic. And it's gotta be called Once Upon A Time in Mexico. And they said, "Sure." I never thought I'd make the movie. I just thought it was such a hassle to shoot on film, and to go down there again and make a movie in Mexico on film; I just thought, you know, "Life's too short." Then when those HD cameras came around, suddenly all those projects I thought were just impossible felt suddenly doable. Actors' strike was coming up—Yeah, I could write this script in five days, prep in two, we'll shoot in seven weeks!—and that's what we did. It's done now. The studio couldn't believe it; all their movies are over $100 million and still shooting, and they're like, "Man, how'd you do that?" HD, and the system, the process being simplified. It was a 10-year anniversary from when I did Mariachi, so I thought, you know, production designer, DP, I'm going to do all that stuff again. But we had a huge cast—Johnny Depp, and Willem Dafoe, Antonio, Salma, Eva Mendes, Rubén Blades, Mickey Rourke—we had a huge cast for this giant home movie. It looks like a Sergio Leone; it's on widescreen; it looks like we were down there a year shooting. It looks huge! The studio can't believe it. It's this big epic movie about Mexico.

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