Watch this: Robert Rodriguez Revisits The Mexico Trilogy at AFS Cinema

Robert Rodriguez’s career arc is the kind of thing you can’t make up. As a young, broke indie filmmaker, he took a skeleton crew to a rural town in Mexico with seven grand in his pocket (half of which he’d earned as a guinea pig in pharmaceutical trials) to make what he considered a practice film that he expected nobody to see. Instead, he wound up creating a minor miracle of low budget action that caught the attention of Columbia Pictures. This auspicious debut, EL MARIACHI, was the first installment of his now beloved Mexico Trilogy. Today, August 25, 2020, marks the 25th anniversary of the release of the trilogy’s second film, DESPERADO, a much higher-budget affair that gave Antonio Banderas his first American lead role, further cementing his status as a bonafide Hollywood star. From there, Rodriguez never took his foot off the gas, prolifically churning out blockbuster after blockbuster and innovating at the boundaries of modern filmmaking technology. Rodriguez’s willingness to dive head-first into seemingly impossible projects has made for some unbelievable adventures in filmmaking. A couple years ago, we had the great pleasure of hearing some of them when we hosted the Austin-based legend in conjunction with a marathon screening of the Mexico Trilogy. Today, we’re thrilled to share the exhilarating conversation with you.