Robert Rodriguez (@Rodriguez) is a director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, editor, and musician. He is also the founder and chairman of El Rey Network, a genre-busting cable network. There, he hosts one of my favorite interview-format shows, The Director’s Chair. While a student at the University of Texas at Austin, Robert wrote the script for his first feature film while he was a paid subject in a clinical experiment at a drug research facility. That paycheck covered the cost of shooting over two weeks. The film, El Mariachi, went on to win the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival and became the lowest-budget movie ever released by a major studio. He went on to write, produce, and direct many successful films, including Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn, the Spy Kids franchise, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Frank Miller’s Sin City, Machete, and others. You might also enjoy my interview with Robert on The Tim Ferriss Show podcast.