Shorts by Robert Rodriguez

In 1995, Robert Rodriguez made Salma Hayek and Antonio Banderas famous. After the success of Desperado, the Mexican-American director went on to make the blockbusters Sin City, Once Upon a Time in Mexico and Spy Kids.

His latest, Shorts, is about three kids who have fun with a rainbow rock that grants anyone wishes – until it falls into the wrong hands. The movie was written with the help of his 10-year-old son, Rebel, who also plays "Lug" in the film.

We took a trip down to Rodriguez's Troublemaker Studios in Austin, Texas to talk about pochos, the '80s and video games.
How do you go from Sin City to a kids movie?

Cause they're not that far apart… they're all fantasies. I'm a cartoonist and it's not that different to have kids with jet packs on Spy Kids from having guys in Desperado shoot missiles from guitar cases.

If I made movies like Shorts and then made movies like Se7en, that would be totally schizophrenic.

Do you feel Mexican or American?

I grew up Mexican-American so you're kind of unclaimed by both sides in a way.

Which is kinda nice, because here, it's like "Oh, he's a Mexican director." You go to Mexico and it's "Oh, he's a pocho." That's why a lot of my movies take place at the border. I like that you have one foot in each side. You can make a very American movie or you can make a very Latin movie because you've got the best of both.

Do your kids movies have an '80s bent?

There's a playfulness to all my movies that kind of stems from that era. I remember that being a very magical time for me. I think it was a great decade for imaginative film making. That's just always kind of stuck with me.

Do you show your kids movies from when you were a kid and tell them: "Hey, this is what I was into when I was your age"?

Yeah, one of my sons loves Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark – I thought that would be too dated for them, but it holds up really well. They can't get enough of those movies.

Do you think texting, video games and/or the Internet make kids less creative?

[Laughs] Well, my sons tries to run as fast as Sonic the Hedgehog and he runs into walls.

The more knowledge you have about technology the less limiting it is. If all you know about technology is turning on the computer and playing this one single game, that's a limit you're putting on yourself. You can do so much more with that computer.

That's what is hard. A lot of parents don't know how to use it, so they can't really teach the kids.

My parents were really savvy, my dad lent me his VCR when I was 12 – he didn't even know how to hook it up – and I was filming movies and taping shows. No one at my school had anything like that. I couldn't even believe this thing existed. Now my kids are doing that to me, showing me how to do things and I'm like "How'd you figure that out?"

Your kids speak a little Spanish, right?

Yeah, Elizabeth (Rodriguez's ex-wife) has always spoken to them in Spanish. I would speak in English so they would also learn. We knew they would learn English in school so we spoke mainly Spanish. I didn't speak a lot of Spanish in my house because my parents used it as a secret language with each other.

Raul Julia once said in a speech: "To know two languages it to have two souls." So I was like: "Wow, that sounds pretty cool, everyone would like to have a second soul!"

Things don't always translate, so we wanted our kids to have two souls.

Shorts is in theaters this next Friday, August 21.