Interview: Robert Rodriguez of ‘Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D’

Interview: Robert Rodriguez of ‘Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D’

Posted on August 15, 2011 at 12:30 pm

Robert Rodriguez is a ground-breaking movie director whose first film, “El Mariachi,” was made on a micro budget of $7000 (with another $220,000 after it was purchased for release).  He is known for striking visuals and ultra-violence in movies like Once Upon a Time in Mexico and “From Dusk til Dawn” and for wildly imaginative family movies like Shorts and the Spy Kids series.  Rodriguez continues to operate outside of the film-making establishment.  He has established his own film-making set-up in his home town of Austin, Texas, and works with his family, writing, editing, shooting, and directing himself, with his ex-wife, Elizabeth Avellan, and his sister as his producers, and his cousin Danny Trejo appearing in many of his movies, including this one as “Uncle Machete.”

I spoke to him about the fourth in the “Spy Kids” series, this one in “4D.”

What does 4D mean?

It’s been a very scrappily innovative series since the beginning.  In “Spy Kids 2” we started shooting digital.  And with the digital camera, I thought, “Hey, I think I could bring 3D back.”  It hadn’t been tried in 20 years.  I tried it with “Spy Kids 3” and that became the biggest “Spy Kids” of all, and Jeffrey Katzenberg took note of that and said, “We’re really going to bring 3D back.”  In keeping with the series, with everyone being 3D, we really had to go to 4D.  I remembered a film with “Odorama” called “Polyester.”  That wasn’t a family film, but I said, “That would be a terrific gimmick in a family movie and I’m sure the technology has gotten a lot better.”  It has — everything doesn’t smell like batteries.

How do you keep the smells from colliding with each other?

They don’t do that any more.  It used to be that all the smells had a real chemical base to them and they all started smelling the same after about the third or fourth one. Once you got to the dirty socks, everything kind of smelled that way.  But now they call stay really distinct.  The technology has really gotten better, and I didn’t have to do anything but pick which flavors I wanted and they put them on the card for me.  And it’s free, just as with the 3D movie where we gave the glasses away for free as well.  It’s a level of interactivity that you just don’t get in a movie.  Kids are so into interactive things like video games for entertainment.  A movie can be very passive by comparison.  This brings back the active excitement of putting yourself one step closer to the actors and the characters on screen because you’re smelling exactly what they’re smelling at the same time.  In the tests we did, the kids felt it was really a home run as far as making them feel they were a part of the action.  That’s what you hope to do with another dimension, just make them feel closer to what is going on in the movie.

One of my favorite things about theThe Spy Kids Trilogy is the fantastic gadgets the kids get to use.  What’s your favorite gadget in this film?

There’s a dog they could never understand who watches over the kids in the house and he turns out to be a robot dog voiced by Ricky Gervais.  That’s probably my favorite.  He can do just about anything.  He’s like a multi-tool gadget knife and James Bond car all built into a dog.  And another of my favorite gadgets is the hammer hands that the boy puts on, like Hulk hands — they can smash through anything you touch.  I think my little boy would really love them.

I love the way the “Spy Kids” movies have a lot of action but very little violence.

There’s a very comic line to the action and a lot of it comes back on the kids themselves, so it really promotes adventure and not violence.  That’s what parents have always loved about the series.  I’m always very careful not to put anything over the kids heads in my family films.

Is there anything you wanted to include in this one that you didn’t get to do?

I wanted to do a James Bond-type song over the end credits with the dog’s head like Sheena Easton but we didn’t make it happen.  Maybe next time!

How do you cast a villain? What do you look for?

You want a surprising quality.  The villains in my movies are never really villains; they’re just misguided.  The children always teach the villain a lesson.  They don’t defeat him.  This movie’s villain is the Timekeeper, and he’s very much me.  I’m always worried about time there is.  Seeing my kids grow up so fast, I always want to freeze time.  So he is just a little eccentric and it turns out he has a tremendous amount of heart.  He’s a super-villain with family values.  You need someone who’s a real chameleon.  I knew Jeremy Piven could create three or four distinct characters and pull it all together.  He has a lot of heart as an actor.

The “Spy Kids” movies are always about the importance of family.  In the earlier movies, there was a typical nuclear family but in this one there’s an issue a lot of kids have to deal with — adapting to a blended family.

I got the idea from seeing Jessica Alba on the set of “Machete” with her baby, but dressed for filming.  I thought, “Wow, she kind of looks like a spy, and having to deal with this baby — wouldn’t that be cool as an element in the ‘Spy Kids’ movies.”  I said to her, “You should be the mother in the new ‘Spy Kids’ movie and have to take the baby on a spy mission.”  She said, “I’d probably have to be a step-mother because I am too young to be the mother of school-age kids.”  So I thought, “that’s even better.”  She’d be harboring this big secret and kids are really sensitive.  They know when someone is hiding something from them.  So they don’t really like her as a stepmom because they can tell she is not being honest.  Through this mission they find out what her secret is and everyone becomes closer because of it.  I thought that would add a really great wrinkle to the whole idea of what family means.

I also like the way the kids in your movies are real kids but also very brave and capable.

Kids crave things that empower them.  Seeing kids on screen flying around saving the world gets into their dreams and they identify with it and pay-act it out.  I saw it in my own two youngest, who weren’t born when the first ones came out.  I told them I made them but they did not really understand what that meant.  They just like them and pretend to be spies and to be strong.

And Machete is in this movie?

Danny Trejo’s code name in the original “Spy Kids” movie was Machete.  We were doing a nod to this idea for a movie that we never got off the ground.  We had been talking about doing a “Machete” movie since “Desperado.”  So we said, “We should make your character’s code name ‘Machete.'”  His name was really Isadore.  He’s not the same character as in the movie “Machete!”

That’s good to know, but I hope he doesn’t text.

No, he doesn’t text.  Some things are sacred!

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Behind the Scenes Directors Interview Writers

Spy Kids

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:17 am

B+
Lowest Recommended Age: Kindergarten - 3rd Grade
Profanity: One brief almost-swear word
Alcohol/ Drugs: None
Violence/ Scariness: Some peril, mostly comic
Diversity Issues: Strong female characters, several Latino leads
Date Released to Theaters: 2001
Date Released to DVD: August 15, 2011
Amazon.com ASIN: B004SIPAFK

This week’s release of the fourth in the “Spy Kids” series is a good reason to revisit the original.

Imagine James Bond crossed with “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” and you might have an idea of what to expect in “Spy Kids,” the best family movie of the spring. It has just the right combination of giddy fantasy, exciting adventure, wonderful special effects, and sly comedy to be ideal for 7-12 year-olds and their families. It is doubly welcome, after the terrible “See Spot Run,” and especially because it features strong females and characters and performers from the Latino culture.

Carmen and Juni Cortez (Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara) are the children of Gregorio (Antonio Banderas) and Ingrid (Carla Gugino), once the cleverest spies in the world, but now loving parents who make a living as consultants. Or so they say.

It turns out that once the kids go to bed, Gregorio and Ingrid flip a few switches to connect to a command center that keeps them involved in spy missions, though now from a safe distance.

When top secret agents start disappearing, Gregorio and Ingrid call on “Uncle Felix” (Cheech Marin) to watch the kids and climb back into their spy gear to go off and save the world. But then they, too, disappear, and it is up to Carmen and Juni to rescue their parents, and, while they’re at it, the rest of the world, too. But first, they have to learn to respect and trust each other.

They also have to learn how to use a bunch of gadgets that would leave James Bond, Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, and even Inspector Gadget green with envy. I loved the way that instead of ray guns or other destructive devices the kids use fantasy versions of stuff that kids know best. They fight the bad guys with bubble gum that gives the enemy an electric shock, silly string that turns into cement, and, that ultimate dream, a back-pack-y sort of thing that enables them to fly. Similarly, instead of scary ninjas or soldiers, most of the bad guys are either thumb-shaped robot creatures who are literally all thumbs or a bunch of robot children whose most menacing aspect is glowing eyes and super strength.

Any good adventure story needs a great villain, and this one has the always-great Alan Cummings as Floop, the star of Juni’s favorite television program who is also the mastermind of the plot to create an army of robot children. His sidekick is Minion (Tony Shaloub), who transforms the captured spies into backwards-speaking, silly-looking mutants for Floop’s show. But one of the interesting things about the movie is that nearly everyone turns out to be something different than what they or others thought, even Minion and Floop. The transforming in the movie is not limited to the mutants.

Parents should know that the movie includes a little bit of potty humor (which most kids will find hilarious) and one almost-swear word. Younger children might be frightened by the mutant creatures, but most will find them more silly than scary. Characters are in comic peril and there is a certain amount of head-bonking violence, but no one even gets a scratch except for one villain whose encounter with flames leaves her having a very bad hair day.

Be sure to tell kids that the thumb-robots were inspired by drawings writer/director Robert Rodriguez did when he was 12, and ask them to come up with some pictures of things they’d like to put into a movie someday. Good topics for family discussion include how to know which secrets to share, the challenges of siblinghood (a two-generation challenge in the Cortez family) and the movie’s conclusion that spy work is easy compared to keeping a family together, which is not only more of a challenge, but more important.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” and “James and the Giant Peach.”

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