Robert Rodriguez came to my school today!!!

So today I was lucky enough to see Robert Rodriguez speak. He's a graduate from UT with a major in RTF (like me!), and he came today to talk to a bunch of us about his life and answer questions.

The main themes of what he said were "shoot for the stars, because if you miss you'll land on the clouds," and don't give up your dreams, because most people do anyways, so it's not that far fetched for you to succeed. He also talked about how a lot of what he's done in film has come from his idea that you should use whatever tools you have to their full potential. Just be creative and have an imagination.

Other than that, he talked a lot about the technical aspects of filmmaking. And how the first time he met George Lucas was very "Wizard of Oz"-ish. Shooting on digital is the future. Life goes by fast. George Clooney's a cool guy. Make your own movies. Oliver Stone is kind of hard-headed. Angelina Jolie's kid thinks he's Shark Boy. School sucks. His next project is going to be called Shorts. He described it as "Pulp Fiction" for kids. It's a bunch of short films that are intertwined and told out of order. Cool. He said he likes "empowering" kids.

He's also inspired me to get a day planner. A real one. Like, paper and pen.

Here's his short film Bedhead that won a lot of awards and sort of sparked his career.