El Mariachi is a 1992 action thriller film. It is the debut film of writer/director Robert Rodriguez.
The Spanish language film was shot in the northern Mexican border town of Ciudad Acuña with a mainly amateur cast. The US$ 7,000 production was originally intended for the Hispanic home video market, but executives at Columbia Pictures liked the film so much that they bought the American distribution rights. Columbia eventually spent several times more than the 16 mm film's original budget on 35 mm transfers, promotion, marketing and distribution.
The success of Rodriguez's directorial debut led him to create two further entries, Desperado (1995) and Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003), in what came to be known as the Mariachi Trilogy.
Plot
El Mariachi tells the story of an out of work musician traveling through Mexico. He dreams of being a big-time Mariachi like his forefathers before him. He arrives in the small town of Acuña, hoping to find work in some of the local cantinas and clubs. He is unable to find employment, and decides to check in at a local hotel while he continues his search for work. Meanwhile, a recently escaped convict by the name of Azul is looking for revenge against his former partner Moco (short for "Maurice"). Moco failed to give Azul his cut of their criminal profits, so Azul has been killing Moco's men using a stash of weapons hidden in his guitar case. Through a chance encounter, El Mariachi and Azul accidentally exchange guitar cases.
A group of hitmen are dispatched to kill Azul, but because of the exchanged guitar cases they mistake El Mariachi for the criminal and find only an innocent guitar in Azul's case. El Mariachi kills four of Moco's men in self-defense. As El Mariachi seeks refuge in a bar owned by a woman, Dominó, he falls in love with her. Unfortunately her bar is financed by Moco, in order to gain her affection. In the process, El Mariachi is captured and taken to Moco who correctly identifies him as the wrong man, and sets him free.
Meanwhile, Azul, who has no directions to Moco's home, has taken Dominó with him. Dominó agrees in order to save El Mariachi's life. When they arrive, Azul pretends to take Dominó hostage in order to gain entry. Moco soon realizes that Dominó has fallen for El Mariachi and, in a rage, shoots her and Azul. Suddenly, El Mariachi arrives to find the woman he loves gunned down. Moco then shoots El Mariachi's left hand, rendering him useless as a guitar player. However, overcome with grief and rage, El Mariachi is able to acquire a weapon and kill Moco, taking revenge for Dominó's death.
El Mariachi leaves the town, on Dominó's motorbike, with her pitbull, and her letter-opener as token. His dreams to become a mariachi have shattered, and his only protection for his future are the weapons of Azul, which he took along in the guitar-case.
Cast
| Actor |
Role |
| Carlos Gallardo |
El Mariachi |
| Consuelo Gómez |
Dominó |
| Peter Marquardt |
Moco |
| Reinol Martínez |
Azul |
| Jaime de Hoyos |
Bigotón |
| Ramiro Gómez |
Waiter |
| Jesús López Viejo |
Clerk |
| Luis Baro |
Dominó's Assistant |
| Óscar Fabila |
The Boy |
Production
The movie was shot in numerous locations in Acuña, Coahuila. Rodriguez had a $7,000 budget, almost half of which he raised by participating in experimental clinical drug testing in Texas.[1] The opening scenes feature a shootout in a jail. It was the local Acuña jail situated on the outskirts of the town.[2] Also, both the female warden and the male guard were both the real-life warden and guard; Rodriguez thought it convenient because it saved him the cost of hiring actors and renting clothing.[2] The intro bar scene was shot inside the Corona Club, and exterior street scenes were shot on Hidalgo Street. The shoot out was filmed outside at "Boy's Town" the local red-light district.
Not everyone in Acuña was pleased at first: local journalists Ramiro Gómez and Jesús López Viejo were especially critical of the filming, and to win them over, Rodriguez gave them small parts in the film. Due to the high body count of the film (i.e. people whose characters had been shot could obviously not return), Rodriguez increasingly had difficulties finding adult men to play thugs; for that reason, when the Mariachi meets Moco's gang in the end scene, the gang consists mainly of teenagers.[2]
On the El Mariachi DVD, Rodriguez devotes both a DVD commentary and an "Extras" section to explaining the tricks of filming a feature-length movie with just $7,000. Rodriguez heavily stresses the need for cost cutting, "because if you start to spend, you cannot stop anymore." This is why he cut costs at every possible opportunity, such as not using a slate (instead, the actors signaled the number of scene and number of take with their fingers), not using a dolly (he held the camera while being pushed around in a wheelchair), not using professional lighting (essentially using two 200-watt clip-on desk lamps) and not hiring a film crew (the actors not used in the scenes helped out). Also, Rodriguez believed in filming scenes sequentially in one long take with just one camera: every few seconds, he froze the action, so he could change the camera angle and make the audience believe he had a couple of cameras at the same time.[2] Also, bloopers were kept in to save film: noted by Rodriguez were scenes when the Mariachi jumps on a bus, where Rodriguez is visible; the Mariachi bumping his weapon into a street pole; him failing to throw his guitar case on a balcony and Dominó twitching her face when she is already dead. In the end, he used only 24 rolls of film and only spent $7,225 of the $9,000 he had planned.[1]
Rodriguez also gave insight into his low budget approach to simulate machine gun fire. The problem was that when using real guns, as opposed to the specially designed blank firing firearms used in most films, the blanks would jam the weapon after being fired once. To solve this, Rodriguez filmed the firing of one blank from different angles, dubbed canned machine gun sounds over it, and had the actors drop bullet shells to the ground to make it look like as if multiple rounds had been shot. In addition, he occasionally used water guns instead of real guns to save money. Rodriguez also describes that the squibs they used in shootout scenes were simply condoms filled with fake blood fixed over weightlifting belts.[2]
Rodriguez also noted the use of improvisation. The tortoise which crawls in front of the Mariachi was not planned, but was kept as a good idea.[2] Similarly, there is a scene in which the Mariachi buys a coconut, but Rodriguez forgot to show him paying for the fruit; instead of driving back to the place to shoot additional scenes, Rodriguez decided to build in a voice-over in which the Mariachi asserts that the coconuts were for free.[2] Improvisation was also useful to cover up continuity mistakes: at the end of the movie, the Mariachi has his left hand shot, but Rodriguez forgot to bring the metal glove to cover up the actor's hand; he solved it by packing his hand with black duct tape.
In the DVD commentary, Rodriguez describes the acting of Peter Marquardt (who portrayed gangster boss ”Moco”). As the language of the film was Spanish, which Marquardt did not master, he had to learn his lines without understanding what he was saying.[2] The running gag, in which Moco lights up his match using the moustache of his henchman Bigotón, was described by Rodriguez as a means to start and end the film: the end scene is a parody of this scene. Also, Marquardt suffered some physical discomfort in the final shooting scene. When Moco is hit in the chest, his blood squib exploded with such force that he really crumpled to the ground in pain.[2]
Originally, the film was meant to be sold on the Latino video market as funding for another bigger and better project that Rodriguez was contemplating. However, after being rejected from various Latino straight-to-video distributors, Rodriguez decided to send his film (it was in the format of a trailer at the time) to bigger distribution companies where it started to get attention.
Music
For the scene in which the Mariachi delivers a song in front of Dominó, Rodriguez hired a local exterminator. Recording the song with little more than a microphone held next to the musician, Rodriguez pitched the voice to match the voice of Mariachi actor Carlos Gallardo.
Book
The story of El Mariachi's production inspired Rodriguez to write the book Rebel Without a Crew: Or How a 23-Year-Old Filmmaker With $7,000 Became a Hollywood Player.
Awards
El Mariachi won multiple international awards, and writer/producer/director Rodriguez went on to gain international fame, being interviewed on such shows as Sábado Gigante, and going on to make more Hollywood-backed movies such as The Faculty and Sin City.
References
Further reading
- Rodriguez, Robert. Rebel Without a Crew: Or How a 23-Year-Old Filmmaker With $7,000 Became a Hollywood Player. Dutton Signet. ISBN 0452271878.
External links
