Cont'd from Part One..

TAPPER:

What is your favorite Rodriguez movie?

TARANTINO:

Oh, that's a good question. Gosh.

TAPPER:

You have to give me one.

TARANTINO:

Yes. Yes. Yes.

TAPPER:

Don't list them all.

TARANTINO:

No, no. If I was going to actually put it right under a big, giant microscope, I would definitely say my favorite piece of filmmaking of his is the whole Mickey Rourke section of "Sin City," just that section right there. And then the other greatest cinematic thing that he has done is the whole opening set piece that starts "Spy Kids." That whole opening sequence where you see how the parents met each other and fell in love…

TAPPER:

What is your favorite Tarantino movie?

RODRIGUEZ:

I think, for me, it is not really the movie itself. It is, but it's just how everything just came together for me at that point in my life. I had just made "El Mariachi." I was at the film festival. I knew I was going to meet this guy. He had some crazy new movie, and I saw "Reservoir Dogs" for the first time. I just bought it last night -- I was at Virgin and they had a blue-ray HD DVD version of it. I bought it there. I wanted the cleanest version possible, just to remember that time period -- That might be my favorite…"Reservoir Dogs."

TAPPER:

You can't talk about your movies without talking about violence in the movies. And it's funny, because –

RODRIGUEZ:

Except for my "Spy Kids" movies…

TAPPER:

Except for the "Spy Kids" movie…But, in general. And the "Grindhouse" movie -- very, very violent, intentionally so. When I saw "Reservoir Dogs," I was pretty stunned by the violence. Horror director Wes Craven walked out of "Reservoir Dogs."

TARANTINO:

Yes, at a film festival in Spain.

TAPPER:

Craven later said he walked out because he felt like you were enjoying the torture and that human suffering was being trivialized. But looking back on it now, from the perspective of 2007, it is not that violent.

TARANTINO:

Well, it really wasn't that violent then either, as far as like what you see as far as on-screen gore. I always actually took it as an incredible compliment, because I know I didn't really show that much. So the fact that I was freaking people out, and people were passing out, and people were leaving the theater -- that was good filmmaking. I didn't show you anything, and I scared the hell out of you.

Brian DePalma always used to say something that was one of his stock-in-trade answers, but it was a really good answer. He said that if you direct violence, you get penalized for doing a good job. Because hacks never get bothered with this question, because their stuff has no effect. But when you actually get to people, then you actually get put under the microscope a little bit more.

TAPPER:

I guess what I'm saying is the evolution of violence just since 1992, in film -- it's huge, especially just in the last few years. Do you think that all the violence in film today is a good thing for society? Have you ever considered that it's part of a problem?

RODRIGUEZ:

This just really comes in waves…look at movies in the '80s. Those movies are extremely violent…and then it went down for a number of years, but then when it resurged again in the early '90s, it became an issue again. And I think it comes up in waves. And this horror wave, like you were saying, remember, people didn't want you to call a movie a horror movie.

TARANTINO:

Yes, when we did "From Dusk Til Dawn" (in 1996), I couldn't call it a horror movie, even though it was, because people were scared of horror films. And all the horror fans -- everyone stayed away. We had to call it a roller-coaster ride.

RODRIGUEZ:

But now over the past couple of years, horror films have suddenly sprung up. Now, people are trumpeting, "We have a horror film and it's unrated and it's brutal and it's…"

TARANTINO:

And we love horror movies. I mean, it's always been the fact that horror films have always kind of been under a dark cloud, and the filmmakers couldn't really fulfill their visions. A lot of them lead to the extreme -- it's that kind of genre. All right? It's like complaining about horses in a Western. It's a Western. You've got to have some horses. I don't care if you're allergic. Don't watch it.

But the thing is now, all of a sudden, all those things that are in the horror films -- if you tried to do them before, it was like, "Oh, that's what will make it not commercial. That'll make it just sort of small, little audience, and it'll scare everybody off and freak everybody out." Now, all of a sudden, they're being embraced. So, to me, it's like a renaissance for horror cinema right now that it's this exciting little thing.

And it didn't start here. It started in Japan. It started six years ago with these violent J-horror movies is what they called them. With directors like Takashi Miike. Per usual, it took Hollywood six years to be infected by it. But what basically happened is these directors now, like Eli Roth and all these guys that they call part of the Splat Pack, they watched these like kind of snuffy Japanese horror movies over the years and they wanted to make their own versions, and that's what we are seeing now.

TAPPER:

But do you think it's a good thing?

RODRIGUEZ:

We're responding to what people actually want. If nobody went to see them, they wouldn't be making more of them. So it's really a matter of, why is the audience's taste like that right now? What is it that makes them want this very extreme escapism? Is it the times that we're in right now? It might be that. Because it does come in waves. There are times when they just don't want anything like that, and then, other times, when it is voraciously taken in.

TARANTINO:

I personally think it's a very good thing. And the reason I think it's a good thing is, to me, it's just aesthetic. It's not a question of society. There's nothing you can do wrong in a movie. It's like there's nothing you can do wrong in a painting or wrong in a song. You can do it badly. You can do it well. Violence is green, all right? And I'm a painter, and, you know, musicals are red and something else is blue. And it's one of my colors.

TAPPER:

Right now, the government is taking a hard look at how movies are marketed to kids, the fact that a lot of horror movies, like the SAW films are getting into the hands of people under the age of 15, through the Internet or DVDs. Is that a concern to you as filmmakers that the government is taking a look at your work?

TARANTINO:

Well, what does that mean, though? They're taking a look at our work, what does that mean?

TAPPER:

Well, that there is a concern about the marketing of violent movies to kids. "Grindhouse" is rated R, and nobody under 17 is supposed to be admitted without an adult. But, in this new era of films and bootlegs and Internet and DVDs, a lot of kids will see these movies. That obviously had an effect on you as a kid. It made you want to be a filmmaker.

TARANTINO:

Oh, I know. Yes…everything you're talking about, whenever it's described as a worst-case scenario, it's like, "Well, that's my life, and I'm doing pretty good."

TAPPER:

But certainly not every child who watches these movies is going to end up as successful and talented as you.

TARANTINO:

But everything that is supposed to be a fate worse than death has actually been fantastic for me, and I had a good time when I was a kid watching these movies.

I have a little joke, but it actually is kind of true, that kids who watch violent movies -- again, who like them, not that you force them -- but if the kids will respond to that naturally, it won't make them a violent human being when they grow up, but it could very well make them violent filmmakers when they grow up.

RODRIGUEZ:

And it's really considered a rite of passage for some kids to watch some of these movies, like, "Can you take it?" You know, egged on by their friends. And some kids don't want to watch that stuff. They're not ready. I mean, I felt I was ready, around 12 years old is when I first saw these movies, and it made me want to be creative. It didn't make me want to go kill people. It actually made me go, "How did they do that? How did they get that --"

TARANTINO:

"How did that head explode? Whoa. What was that?" And then that is why you have all these 12-year-old kids and they're doing -- they all want to be little Tom Savinis, and they've got their makeup kits and they're putting scars on their face and tumors and learning how to blow up a melon and make it look like a witch head.

And they actually see it in the right way. It's not the way everybody's feeling, but my feeling is -- say something like "Grindhouse" is an example, anywhere from 12 up, if the kid wants to see the movie, he could probably handle it. If he doesn't want to see it, then whatever. But if he actually wants to see it -- or she wants to see it -- they can probably handle it. But that's up to the parent.

TAPPER:

But the Motion Picture Association says 17 and over.

TARANTINO:

No, they don't. OK? You can take a six-year-old kid to see "Grindhouse," if the parent takes them to the theater.

TAPPER:

If the parent takes them.

TARANTINO:

Yes.

RODRIGUEZ:

No one under 17 admitted without a parent. And they've started being more strict about that -- when was it? About five, six years ago?

TARANTINO:

They were always strict about that when I was a kid.

RODRIGUEZ:

Well, even more so. They've been more strict about it recently…You have to show an ID now and –

TARANTINO:

And not only that. They were always pretty tough about it, a 17-year-old babysitter couldn't take me to see an R-rated movie. It had to be an adult.

RODRIGUEZ:

I know they've been looking at how the advertising is being aimed in areas that kids could see things. And I know they've changed that. So, unless they're going back and looking at it again, I know that it was really effective when they did it the first time, which was a few years ago.

TARANTINO:

But the real reality is, look, we're talking about cool, sensationalistic movies, and a lot of kids like that stuff. I know I did. I responded to those posters. I responded to those ads in the newspaper, and if that was now, I'd be responding to that stuff on the Internet and the TV spot. "Well, that looks cool."

Maybe the ads aren't aimed towards kids, but after that opening weekend is over and they go back to school and they're on the playground and one of the kids saw it, "Man, you saw 'Planet Terror.' There's a scene where the helicopter cuts up the zombies." "Really? Oh, man, I've got to see that." You know, I just think that's groovy.

RODRIGUEZ:

I reacted really strongly back after I had done "Desperado." Some parent came up to me and said, "Oh, my kid loves your movie, 'Desperado.' They love it." I was like, "Oh, that's great. How old's your kid?" Said, "Well, he's almost seven." I was just like -- They're not supposed to see that.

And I thought, oh, I can see why they would like it, because of the action. But I thought if the parent is going to be that irresponsible to show something like that, maybe I should just make something like that for kids, something that has that kind of action, where they have those heroics and you have action sequences that get them dreaming about that sort of thing.

So I made "Spy Kids" because of that. And we made a series of them, because they were successful. Empower kids and give them really cool action sequences. And then I'm off the hook from parents coming up to me and saying those things. "Don't show them 'Desperado.' Show them 'Spy Kids.'"

TAPPER:

Has being a father made you even more responsible to these kinds of criticisms?

RODRIGUEZ:

I've been a father as long as I've been a filmmaker, practically. And I'm from a family of 10 kids. But I've always thought, when I was making these movies, they're R-rated movies. I never tried to squeeze a PG-13 out of them. I knew that they were for an adult audience or any kids around the age of 14 to 15, if the parents wanted to take them. But when it started being just a spillover, that little kids were just seeing it, because their parents just liked the movie themselves and thought, "Oh, Junior's there. He'll like it, too, because it's got action," I decided to start making some other types of movies as well.

TAPPER:

You guys are known as filmmakers that are always trying to top what you did last. In terms of narrative, in terms of cinematically, certainly. At some point, do you reach a level where you can't go any higher? Do you ever fear, "Oh, God. I don't know how I'm going to top a woman with a machine-gun leg."

(LAUGHTER)

RODRIGUEZ:

You don't fear, but you know that's always a challenge. I finished two series at the same time. I finished the "Spy Kids" Trilogy and I finished the "El Mariachi" Trilogy within two months of each other. And they both did really well at the box office.

I try to take a left turn. So I'm going to do "Sin City." I'm going to go do something that's just cinematically a lot more challenging for me and gets me excited. Because if I don't get excited about the next project myself, I know the audience isn't going to get excited. And you almost want something that has built-in challenges, something that people haven't seen before, but, mainly, something you haven't seen before.

And I did that one, then I had the same problem. "Well, now, what am I going to do?" We took the color out. And then I thought, "Double feature." Can't be better than that. So, now, the more you raise your bar on yourself, the more the audience benefits, because they'll end up seeing things that are more original, or just something that they haven't seen before, because you get tired of doing the same thing. So already I'm thinking, "OK. Now, what can we do that's going to get me excited?" And I won't do it unless it makes me excited.

TAPPER:

What about you? I mean, you've certainly had the same kind of career practice, constantly trying to challenge yourself.

TARANTINO:

Well, yes. I would never stop trying to challenge myself, because that's always my favorite -- it's the scariest stuff that I do when I'm really kind of throwing it on the line as far as testing my filmmaking abilities, as far as pulling off this sequence or that sequence. And those are always the scariest ones to go into because if I fail, then I'm not as good a filmmaker as I thought I was. Kind of scary.

But getting through it is always the most fulfilling, the most rewarding and usually the best filmmaking. By being scared and climbing that mountain anyway. If you look at my whole career, though, I actually didn't try to top myself after "Pulp Fiction." With "Jackie Brown," I actually purposely went underneath "Pulp Fiction" to do more of a character meditation. And I knew I would be in the wrong mood to try to top "Pulp Fiction." I can only just show my strength as a filmmaker and as a character-oriented director and go the other way. Then, after that, then, with "Kill Bill," I wanted to really go to the moon…

I was talking once to Eleanor Coppola, who is the wife of Francis Ford Coppola, and I was talking to her and she asked me what I was doing next, and I had just finished up "Kill Bill," which was like climbing Mount Everest. Come down off of there, you're not going to quite be the same man you were that started it.

And she's talking about what I'm going to do next. So I had another big idea for a cool project, but it would be another Mount Everest, and I was like, "Look, I want to do it, but I don't want to be climbing that mountain again. I just got off."

And we were talking a little bit and everything, and she goes, "You know what, Quentin? I think this is your time in life to climb Mount Everest. These are your mountain-climbing days." And I knew she was right the minute she said it.

TAPPER:

Meaning what?

TARANTINO:

Meaning this is my time to do big projects. If I've got a grandiose idea, this is the time. If I'm going to do something that's going to take a long time and be very difficult and "Screw life, it's all about this, life can't get in the way, I've got to do this mission." You know, when it comes to whatever project, this is the time for that. It's not going to be when I'm 60. It's not when I'm 55. It's right now. Now, I think it'll be that way when I'm 55, too, or I'll stop, but it's got to be on line. It's got to be I'm really trying to do something.

TAPPER:

Robert, you're 38, Quentin you're in your 40s. You're no longer the fresh kids. It's not 1992. You're not filmmakers in your 20s and 30s. I mean, obviously, you have retained a lot of the same spirit as when you were young and just completely self financed. Back when you, Robert, did medical experiments to finance your first movie.

RODRIGUEZ:

I come from a family of 10. I couldn't go hit mom or grandma for money. So, yes, I did medical experiments.

TAPPER:

You took pills or something?

RODRIGUEZ:

Well, Austin is a big college town. So the pharmaceutical company there is called Pharmaco. They would get students to come in and they would test the latest drug on them, because you have to do that to pass through the FDA. And you would get money for it. And so I did anything from like a cholesterol-lowering drug -- which is on them market now, but they were still testing it -- to a speed-healer drug, where they punched holes in my arms and then put speed healer on one and a placebo on the other and cut it away. Went and did tests on it. I got $2,000 for seven days work. That's how I'd go pay for my movie.

TAPPER:

And it cost $7,000?

RODRIGUEZ:

"El Mariachi" did. Yes. That was a lot of money to me, to any college kid. "You got $7,000 in your pocket I can borrow?" You know, that's a lot of money. So people say, "Oh, that's so cheap." The hell it is. It cost me my body. Cost me my blood. That thing cost, man.

TAPPER:

How is it different now? Obviously, it seems like you can pretty much do anything you want with almost any actor you want. Is that right?

RODRIGUEZ:

Right now is a great time. Like when we thought of this idea for the "Grindhouse" movie, it became our dream project all of a sudden, to do this double feature& But it didn't have to be a dream project we had to dream about for very long, because we get to turn around and start making it.

So that was a really exciting thing to do, and then bring actors in and Bruce Willis looks at a little test -- "Well, I'll be there. Sure. Just tell me any part I can play." I mean, it's a great time.

And so, you know, you want to wield that power carefully, because you wonder what can I do next? What should I do next? And it's a great time right now. So try to put your best foot forward.

TARANTINO:

I think the only thing that would be fantasy would be if I wanted to do an NC-17 movie. And I could do that, but it would have to be not the budget of "Grindhouse," it'd have to be a smaller budget, because of going with new ground, trying to make something like that popular. So that would be the only limitation there. I could still do that, but I'd have to do it at a price.

TAPPER:

I'm sure you've seen this happen to filmmakers that you admire -- they get so powerful that they don't have anyone around them that says, "That scene doesn't work." "This movie's too long." "This whole idea is horrible." "That's the wrong actor." They don't have anyone like that, because they're in Hollywood, they're surrounded by yes-men and studios who see them as money making. How do you avoid becoming those guys?

RODRIGUEZ:

I don't know. For myself, I have always just trusted my inner voice. I have always tried to just please myself first. If I really think something is good, well, you know, it's subjective. It is good. Even though other people might not like it, you can't let that make you think, "Oh, maybe my ideas aren't right. Maybe I shouldn't trust my instinct." This might be the wrong time for it. It might just be ahead of its time, behind its time…

You can always trust that. You're not going to always have consistent people around you that you can always listen to. And everyone's going to tell you different things. You've got to be able to trust your heart, so that you always are doing the right thing for you.

So, I don't think it'll be a problem. I think maybe my ideas will stop working after a while, but as I am listening to my voice, I can't blame anybody. I can't blame anyone for giving me the wrong advice at any point. You always listen to yourself, and it's served me well. So try to do that, because if it's not true to one person, at least, it's not going to work for anybody at that point.

TARANTINO:

The thing with me is, I'm a writer-director, and actually the writing of the script is a huge part of what I do. It's as important -- that process and that writing of the script, and even just the script itself, as a finished document as a piece of literature that I will publish later -- it's as important to me as the movie…

And so I'm always coming off from a really strong base. I either do it on the page or I don't. I either make the movie work there or I don't. When you read my scripts, you see the movie. It kind of either works or it doesn't. You know what I mean?

So I am always coming off from a very strong base by the time I actually get a movie together, which is different than, say, a director for hire who could get caught up and lost because he's trying this and that and the other. My material is always coming straight from scratch.

And I actually don't see your scenario as a problem to really worry about. There's another problem to worry about, and that is becoming too much of a Hollywood professional. I don't think the problem is, "Oh, we can do whatever we want. Oh, my God." I think the problem is passion about what you're doing, not just working to work, not just doing something for political reasons or for a gigantic paycheck to pay for your pool or to pay for your alimony or to work with this actor or just to keep busy. I think everything's got to be all or nothing, as long as I'm the writer and director and I'm doing my thing and this is my next piece of work, and it stands in the canon with the other pieces of work.

And, yes, there'll be days -- and with "Jackie Browne" you can ever see that was the case -- where a film might not be so accepted when it comes out, but, hey, it's not about the day it opens. It's about the eternity of cinema, and it ain't going nowhere, and time can pass and five years, 10 years later, it can be accepted, and, actually, most of the directors I like, my favorite movies of theirs were the ones that weren't accepted in their day, but over the course of time have risen in the ranks.

TAPPER:

Like what?

TARANTINO:

Oh, well, "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" is one of the greatest movies ever made -- for me, the greatest movie ever made. And it totally got thrashed by Pauline Kael and The New York Times and the LA Times when it came out. And, then, "Once Upon a Time in the West" was really torn apart by everybody, and those are considered classics now. "Night of the Living Dead" didn't get good reviews when it came out, and that is one of the classics of independent cinema of all time. "2001" got bad reviews.

RODRIGUEZ:

I don't relate completely to what you say, because I do live in Texas, and I'm not really surrounded by people like that. Everyone that surrounds me down there isn't in the movie business at all. So they don't even know what I do really. "When's that movie you got coming out?"…When I did "Sin City," I thought for sure this is easily something that will not be caught onto immediately at all. Maybe discovered later in DVD, but it's very weird. It's black and white. It's an anthology. It's got voice over. The three No's, what you're not supposed to do in a movie.

I really felt like it was something that was exciting, I hadn't seen before and that I would get an A for effort. "At least he tried to do something different." And so it was a big surprise that it was so successful right off the bat and that people caught on to it.

The same with this movie. As I had this idea, I thought people might not get it at first when it comes out in the theaters. But as soon as people saw the trailers, they were going crazy for it. So you're not always sure if your ideas are going to work or if they are coming out at the right time, but you just always got to follow your heart. You take consensus of what people think, you're going to get a different answer from everybody. So, really, the only answer that matters is the one that you find inside.

TARANTINO:

There is one other aspect that's also a kind of a danger, especially if you're a writer-director. There are a whole lot of writer-directors that come out here. They do one movie, two movies, three movies, and it's like, "What a voice! What a voice." They wrote the scripts and they direct the movies and they're all of a piece and they're terrific.

But then they get successful, and facing that blank page and starting all over again, every single time from the scratchiest of the scratch, that's hard work.

It's hard to put yourself back at square one every single solitary time. And that is what you do when you write a script from scratch. And, at a certain point, those guys are like, "Forget that, man. Let me go and let me look for a script that I like. Let me find something out there that I want to do."

And then they find something out there, and because they're a writer, they can work with a writer and have them change it or think, "Oh, I'll just do it myself and do a pass," because it's easier.

And that works maybe OK for a while, but the next thing you know, they do three more movies like that, and then you look at all of them together, and what was the strong voice or the real artist trying to do something gets diluted down and diluted down, because the voice is just getting weaker and weaker and weaker. They might be directing the heck out of the movie, but that voice that you heard, that's gone.

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Stay tuned for Horror.com's own interviews with Tarantino and Rodriguez.