MACHETE Writer Alvaro Rodriguez on Taking a Fake Trailer to Box Office Success

Screenwriter Alvaro Rodriguez discusses his bloody action thriller Machete, as well as his early collaborations with El Mariachi filmmaker Robert Rodriguez and writing the current TV series From Dusk Till Dawn, which is based on Rodriguez’s 1996 action film of the same name.

Alvaro says his new series – which aired on the El Rey Network and is currently available on Netflix and DVD – is a continuation of the film version of From Dusk Till Dawn, which was written by Quentin Tarantino.

“The first season, 10 episodes, takes the original film and kind of extrapolates that 90 minutes over 10 episodes and expands the storyline and adds new characters, and gives us different backstory kind of stuff, and takes it a little bit further than the movie did.”

The series is shot exclusively in and around Austin Texas, according to Alvaro, himself a Texas native who has been writing since childhood.

On working with Robert Rodriguez, his first cousin, Alvaro said he feels fortunate to have gone to high school and college with Robert, and continued to learn a great deal of the business from him.

“I learned so much about filmmaking and storytelling from him, and I always felt he was an incredibly visual writer. He had a comic strip when we were at the University of Texas called Los Hooligans, which became the name of his production company.”

He said that during his collaborations with Robert, he felt like his cousin wrote in pictures, while he wrote in words. “I feel like that’s part of my contribution to some of these things that I’ve done.”

He recalls one instance in which he was working on a script draft and Robert told him that his words read the best, but it was boring, whereas another writer’s work “made no sense,” but was totally visual and action-packed.

Alvaro talks about how Machete came together as a standalone movie after beginning as a fake trailer for the two-part feature Grindhouse, which was written by Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez.

“So Machete was one of the trailers that played in there. And it was a concept that had gone all the way back to the time of Desperado, when Robert first met Danny Trejo.”

He reveals that Robert brought up the idea that he wanted to make a film making Trejo as the star. “Even though the movie Grindhouse didn’t do that well theatrically, the trailer itself became a sensation on YouTube, and it went viral, and the comments were like, “I wanna see that movie.”

“It started out as a small project, and then it just started to grow and grow,” Alvaro said, adding that the original idea was to have Trejo star in Machete with a group of lesser-known actors. “And then it was like, I think we can get Don Johnson for this part,” he said, while discussing the star-studded cast that included Robert DeNiro, Jessica Alba, Steven Seagal, Michelle Rodriguez, Cheech Marin, Linday Lohan and more.

“It was a really great cast, and of course, Danny Trejo who – talk about being soft-spoken or how do you do this-and-that – and if you ever spend time with Danny Trejo, he is a very soft-spoken, and very sweet and gentle man.”

Watch the full interview to find out some of Alvaro’s writing influences growing up, and to also hear him discuss how his Catholic upbringing impacts his work today.