From 'El Mariachi' to El Rey: Robert Rodriguez and the transformation of a microbudget filmmaker into a Latino media mogul

Studies based on a director often follow a common model, generally resorting to an overview of that director's films and examining shared aesthetic qualities and themes. This sort of study was grounded in the auteur theory---following authorship approaches in literature---and was invested in a consistency that justified the place of film authorship as a worthy pursuit in academia. In this study, however, I examine Mexican-American filmmaker Robert Rodriguez through a discursive analysis, unencumbered to textual analysis or even a chronological approach, with a look at the media discourse, Rodriguez's own writings and interviews, and the pertinent scholarship. His debut award-winning debut feature, El Mariachi (1992), as well as the production diary that would soon follow, Rebel Without a Crew: Or How a 23-Year-Old Filmmaker with ;After a brief introduction to the auteur theory in addition to contemporary approaches to authorship that suggest a move away from text-based analyses, I consider four broad areas that point to Rodriguez's growth from the director of the microbudget El Mariachi to his renown as the most prominent Latino media figure: social contexts (i.e., his Mexican-American identity), labor, economics, and technologies. I conclude that while Rodriguez's career has evolved significantly over the last twenty-plus years of his professional career, he has steadfastly retained his adherence to his Mexican-American identity, his penchant for taking on many of the tasks of filmmaking (cinematography, editing, composing, etc.) despite having larger budgets, his parsimonious approach to budgets, and his technophilia.