The San Antonio native wants Friday’s screening of his cult hit to serve as the launch point of a new era of film retrospectives at the Aztec.
SAN ANTONIO — Before the Aztec Theater was a live music venue, it was a movie theater.
And years before Robert Rodriguez takes the stage Friday for a 30th anniversary screening of his Western-action bonanza “Desperado,” he watched “Jaws” and “Star Wars” at the Aztec during his Alamo City upbringing.
“It’s like literally one mile from my house where I grew up,” said Rodriguez, the director behind modern genre classics “Sin City,” “From Dusk Til’ Dawn” and others. “So I’m always down there.”
Rodriguez plans to be there more in the future—not just in the crowd during concerts, but as a regular introducing other films (maybe even some of his own) built for maximum fan enthusiasm. He already does something similar at downtown Austin’s Paramount, where he routinely introduces or even curates film screenings.
“You see things that no one else can ever see, hear stories no one else has heard. And they’re so full of people, the excitement level is just so high,” he said of those events. “I thought, ‘Let me bring those kinds of things to the Aztec.'”
It begins with “Desperado” on Friday, a screening that will be much more than your average screening: It’ll also feature a live Q&A between Rodriguez and frequent collaborator Danny Trejo; a live performance by Rodriguez’s band, playing “chingon-ized” versions of rock classics and original tracks from his films; and other surprises for fans.
“Desperado,” which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1995 and opened in theaters three months later, is the middle installment of Rodriguez’s Mexico Trilogy. It follows a lonely musician’s quest for revenge against a drug lord, a journey that is madcap and explosive while harkening back to a gritty, go-for-broke caliber of ’90s filmmaking that today’s polished blockbusters can’t quite replicate.
Rodriguez’s second feature, “Desperado” helped launch his career, as well as American audiences’ awareness of Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek, into hyperdrive.
For as big a place as the Aztec holds in Rodriguez’s heart, however, it wasn’t until a concert this past May that he realized it was the perfect place to hold a special screening.
“I was shocked how renovated and kept up it was,” he says. “I was like, ‘Man, I can just live in here. I love this building. I’m going to do more with it.’”
He quicky called up the Aztec and asked about screenings. They were game.
There are some surprises Rodriguez has in store for fans on Friday, as well as stories from the set of “Desperado” and other moments throughout a 33-year career that includes the making of “Spy Kids,” “Machete” and “Alita: Battle Angel.” (Keep a close eye on the screen behind his band during their performance, and you’ll catch some montages showing how he frequently works with the same stable of actors.)
Rodriguez says it won’t just be a trip down memory lane of his own career, but a celebration of the influence his hometown has had on it.
“(I remember) going to Mi Tierra and hearing my parents always ordering up mariachi songs and me going like, ‘”Malagueña Salerosa,” I bet that’d make a cool rock song someday,'” he said. “Sure enough, it’s in ‘Kill Bill (Vol.) 2’ and all over the world now.”
Rodriguez’s dream of turning the Aztec into a place where film fans can flock to as well as concertgoers is taking shape at a historic moment for the downtown venue: It turns 100 next year.
If there’s any indication about the atmosphere that awaits Friday’s crowd – and perhaps others movie audiences there going forward – it can be found in the fact that the director views it less as a screening than a pachanga.
“I just want to make it a place that we can feel like, ‘This is our own place. We’re celebrating our own movies we made on our own and created our own star system,'” the filmmaker said. “It is a lot to be proud of.”