Edinburg native co-wrote new film 'Machete' with cousin Robert Rodriguez

How Robert Rodriguez’s new film came to be is already the stuff of Hollywood legend.

Machete, which opens nationwide today, began as the subject of a fictional movie trailer in the 2007 film Grindhouse, directed by Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino.

Despite not actually existing, the mock film developed a sizeable cult following.

Rodriguez and his colleagues knew they were on to something. Over the following two years, the director turned that fake trailer into a full-length feature film with Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba and Lindsay Lohan among its star-studded cast.

But what even Hollywood insiders might not realize is that the origins of Machete reach back even further — to the bed of a pickup truck in Rio Grande City, where Edinburg native and Machete co-writer Alvaro Rodriguez first recognized a kindred spirit.

It was the early 1980s, and 10-year-old Alvaro was hanging out with his cousin Robert at their grandmother’s house. Robert was raving about a new movie he had read about in the sci-fi/fantasy magazine Fangoria — John Carpenter’s Escape From New York, starring Kurt Russell.

“He was going on about how awesome it was, even though he hadn’t actually seen it,” Alvaro recalls. “I just couldn’t believe somebody else in my own family was as into movies as I was as a kid. … In a way, Machete is the next step in that whole story.”

The two remained close throughout childhood, attending the same high school in San Antonio for a time and later studying at the University of Texas at Austin together in the early 1990s. It was during that period that Robert Rodriguez made his breakout film El Mariachi, the $7,000 sleeper hit that turned millions of dollars in profits and cemented its director’s status as a Hollywood maverick.

Remember those Spanish guitar riffs heard throughout El Mariachi? That’s Alvaro.

“I’d been learning guitar at the time,” he said. “Robert asked me over to his apartment, and I showed him some riffs, and he recorded me.”

Once El Mariachi took off, “everything seemed possible,” Alvaro remembers.

He has since worked with Robert’s Austin-based Troublemaker Studios, but Machete is the first film on which they share writing credits. The stylish action film stars grizzled character actor Danny Trejo as a rebel federale tangled in a surreal web of bloody crime and black comedy along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“It’s a wild ride,” Alvaro said. “It plays with a lot of the conventions of the grindhouse movies of yesteryear.”

But like Escape From New York, Machete is more than just a modern-day exploitation flick. Beneath the B-movie stylings and boatloads of gore and nudity lies a subtle but sharp commentary on illegal immigration.

“Its pro-Mexican, anti-American stance is so gleefully inflammatory,” writes Stephen Holden in his review of the film for The New York Times, “that some incensed nativists may refuse to get the joke.”

Texas Monthly isn’t laughing either. In a September article headlined “El Underachiever,” the magazine goes as far as suggesting Robert Rodriguez is “squandering his talent” on offbeat fare like Grindhouse and Machete.

Alvaro thinks they’re missing the point.

“Movies don't all have to be about one thing,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be, like, ‘This is his message movie,’ or, ‘This is his drama, his comedy.’ Robert makes movies he wants to see. They’re all part of his own story universe.”

Alvaro is set to relocate back to the Valley from Austin this fall. Even though both he and Robert are hundreds of miles away from Hollywood, the work they want to do is here at home, here in Texas.

“We’re not only making the movies we want to make — we’re making movies where we want to make them.”

ON HIS AND ROBERT RODRIGUEZ’S WRITING STYLES

“Robert is a visual writer. He definitely sees everything and is able to get that on paper. I’m much more on the story side. I think about the arc of the story and the way people talk.”

ON CONTINUING HIS CAREER WHILE LIVING IN THE VALLEY

“The Valley has grown so much. It’s a great place to be. With the advent of new means of communication, you’re basically no more than a phone call or e-mail away.”

ON TURNING A FAKE TRAILER INTO A REAL MOVIE

“Machete became one of the most talked-about things in the Grindhouse project. It was a really easy expansion. In a way, it became a new writing exercise. As the casting started to get under way, it was a really simple progression.”

FAVORITE PLACE TO EAT BACK HOME?

“Los Comales in Edinburg.”

Brandon R. Garcia is editor of Festiva and Valley Life at The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4461.