Danny Trejo

Austin-based Robert Rodriguez has earned his reputation as a maverick, do-it-all filmmaker who makes the most of every resource at his disposal. Give him left-over chicken gizzards, he’ll make a tasty chicken soup.

He was, after all, the guy whose first breakout hit, 1992’s “El mariachi,” was made for the Mexican video market for a paltry $7,000, part of which he reportedly earned by working as a test subject in medical science tests.

Since establishing his Troublemaker Studios in his Texas hometown, Rodriguez has gone on to much bigger things, but always with that hand-made ethic that often sees him serving on his films as director, producer, writer, editor, musical composer, cinematographer, sound technician, visual-effects artist, electrician, actor, production designer, miscellaneous crew and more.

So it’s not surprising that this style of using everything but the kitchen sink to make his movies comes to the fore in his newest picture – the over-the-top actioner “Machete,” an amazing amalgam of low-budget, B-movie panache and big-time Hollywood star power.

The overarching gag about “Machete” is that it’s the classic example of the tail wagging the dog; it’s a feature-length movie drawn from one of several “fake trailers” included in Rodriguez’s and Quentin Tarantino’s 2007 exploitation double feature, “Grindhouse.”

Apparently, audience buzz for the “Machete” trailer was so strong that Rodriguez decided make a “Machete” movie for real. So he dusted off an unproduced script he’d written in 1993, after he’d first cast Danny Trejo in “Desperado.” Then, recycling footage from the fake trailer, casting Trejo in the lead and adding star power with a surprisingly potent cast that includes Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba, Steven Seagal, Michelle Rodriguez, Don Johnson and Lindsey Lohan, Rodriguez gradually built a “Machete” that 20th Century Fox elected to release as a late-summer theatrical feature.

“Machete” will screen at the 67th Venice International Film Festival on Wednesday (Sept. 1) and open nationwide in the U.S. on Friday.

Oddly enough, this is not the first time a trailer has created a sensation that turned the fate of the movie it was previewing.

When Warner Bros. was prepping Kevin Costner’s “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” for its 1991 theatrical release, a preview trailer was released months in advance to whet audiences’ appetites. The trailer featured a cutting-edge, digital arrow-cam shot that followed an arrow from the archer’s bow as it zipped through the forest and thudded into the trunk of a tree. The shot was not originally included in the film. But the buzz created by that remarkable digital sequence persuaded director Kevin Reynolds and the producers to include a similar arrow-cam shot in the finished film. It became the movie’s signature image.

See? The tail wagging the dog.

- Dennis King

(Courtesy Paul Herman)

It’s a fundamental truism of Hollywood that in the movie business, nobody works until the writer writes. But having written, and setting the gargantuan machinery of movie making grinding forward, the screenwriter quickly becomes persona non grata.

In a business that lives or dies by the stories it tells, the men and women who dream up the stories are widely viewed as hired help, expendable toilers with no power to decide what finally appears in the big picture.

That’s the essential gist of anecdotes told by the industry’s top screenwriters in “Tales From the Script,” a unique nonfiction book/documentary film project now making the rounds of colleges, lecture venues, cinemas and bookstores everywhere.

The duel work is the brainchild of Peter Hanson and Paul Robert Herman, who combine ample credits as directors, producers, screenwriters and book editors and who conceived the project as a way to examine some of the myths and mysteries of that most misunderstood craft of screenwriting.

Gathering a virtual who’s who of Hollywood scribes for both talking-head appearances on film and anecdote-filled entries in a soft-cover book, the authors have managed to compile an entertainingly comprehensive gabfest in which screenwriters discuss the various hardships and occasional triumphs of their elite profession. It’s a calling that promises fabulous salaries but virtually guarantees rejection, frustration and humiliation at the hands of bean-counting producers, imperious directors and egotistical stars.

Among the wordsmiths dishing on the frustrations and rare satisfactions of their glamorous work are William Goldman (“The Princess Bride”), Shane Black (“Lethal Weapon”), Nora Ephron (“When Harry Met Sally”), John Carpenter (“Halloween”), Frank Darabont (“The Shawshank Redemption”), Jane Anderson (“How to Make an American Quilt”), Paul Mazursky (“An Unmarried Woman”), Bruce Joel Rubin (“Ghost”), Paul Schrader (“Taxi Driver”), Ron Shelton (“Bull Durham”), John August (“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”) and dozens more.

It’s not surprising to learn from their comments that in the highly collaborative, creative and ego-driven art of filmmaking, big-name directors and celebrity actors dominate, producers with MBAs and no writing skills wield yea-or-nay power and screenwriters occupy the lowliest rungs on the food chain. One writer describes he and his colleagues as “egomaniacs with low self esteem.”

Stories abound here of writers being used and abused, hired and fired, courted and then cast aside, of good scripts being rewritten into hash, of deals broken and hopes dashed. “It’s really not as glamorous as you might imagine,” one writer says. “You job is to get punched in the face.”

Among the juicy tidbits revealed here:

Ron Shelton nearly cut the signature speech in “Bull Durham” that helped Kevin Costner become a bankable star.

Shane Black (“The Last Boy Scout”) retreated from public life for years because of the heated hype of early successes and multi-million dollar script sales.

John August (“Corpse Bride”) has made three films with director Tim Burton but has spend less than 24 hours in the presence of the arty filmmaker.

William Goldman, Oscar winner for “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “All the President’s Men,” reveals why he’s never had an urge to direct.

Josh Friedman was hired by Steven Spielberg to adapt H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds,” even though Spielberg hated the screenwriter’s take on the material.

Naturally, most of the screenwriters are scrupulously politic and vague in pointing fingers or laying blame for scripts mangled or for backs stabbed. No one burns bridges here or risks being blackballed. Likewise, these successful writers are not immune to a little self-serving hyperbole (writing a great script “is the hardest thing in the world to do”). But if the highly paid scribes occasionally lapse into whiney tones about their rarefied profession, their small rants are nevertheless always colorful and entertaining.

“Tales From the Script,” both on the page and on the screen, is a must for aspiring screenwriters and for film buffs wishing to draw back the curtains and see how sausage is really made in Hollywood’s dream factory.

The DVD version of “Tales From the Script” was released in April by First Run Features and retails for $24.95. The soft-cover book, published by It, an imprint of HarperCollins, is available in bookstores or online for $15.99.

- Dennis King