Rodriguez credits his 7-year old son with coming up with the idea for “Shark Boy and Lava Girl.” “We’re playing in the swimming pool and we’re playing shark. He said, ‘You’re shark dad, I’m shark boy. Hey, let’s make a movie about shark boy and I’ll be the shark boy.’ I said, ‘Yeah, yeah, whatever.’ So we’re drawing it out and it became this movie and I got really excited about that, [about] getting to work with my family on a movie for other families. So I thought, ‘This is something I can wake up in the morning and work on. This is going to be [something] we can put all our imagination into,’” recalled Rodriguez.
“The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl” isn’t the first movie Rodriguez has made in 3-D. The final saga of the “Spy Kids” franchise proved Rodriguez has a handle on that style of filmmaking and box office receipts seem to indicate audiences are once again ready to embrace 3-D films. Even with all the hype that surrounded the April 1, 2005 release of “Sin City,” it’s “Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over” that holds the record for the biggest opening weekend for a Rodriguez film, and Rodriguez and James Cameron are being credited with reinvigorating the once popular form of cinema.
Besides being a devotee of digital filmmaking, Rodriguez is also famous for his love of green screens. At the premiere of the green screen heavy “Sin City,” the mom from “The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3-D,” ex-“Sex and the City” star Kristin Davis, laughed as she said Rodriguez doesn’t know how to make a movie without using green screens. Davis was lucky enough to get a peek at “Sin City” as it was being edited together and even though she watched Rodriguez work on it, she admits she has no idea how he actually pulls it off. “I was in Austin shooting the ‘Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3-D’ movie…and so I saw everything on the green screen like they shot it. And on the same laptop, he was just adding in everything and it was just unbelievable. I don’t know how he does it,” said Davis.
How tough is it for actors to work around green screens? Davis says it’s all about the imagination. “I think all actors have a wild imagination or we wouldn’t be actors. But Robert makes it very easy. He explains everything to you. They have this wonderful man who is dressed in green who helps you. In my movie I fly and the green man was there to catch me if I fell – but I never fell. I mean, we do a lot of weird things as actors and it’s just one of them.”
Davis didn’t disclose much of the plot of “The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl” while at the “Sin City” premiere, but she did say a little about her character. “I’m the mom. Lava Girl is kind of like my alter ego. I fly with Lava Girl and I fly by myself. David Arquette is my husband, and he and Robert have worked together so it was fun.”
From “Desperado” to the “Spy Kid” franchise to “Sin City,” and now “The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl,” it makes you wonder how Rodriguez decides what to do next. Rodriguez explained the process at the press junket for “Sin City” by saying, “The bad ideas you don’t get excited about fall away, and the ones that come forward are the ones that get your blood pumping and get your heart pumping, and the ones you can’t sleep until you do them. Those are the ones that keep me up all night and keep me working.”
Catch “The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3-D” in theaters on June 10, 2005.
