Rebel Without a Crew (subtitle: Or How a 23-Year-Old Filmmaker with $7,000 Became a Hollywood Player) is a 1995 nonfiction book by Robert Rodriguez. Presented in a diary format, Rebel details Rodriguez beginnings as a young filmmaker; his stint at a medical testing facility to raise money for a feature film; the making of that film, El Mariachi for $7,000, and his subsequent experiences in Hollywood selling the film and going to film festivals promoting it. Robert Rodriguez (born June 20, 1968) is a Mexican-American film director. ... El Mariachi is a 1992 motion picture production directed by Robert Rodriguez as the first chapter in his Mariachi Trilogy. ... ...

Later editions of the book also feature one of Rodriguez's tutorials on low-budget filmmaking: "Ten Minute Film School," and the screenplay to El Mariachi.

Influence and Controversy

Rodriguez's rags-to-riches story, detailed in Rebel, as well as his vociferous support of low-budget techniques (such as digital filmmaking) to allow anyone to make a film cheaply, have made him an icon of modern independent filmmaking. Digital film refers to cinema production and performance systems which work by using a digital representation of the brightness and colour of each pixel of the image. ...

However, the book (and Rodriguez) does have detractors, most notably of the statement that El Mariachi was made for $7,000. While that was indeed the budget for the film when it was produced for the Spanish direct-to-video market, critics point out that when the film was turned into a theatrical-release film, it had to be converted to 35mm with subtitles added and sound remixed, greatly increasing its production cost. El Mariachi is a 1992 motion picture production directed by Robert Rodriguez as the first chapter in his Mariachi Trilogy. ...