Filmmaker Robert Rodriguez was in the midst of producing his 1996 horror film From Dusk Until Dawn. The plot for the movie takes shape by introducing two criminal brothers – George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino. Needing a way out of the country after robbing a Texas bank, they run into a family on vacation at a local motel. They take the family as hostages and use their RV to cross the border, evading the FBI. They stop at a strip club late in the evening. After an altercation breaks out, the group discovers the strippers are vampires. The few that survive the attack spend the rest of the evening fighting off the vampires until dawn.
One of the final scenes shows the survivors sprinting out of the bar at sun rise. Rodriguez had the special effects team build in explosives to the set, designed to go off after the group exited the bar. The problem was they created a really big explosion. The fireball that went off engulfed the set, destroying props that took weeks to assemble. Rodriguez cut the shot before the viewer could tell, but the damage had been done. Multiple scenes had yet to be shot that day. The design team was in tears. Weeks of filming were potentially in jeopardy. People had no idea what to do.
That’s when Rodriguez had a defining moment in the film’s production. He found his assistant director Doug Aarniokoski. Doug looked at him and said, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Rodriguez sensed he was. He said, “Yeah, it looks good the way it is. Let’s just keep shooting and we’ll do the little repair that needs to be done for next week.”
While the rest of the production team was freaking out, Rodriguez and Aarniokoski saw an opportunity. The charring from the fire gave the front of the bar an authentic touch. It looked like it had actually survived an explosion. Little did viewers know it actually had. But if Rodriguez had lost his head with the rest of his team, he wouldn’t have been able to leverage his creativity to navigate an unexpected production problem. It ended up creating a better shot than the one he originally planned.
This, to Rodriguez, is what his job is. “Sometimes I hear new filmmakers talk, they talk all down about their film, and oh, nothing worked and it was a disappointment,” he said on a Tim Ferriss podcast. “It’s like oh, they don’t realize yet that that’s the job. The job is that nothing is going to work at all. And you go: how can I turn that in a way to turn it into a positive and I get something much better than if I had all the time and money in the world?”
In an industry known for big spending, Rodriguez aligns on the more resourceful end of the spectrum. The top grossing movie from 1996 – Independence Day – took $75 million to produce. Rodriguez’s film only required $19 million, something he’s very intentional about.
“I want all of (my movies) to not have enough money, not enough time so that we’re forced to be more creative,” said Rodriguez. “Because that’s going to give it some spark that you can’t manufacturer. And people will tap into it or they’ll go: I don’t know why I like this movie. It’s kind of a weird movie but there’s something about it that makes me want to watch it again and again because it’s got a life to it. Sometimes art should be imperfect, in a way.”
Creativity, to Rodriguez, isn’t required when you have an abundance of resources. It emerges when you’re forced to work with less. If you don’t have an abundance of time and money, you learn to look at a stage prop just damaged by fire and go, “Yeah, it looks good the way it is.”
Which is exactly how Theo Epstein knew his time in Boston had run its course.
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On September 28, 2011, Evan Longoria came to the plate for the Tampa Bay Rays. It was the bottom of the 12th inning of game 162 – the last day of the MLB regular season. The Rays were playing the New York Yankees.
Going into the game, Tampa needed two outcomes to sneak in the backdoor of the 2011 MLB Playoffs: 1) A win against the Yankees, and 2) a Red Sox loss against the Orioles. A little over an hour ago, one of those things came true when Orioles second baseman Robert Andino hit a walk off two-run homer off Boston closer Jonathan Papelbon. Until the 8th inning, the second part of that scenario also looked bleak. Tampa trailed New York 7-0 six outs away from elimination.
And then the unthinkable happened. The Rays put up a six spot in the eighth, fueled by a Longoria three-run-homer. Trailing by one and down to their last strike in the ninth, pinch hitter Dan Johnson – hitting .110 on the season – hit a solo home run to tie the game at seven. On September 2, Tampa trailed Boston by eight games in the Wild Card race. Three and a half weeks later, Longoria had the opportunity to end Boston’s season with one swing of the bat.
Right-hander Scott Proctor was on the mound for New York. The count was 2-2. Proctor went after Longoria with a 95 mph fastball. Posada was set up on the outside corner, but Proctor left the offering up and over the big part of the plate. Longoria connected, sending a line drive down the left field line. If hit anywhere else in Tropicana, Longoria would be standing on second with a double. But like Yankee Stadium, Tropicana has its own “short porch” down the left field corner. Longoria’s blast just cleared the 315 feet sign for his second home run of the game, sending Boston home and Tampa to the postseason in dramatic fashion.
After winning two World Series titles in 2004 and 2007, Red Sox players would now have to watch the postseason from their couch for the second consecutive season in a row. No one took it harder than Theo Epstein – Boston’s homegrown wiz kid who took the General Manager job back in 2002 at just 28 years old. Boston’s unprecedented collapse in 2011 would mark his last season with the team, signing a five year deal with the Chicago Cubs as President of Baseball Operations just two weeks later. Epstein had made it known to Boston ownership the 2011 season could be his last with the team. The constant pressure to win in Boston had grown on him. That was made all the more evident after the Red Sox missed the postseason in 2010.
Facing the challenge of turning over an aging roster, Epstein made a couple of out-of-character decisions. He traded for Padres first baseman Adrian Gonzalez and inked him to a seven-year extension. The extension, worth $154 million, made Gonzalez the eight-highest paid player in Major League Baseball. He also signed 30-year-old free agent outfielder Carl Crawford to seven year $142 million deal, making him the eleventh-highest paid player. Gonzalez played up to his contract in 2011, hitting 27 homers and batting in 117 runs for a 6.9 WAR season. Crawford, on the other hand, had the worst season of his career. The former Ray hit .255 and swiped less than 20 bases for the first time since his rookie season. Both were traded to the Dodgers at the deadline the following season.
“It’s easy to sign guys to seven year deals. It’s hard to find guys that are more creative value solutions or plan ahead a couple years.” – Theo Epstein, from The Cubs Way
The outfielder Epstein almost traded for – Carlos Beltran -rebounded from a tough 2010 campaign and hit 22 homers for a 4.5 WAR season. After getting flipped to the Cardinals for pitching prospect Zack Wheeler, Beltran would go on to put together All-Star seasons in 2012 and 2013. The Mets only wanted two fringe prospects for him. Boston backed out of the deal after receiving bad medical information on his knee. That prompted the Crawford signing, which ended up being one of the worst contracts Epstein ever handed out as Red Sox GM.
Epstein talked about this in Tom Verducci’s book The Cubs Way. “I thought the 2010-2011 offseason was me, for maybe the first time, taking the easy way out, giving into the environment,” said Epstein. “The Crawford one was especially lazy. We had just signed Adrian. I didn’t do a good job of handling the environment and I took the easy way out. It was my fault.
“It’s easy to sign guys to seven year deals. It’s hard to find guys that are more creative value solutions or plan ahead a couple years.”
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Epstein’s early years on the job with Boston looked very differently than his final one with the team. At the trade deadline in 2004, he shocked Red Sox fans when he traded away their beloved homegrown shortstop Nomar Garciaparra to the Dodgers. His declining glove had made him a liability in the infield. In 2011, Garciaparra was due $11.5 million. Boston’s entire starting infield for game one of the World Series cost less than half for Epstein to assemble. One of these pieces – shortstop Orlando Cabrera – was acquired in the Garciaparra trade. Another trade acquisition – second baseman Mark Bellhorn – was dealt by Colorado for future considerations. He made less than $500,000 that season.
ALCS MVP David Ortiz was the seventh-highest paid player on Boston’s roster. He was only made available to the Red Sox after Minnesota released him coming off the 2022 season to avoid a $2 million arbitration payout. He signed that offseason with Boston for $1.25 million. Over the next fourteen years, he blossomed into their most valuable offensive asset anchoring three world championship runs. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2022 – twenty years after Minnesota first released him.
Boston had their fair share of big contracts in 2004 – Manny Ramirez ($20.4 million), Pedro Martínez ($17.5 million). They lured World Series champion Curt Schilling away from Arizona to the tune of 3 years $37.5 million. They had completed a trade to acquire Rangers shortstop Alex Rodriguez, only to be blocked by the MLB Player’s Association. But some of Epstein’s best work during those years wasn’t his willingness to go deep sea fishing for talent. It was how he creatively filled the gaps between those pieces. It was trading away Garciaparra’s bat to find a better defensive shortstop solution in Orlando Cabrera. It was finding undervalued solutions in Ortiz, Bellhorn, and starting pitcher Bronson Arroyo – claimed off waivers prior to 2003. It wasn’t matching New York dollar for dollar. That was a game they weren’t going to win. It was finding creative value solutions to maximize their dollar.
That was when Epstein knew the job had started to take a toll. When you don’t make the playoffs after winning the World Series just three seasons ago, you don’t think with the kind of foresight that allows you to set the team up for long term success. The internal and external pressures are too large. Your only concern is to figure out how to win right now. You don’t have the risk tolerance to take on undervalued assets in hope they blossom into valuable big league assets. You have to go sign valuable big leaguers so you can win games right now. And to their credit, they did for five months. But all big purchases carry fine print. Just because you can spend the money doesn’t mean it’s the best use of your money. And when you can’t spend money, you have to lean on something that money can’t buy.
Sometimes you’re better off looked at a fire-damaged production set and going, “Yeah, it looks good the way it is. Let’s just keep shooting.”
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Creativity isn’t reserved for artists. It’s for the people who are willing to do more with less. The ones who are able to use a production disaster to make their film better. The ones who see a vision for undervalued free agents that ultimately become the backbone of multiple championship rosters. The more we have at our disposal, the less we think this way. But when we’re forced to work with less, we see things we never would have been able to before.
In Rodriguez’s words, “When you put creativity in everything, everything becomes available to you.”
Don’t let the world make you think you need more. Go do more with less today.