Rodriguez traced this principle to his upbringing in a family of ten kids in San Antonio. 'I can't waste money. It's against my genetic makeup.' When he set out to make 'El Mariachi,' the constraints of no budget and no crew forced him to invent entirely new ways of filmmaking — shooting without a tripod by using a wheelchair for tracking shots, casting locals as actors, serving as his own crew. The result was not just a cheap movie but a genuinely innovative one. The constraints had forced creativity that conventional production methods would never have produced. Rodriguez turned this personal experience into a universal principle: scarcity is the mother of invention. 'Traditional thinking will hold you back,' he told graduates. The people with the most resources often produce the least original work because they can afford to follow the rulebook. For the class of 2009, graduating into a recession, the message was especially relevant. They would have fewer resources than previous graduates. Rodriguez was telling them that this was not a disadvantage but an invitation to creativity — to substitute money with imagination, convention with innovation, and tradition with originality.