Robert Rodriguez

Made El Mariachi for seven thousand dollars, some of it earned by volunteering for medical drug trials, shooting without sound and cutting on borrowed equipment.

Rebel Without a Crew is the diary he kept through it, and it is the most practical book ever written about making a film with no money: what to cut, what to fake, and why limitations produce the choices that make a film distinctive.

He went on to Desperado, Sin City and the Spy Kids films, and has kept working small and fast by choice long after he stopped having to.