This chapter is presented in two halves and a coda. The first analyses little known interviews with González Iñárritu before he made his career in feature films that document his practice in radio, advertising and television drama. These interviews focus on his early conception of the relation between art and commerce and his views on the Mexican media scene in the 1990s. The second half of the chapter analyses the rare primary materials themselves: radio commercials, television idents and, at greater length, his first feature-length fiction film, an experimental drama made for Televisa in 1995 called Detrás del dinero (“Behind the Money”). The conclusion argues that even as Iñárritu has more recently distanced himself from broadcasting, his later career as an artistic and commercially successful feature film director embodies a precarious balance between artistic innovation and mass culture and a focus on the audience which he first learned in his early work in advertising, radio and television. A coda to the chapter gives the commentary text of the author’s audiovisual essay for the Criterion DVD/Blu-ray release of Iñárritu’s first feature Amores perros.