What do you mean by break even?
If you spend 50K in hard funds and invest sweat equity of about 30K in labor, then you need to see a distribution deal for about 100K to break even after you pay for deliverables, errors and omissions, etc. That's not profiting, that's getting back what you spent.
Technically, 50K is 50K, so if you got 50K on a distro deal then you break even if you don't have to worry about thinks like assumption agreements, etc.
Breaking even is a pretty lofty goal in itself for guys like us, but manageable.
This also goes hand-in-hand on why I think he or Tarantino wouldn't have any issue breaking through the barrier today. It's about their tastes and interest. Rodriguez is pretty ambitious and he likes visual spectacle. It so happens that a broad paying audience does as well.
Tarantino's respect for traditional cinema and names would get him right back to where he is now. He would be interested in working with great names and that'd launch his career again.
If you see a movie and wonder, thought he production value was low, how did it get there? Think about the "tastes" the director has, the ambition, and the overall execution of tone and story. People pick up on that stuff pretty easily, and even when it lacks technically if the tone and taste is there, it makes up for it.