[♪♪♪♪♪]
CALVIN: Everyone came out like, "This is really good."
My name is Calvin Jung.
I played Steve Minh in RoboCop .
JESSE: It just kinda struck me as being kinda funny.
[laughs]
Jesse Goins, I played Joe Cox.
[chuckles]
[cheers]
I like it!
PAUL MCCRANE: We had a lot of laughs.
We joked around a lot.
EMIL: Think you can outsmart a bullet?
I'm Paul McCrane and I played Emil.
Why don't you let us take over from here, Emil?
RAY: I'm Ray Wise.
I play Leon Nash, number two bad guy on RoboCop .
Yeah.
The original RoboCop .
Well, give the man a hand.
KURTWOOD: Kurtwood Smith.
Yeah!
I'm the man in Old Detroit.
And I played Clarence Boddicker.
CLARENCE: Cops don't like me, so I don't like cops.
When I heard the title,
I thought this is gonna be terrible, horrible, ridiculous.
And I read the script,
and I thought it was really cool.
I had played a number of sort of very sensitive
or fragile characters in my young career.
Hey, could-- could you sign my head?
Yeah, sure.
And I, around that time, told my reps
that I wanted to go up for bad guys.
And they thought I was out of my mind.
[laughs]
PAUL MCCRANE: And so, I just sort of started refusing auditions
for the type of parts that I'd been doing,
just '‘cause I wanted to branch out,
do something different.
You're in the wrong business.
PAUL MCCRANE: This is one of the things that they were able to get me
in the room on.
JESSE: I'd been in LA for about seven years
and done some work.
[groans]
What was cool about the audition was
Paul was great, and he said, "You know, just--
Just give me what you got.
Just give me what you got", you know?
And so-- so we did.
CALVIN: I was brought in to audition.
I met Paul Verhoeven,
and then as I got up and I was leaving,
the casting lady ran out, she says, "Calvin, he loved you,
but he thinks you're too pretty."
Ancient Chinese secrets.
I was like, "What the fuck? Too pretty?"
I said, "No one's ever said I was too pretty."
Unless you want your fuckin' head blown off.
She says, "I'm pullin' for you."
And then um, I think a day later I got the call.
My agent, we got-- I got the gig.
How did I get involved? Well, let's see.
Uh, how many years ago has it been?
You try to interfere with another one of my properties,
and they won't be able to put you guys back together
with Krazy Glue.
RAY: I went in and I read, originally for Murphy.
Double wages for the lead men.
I was all set to play Murphy.
I wanted to play Murphy.
Nice shootin', son. What's your name?
Murphy.
RAY: But, I got the dregs.
I got the part of Leon Nash,
which turned out to be not such a dreg after all.
[chuckles]
I was still kickin' around uh, playin' uh, mostly bad guys
on television.
He's calling up information on the A-team.
KURTWOOD: Bad cops, or bad administrators.
I'm Clarence.
KURTWOOD: Had a really nice role finally in a feature
called "Flashpoint".
Think about it, whiz kid.
KURTWOOD: Turned out that one of the producers of RoboCop ,
Arne Schmidt, had been the first AD on that film.
Arne uh, was the one who would actually say,
"Yeah, see this guy."
Well, you heard the man, hotshot.
KURTWOOD: They asked me to audition for two roles.
Clarence, and Dick Jones.
Based on things I'd done in the past,
I assumed they were more serious about the Dick Jones role.
I work for Dick Jones! Dick Jones!
KURTWOOD: But Clarence, of course, was the more fun part.
So, I was really excited when I was Clarence.
CALVIN: We're all theater-trained actors.
Theater-trained actors understand
what ensemble work is,
whereas people who wanna be movie stars,
they really don't get that.
So, that was really easy for all of us.
Because Jon Davison wanted to make sure
we were kinda multicultural, the gang became, you know,
every color under the rainbow.
I think the diversity of our cast,
that transcends into the acting,
leaves a memory for people.
Erica Phillips, she was the uh, costume designer,
and she wanted to know what I wanted to do,
and it ended up that she and I just went shopping.
RAY: I think she took into account the way I looked.
I kinda had kinda the widow's peak look,
and the hawk nose, and um, aquiline, I like to say.
And uh, she saw that look,
and she felt that I would look the best in black.
KURTWOOD: I had a very clear idea in my mind about
what they were like.
That they did have a kind of military look to them,
but with a scarf, you know?
JESSE: We added things to it, you know, like the sneakers,
you know, rather than boots.
So, we all had some input.
The sort of weird beard thing that I did was uh--
I'll take credit for it, that was mine.
I knew I wanted to do something a little odd hairwise.
So, I walked onto the set with it
and showed it to Paul, and he said, "Yeah, I like that,
so keep it", so I did.
CALVIN: My ex-wife, when we were dating,
she says, "You weren't in RoboCop!"
I go, "Yeah, I was the guy with the bandan--"
"No, that was a Mexican guy!"
I go, "No, it's me."
This is the all, the all-seeing eye.
Leon's glass eye.
My medallion that I wore all through the movie.
So, quite a bit of action. A little shrapnel.
But as you can see, still looks pretty good.
Shit!
[Jesse chuckling]
JESSE: I loved it.
We were in the truck and Kurtwood looks at the money,
he says, "You burned the motherfuckin' money!"
You burned the fuckin' money!
I had to blow the door! What do you want?
It's as good as marked, you asshole!
You stupid, stupid...
Now, that's not the way
that a normal military leader might behave
in that kind of a situation.
And that's '‘cause he's k-- kind of loaded all the time,
you know?
Clarence, he's the kind of guy who could run Old Detroit,
but could never run Detroit.
He didn't go that far.
But within his world, he was the man.
Clarence Boddicker, unofficial crime boss
of Old Detroit,
now sought in connection with the deaths
of 31 police officers.
Today, he's at large.
KURTWOOD: So, we were all on location, in downtown Dallas,
and in the van when we were first shooting it--
We got a cop on our tail!
KURTWOOD: I wanted to play it kinda full go,
including kicking the back of Paul McCrane's seat.
...and do it! Just do it!
[laughs]
Paul didn't particularly enjoy that part.
Oh, for God's sake.
We were like little kids playin' in the sandbox.
Yeah!
I did some things in RoboCop that now that I think about it
uh, it was crazy.
Why did I ever do them?
[yells]
RAY: Hangin' out of the back of the van,
with no really safety lines on us.
You know, if I had slipped and fallen out of the back,
I would've been run over by the police car.
Ed and I worked on scenes pretty much on the set.
You know, he was always looking for kind of hipper ways
to say things.
When it came time to throw the guy out...
Leon, pick him up.
...I thought, "I just throw the guy out, you know?
I should say something to him, you know?"
This guy burned the money.
This guy screwed this whole thing up.
And so, I wanna say something nasty.
I thought, "Well, you know, I'm gonna throw him out.
let's see if he flies."
Can you fly, Bobby?
Clarence, no!
Can you fly, Bobby?
[yells]
RUSSELL: The part wherever they throw the guy
out of the back of the truck on to the car,
and the car spins around,
whenever they threw him out of the car,
that was in Dallas.
When he landed on the car, that was me here in LA.
If you look real close,
you can see that it's me on the hood of the car,
spinnin' around.
I certainly know
from my father being a police officer
that your partner is someone that you're as close to
as your wife.
Well, you call it.
Let's do it.
It's a very intimate relationship.
There's a really strong bond,
you rely on one another for your life.
RAY: It was an old steel mill in uh, Monessen, Pennsylvania.
This was out of work already since years.
But you had the feeling, the workers,
they'd just left yesterday night.
JESSE: Pittsburgh's my home town.
So, my parents could see me work.
They came out to the set, and they watched me.
Of course, they--
JESSE: My mom got to see me do the pissing scene.
So, I'm like, "Oh, this is great."
My mom was right over there. And this is really artistic.
"Yeah, I'm makin' money, mom.
This is what I went to college for."
Mind if I zip this up?
I love the bad boys. I love them!
You know, they were collectively, I'll just say,
the nicest, really sweet, wonderful guys.
Didn't drink, didn't smoke.
No.
You know, those things will kill you.
And to see them be so mean, and rotten,
and horrible on the movie,
it just kinda tells you how good they all are.
[laughs]
KURTWOOD: We would steal the golf carts from the ADs, you know,
because they had to drive around those things all the time,
come and get us.
Then we would have our own little races around
and stuff.
It was-- we had-- we had a lot of fun there.
I liked all the guys that I was working with.
[laugh together]
PAUL MCCRANE: You know, I think Peter attacks things with a gusto
and with an intensity.
And that was impressive to watch.
MURPHY: Go ahead and do it.
PETER WELLER: Murphy thinks, he believes, he's a faith holder.
He's like a positivist, you know?
He's like the guy you want as the cop.
Dead or alive, you're coming with me.
JON: The experience creating it was just, I think,
a really grueling experience for everybody.
I mean, I don't think anybody would tell you
they had a good time on that picture.
And if they did, they weren't there.
Every Sunday, Bill Bernstein from Orion Pictures
would fly down and say, "You've gotta stop the bleeding.
You're spending too much money.
You just gotta stop the bleeding", you know?
So, finally, I just stopped the bleeding.
I shut down the picture,
without shooting the most crucial scene
in the picture, the death of Murphy,
and we all went back to Los Angeles,
'‘cause I knew that eventually they were gonna have to
give me the money to shoot the death of Murphy.
MURPHY: Lewis, I got a situation here, girl.
We shot that scene of uh, the destruction of Murphy
in a warehouse, in Long Beach California.
Put your hands on your head. Lewis?
I remember we were all there with our guns,
and I had my favorite sawed-off shot gun.
Why don't you let us take over from here, Emil?
The torture murder uh,
we spent a long time choreographing that.
Your ass is mine.
CLARENCE: No.
MICHAEL: Paul executed what we had on the page.
Not yet, it ain't.
PAUL VERHOEVEN: Murphy gets killed after 50 minutes
or something like that.
I thought that this-- this execution of Murphy
had to be extremely powerful,
So that people would never forget Murphy, you know?
Because you have seen him only 50 minutes,
and then basically he wears a mask, you know?
So, that's difficult for an audience.
PETER WELLER: So, you've got a guy.
And the guy is a good cop, and Mr. Nice Guy,
and signs into the new precinct.
Murphy, transferring in from Metro South.
And immediately gets wind of the politics
that are coming down, you know,
or the privatization of the police force.
He came from a part of Detroit, you know?
That didn't have a lot of action
and he was thrown into Old Detroit purposely,
you know?
We work for a living down here, Murphy.
Get your armor and suit up.
PETER WELLER: He was set up by OCP to go into a place
that had a lot of action and a lot of violence.
And subsequently, that's why OCP chose him
to be this guinea pig for RoboCop .
BOB: We've restructured the police department
and placed prime candidates according to risk factor.
PETER WELLER: And he's an innocent.
But nope, the bigger plan has got him.
VOICEOVER ON TV: With 12 years on the force, and 21 commendations,
Murphy was a good cop.
And in 1991, a good cop doesn't die.
PETER WELLER: I maintain you have to have the cruelty,
and the brutality of that-- that scene of Murphy,
in order to, later on in the film,
endow Robo with his um, redemption.
You can't have it unless you really, really
have been upset by what's happened to Murphy.
[groans]
[laugh together]
PETER WELLER: And not just violently so, but emotionally so.
Where's your partner? Where's your partner?
Well, guys, the other one was upstairs.
I was really tryin' to-- tryin' to figure out
what I could do that would be different.
Jesse came up with that laugh he uses.
She was sweet. Mm, mm, mm.
I took her out.
[laughs]
JESSE: And the laugh just came.
I said, "This guy is a real sadistic bastard.
He's a real sadistic, but he enjoys it.
[laugh together]
So, why make him all dark and sadistic,
just make him, you know?
[laughs]
In your face kinda sadistic.
They'll laugh at you, like he's a joker.
[laughs]
Wooh!
[chuckles]
You know, I thought that was great,
you know?
And-- and then as actors, ensemble, you're like,
"Shit, man! Wish I'd thought of that."
CAMERA OPERATOR 1: Mark.
PAUL VERHOEVEN: Action.
[laughs]
Boy, I'll bet that really pisses you off.
[laugh together]
KURTWOOD: So, I had breakfast with Paul
and we talked about the movie a lot.
We talked about Clarence um,
and I told him what I wanted to do with it,
and it really seemed that we were on the same page.
You probably don't think I'm a very nice guy, do you?
Buddy, I think you're slime.
[laugh together]
KURTWOOD: Clarence was not as funny in the original script
and that was something that I wanted to add.
If we can give this character a dark sense of humor,
it can work in a variety of ways.
One is funny, and two is that when, you know,
something chilling about really sadistic sort of people
and the kind of sense of humor that they might have.
You see, I got this problem.
Cops don't like me, so I don't much like cops.
I loved Clarence's thing with the little gun.
I don't--
[mimicking whirring]
[laugh together]
[mimicking whirring]
We're like, dude.
[laughs]
That's great!
[mimics whirring]
[mimics gunshot]
[laugh together]
PAUL VERHOEVEN: Action.
FRANK: A violent film like that.
A guy blows off a guy's hand and he goes...
Well, give the man a hand!
Give him a hand.
[laugh together]
He's all yours.
I think it's vintage Paul Verhoeven.
PAUL VERHOEVEN: Go forward up.
JOE: Alright, alright, look out.
[Joe laughing]
PAUL VERHOEVEN: [indistinct speech]
[grunts]
PAUL VERHOEVEN: Cut.
Paul grew up in World War II, you know,
where he saw real violence every day.
During World War II, when he was living in Hague,
there were bomb runs by British bombers all the time.
This was when the Nazis were occupying Hague.
So, he grew up under a fascist rule.
And he's a young boy, he remembers this quite vividly.
And he told me about one day his dad taking him to school,
and the night before,
a British bomber had been shot down,
and there were body parts
all lying in the street everywhere,
and German soldiers were going around with steel pales,
and just throwing body parts out.
And Paul's father said, "Don't look."
And Paul, being six, seven, had no sense of perspective.
He was taking cues from the adults.
But the people around him were acting
like they were just cleaning the streets up.
And Paul said to me,
"The thought went through my mind,
'‘Oh, that's what people look like!
Oh, look at that.
That's what a severed hand looks like.'"
So, it was this certain detachment,
because there was no emotional connection, right?
'‘Cause you're too young.
I think that it shaped his worldview.
I shot the-- the-- the killing of Murphy
in the mi-- most gruesome way.
JOE: ...man. Pretty boy! Hey, come on here.
[laugh together]
[Joe yells]
And-- and for me, that was really the crucifixion.
[yells]
PAUL MCCRANE: I think Paul was tryin' to make a point with it
about violence becoming entertainment.
It wasn't just meant to be a splasher, slasher movie
in any sense.
I think he exaggerated the violence
in order to make a point about violence,
and our being endured to violence
in popular entertainment.
Bein' part of a gang, and bein' a bad ass,
I mean, you know, h-- h-- how many kids wanna play that?
It's pretty easy.
We were enjoying blowin' at just,
"Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam."
It was great.
[indistinct speech]
[screams]
When I ran out of-- out of ammo, I'm like, "Oh, shit,
I'm out of ammo!"
Oh, shit, I'm out of ammo!
That's not in the script.
Hey, Clarence, he's still alive.
[groans]
You know, we had to keep doing it,
and there was just blood all over the place
all the time.
PAUL VERHOEVEN: Yeah, what's that? [indistinct speech]
-CREWMEMBER 1: Yeah. -CREWMEMBER 2: Yeah.
PAUL VERHOEVEN: Okay, fight!
[yells]
After a while, it just was kind of sickening, you know?
[groans]
CAMERA OPERATOR 2: Cut!
That wasn't so hard to shoot.
I have to tell you,
I've been shot with squibs before.
Blood!
[screams]
Now, there's no squibs anymore, thank God,
'‘cause they're just a pain.
They're a pain to put on, they're also really dangerous.
I've had my eye burned, my cheeks burned, back burned,
everything burned, man.
They go sideways.
Real violence, the minute I see it,
I'm horrified.
Screen violence, I really like, and I--
And it's not real violence. It's beautiful.
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: And action!
[screams]
ED: And so, one of the things that happened,
that was interesting, was that I met Paul.
And Paul and I we're like, you know,
it's like you meet that girl
who likes the same ice cream you do.
[laughs]
That was just like, "Oh!"
And we would say things like that,
"Well, I think violence is beautiful."
And he would go, "Yeah, it is, it is.
Yeah."
The hardest thing was the prosthetic
of the arm going off.
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: Three!
[screams]
RAY: There was a certain amount of um, uncomfortability.
But then after a while it got to be so ridiculous
with all the-- all the-- all the shooting
that it did become humorous to us.
Oh, shit, I'm out of ammo!
-Nice shot. -[laugh together]
[overlapping speech]
He wouldn't die!
[laugh together]
And so, the laughs were more real, I suppose.
Uh, the dialogue is fantastic, I think.
"Does it hurt? Does it hurt?"
[laughs]
Does it hurt? Does it hurt?
[laugh together]
JESSE: All of that was improvised, you know?
"Good night, sweet prince."
JOE: Good night, sweet prince.
[Joe laughing]
JESSE: That's all improvised.
The puppet, that was a very big deal.
That was another one.
"Oh, by the way, we need a set
that's got about four feet underneath it,
so we can get our puppeteers in there
to operate this puppet of Peter Weller."
Rob Bottin had built this
incredibly lifelike version of Peter Weller.
ARNE: It was shocking how detailed it was.
You could see like every pore in his skin.
Rob was there for that
and Rob was directing the sequence, practically,
because it has to be shot this way
with the gun that's connected to the fake head.
It's got like an eccentric motor,
like a car polisher in it, so the thing is shaking,
and it's-- it's just incredible.
Okay, fun's over.
[groans]
[laugh together]
[yells]
CLARENCE: Okay, let's get out of here.
On one take, I said, "Hey, Jesse, you know what?
You know, fuck it. Let's moonwalk out."
And then you see we did a little moonwalk
as were leaving, right?
[chuckles]
And then there's that pile of coke, right?
So, we moonwalked out, I saw the coke.
Boom!
I popped my head in the coke, came up,
you have all this coke on your face.
Jesse would do that.
And we moonwalked out, and then we came up, we said,
"Paul?"
He was like, "Oh, no, that's okay! That's okay!"
He didn't care what you did.
You know, obviously it was devastating for Anne
to not get there when she knew
and she could hear that something was happening,
she couldn't get through,
and say, "This is very traumatic."
Murphy.
Just thought, "Hey, this is great."
You know, we're kind of goin' over
to type with these guys, these killers.
They shot that guy, what, 500 times?
That there was anything left to put together is--
is a miracle.
It's so crazy bloody and seeming.
It wasn't violent, but it was real bloody.
And I thought, "Oh, we're really in for it now,
you know, with this."
NURSE: Got a pressure of 60 palp.
EMERGENCY DOCTOR: Alright, we have to intubate this guy.
NURSE: His pressure's dropping.
EMERGENCY DOCTOR: Okay.
PETER WELLER: He's a good guy, he's a happy guy,
he's an upbeat guy, man.
He ain't no downbeat, cynical policeman.
Let's prep him for a central line.
PETER WELLER: He's got a family, he's got a life.
When I look at the movie,
I think that's what gives him his humanity.
Is that he had this wife, and this child,
and a woman who loved him,
and she doesn't know what happens to him.
She thinks he's murdered,
and he's killed in the line of duty.
PETER WELLER: He's a public servant, that's what he is,
that's what he wants to do.
And he likes doing his job. Bang!
He gets thrown into this den of vipers,
and uh, it's over for him.
EMERGENCY DOCTOR: Alright, I think that's all we can do.
Let's call it.
DEL: I think it's one of the most brave
and amazing uses of black screen in the history of movie making.
Most filmmakers will never let the screen go black
for eight seconds, because that's deadly.
But he was makin' the point of he's dead.
He dies,
and then slowly basically he comes back to life again.
It's a certain kind of life.
This different idea of shooting from this point of view,
which is now used in video games,
and every-- you see it all the time now,
but then it was very unusual.
Can he understand what I'm saying?
The executive saying he signed a release form,
we can pretty much do anything we want.
He's legally dead.
We can do pretty much what we want to.
MICHAEL: And then his partner saying...
ROOSEVELT: Doesn't matter.
We're gonna blank his memory anyway.
There's a lot to do with ownership of the self,
obviously, and an audience is justifiably outraged
when they hear someone else say, "Give him the amnesia."
Not only has he been brutally killed,
but now he's a corporate product.
And he's owned by somebody.
MICHAEL: That was a very barbed criticism of capitalism
and what ownership is.
Shut him down. Prep him for surgery.
SAGE: I had all my own wardrobe.
The glasses were mine, and it was my idea
that Paul was not very happy with
in the beginning.
He said something to me about being attractive
and he didn't understand why I wanted to wear them,
and to me, it was her being able to put a barrier to say,
you know, "Take me seriously",
because she was working with all these men.
And the one time
she allowed herself to be vulnerable, you know,
were those moments when she took them off.
Happy New Year.
Somebody asked me once,
"You know, you fell over and they got that on camera",
and it's like, "No, that's called acting."
[cheers]
Oh!
SAGE: Certainly, Miguel was, I'd say, my favorite person on the set.
MIGUEL: Well, I played Bob Morton,
who is a-- a sort of up and coming executive
with this company OCP.
The company itself is kind of scary.
It's like, "We are Beatrice", you know?
We own the police, we own the hospital, it's great.
FELTON: The new mega corporation.
And now, they've figured a way to go into law enforcement.
We'll come up with the best cop they ever saw.
You're gonna be a bad motherfucker.
[chuckles]
Rob Bottin had several specific suggestions for Paul
directorially.
BOB: We get the best of both worlds.
You know that if you introduce that thing wrong,
and you get a laugh,
you're dead for the rest of the picture.
BOB: The fastest reflexes modern technology has to offer,
onboard computer-assisted memory,
and a lifetime of on-the-street law enforcement programming.
Rob suggested that Paul, as he introduced RoboCop ,
conceal him.
It is my great pleasure
to present to you, RoboCop .
MICHAEL: And it's a beautiful directorial suggestion.
Come on, come on, come on.
That's for you.
MICHAEL: The first time we see RoboCop
is when the plastic is pulled off
and there he is on the video screen.
Then we see him behind frosted glass
as he's walking into the police department.
And we just see a turn as he goes through a door.
It felt like something special was happening.
What is this shit?
Then there is wire mesh in front of him
when we see him in his chair.
When you're at rest, you will sit in the chair.
Yes, I understand.
Rob Bottin, in collaboration with Paul,
choreographed that,
so that we slowly introduce the illusion.
And by the time we actually see him,
he's in the chair surrounded by metal,
And they're really selling this thing really well.
That, to me, was brilliant.
The footstep test for RoboCop ,
we did 104 individual footstep tests.
Because Paul wanted Robo to be massive.
This is the sound effects prop for RoboCop 's foot.
It's a truck timing chain.
It's-- it's pulled out of a truck.
It's an old truck timing chain with uh, with handles on it.
STEPHEN HUNTER: We hand cut these sort of cartoony,
low-frequency whoops.
Every time Rob walks, he's got a larger than life,
cartoon element to him.
We could perform it
on all the surfaces Robo walked on.
STEPHEN HUNTER: We could perform it dramatically
if he had to scuffle, if he had to go fast.
And because Robo was a heroic character,
without being spurs or roundels, like a Western,
it had that flavor.
Peter Weller had these jackets made for us.
Um, he also gave us all nifty nicknames.
Mine was "Sci-fi",
which was probably the least derogatory of--
Of everyone elses.
What were the nicknames?
I made nicknames for them.
Mine was "His Royal Swami Blondness."
It was like "Doc" from like the Seven Dwarves.
Yeah, I remember calling Stephan "Doc".
[laughs]
PETER WELLER: Stephan is a genius.
He's a Dick Smith protégé.
Todd Trotter, my assistant, was a great guy.
Todd and Gregor were like nerds.
Bart is one of the greats.
Dennis was like just working constantly.
And Dennis here is like the chief mechanic,
he does all the-- supervises all the repairs,
because there are people working on this suit
round the clock.
Beautiful, beautiful guys, man.
Guys were fantastic.
GREGOR: To say it was a monumental effort
to keep that suit running is an understatement.
It was a 24-hour a day process to keep the few suits we had
screen ready.
PETER WELLER: You got a Formula 1 team around you,
changin' out arms, and all the stuff.
And it took 45 minutes to warm up, stretching.
Then workin' the inner suit, doin' all of the stuff.
Pop! Yeah? So, don't go neatly.#*
Your-- uh, your steps were not completely coordinated here.
He greased the machine, Bottin,
and he got it down to like a 90-minute put-on,
which is the best we could do without really messing it up.
GREGOR: The main under suit was made out of foam latex
and it was molded to his body.
BART: We had a bald cap,
and then there was a black foam neck piece,
and the foam jaw piece.
The helmet was fiber glass.
Everything else was a flexible urethane.
GREGOR: Urethanes just don't take paint very well.
So, it would blister and peel,
and so the suit was repaired almost every day.
And by repaired I mean repainted from scratch.
STEPHAN: The paint job was like different coats
of blues, yellows, purple, silver, and so on.
So, it kind of changed color when he was walking around
in different sort of lighting, which was really cool.
BART: The chest was a front and back piece
that screwed on.
And then there were the little rings
on the shoulders, we just Super Glued those on.
The arms were one piece that slid up
and had Velcro on the shoulders that anchored those to the suit.
The black gloves were foam latex.
RoboCop couldn't be dressed without the power of K-Y jelly.
To get his gloves on,
there was quite a few gallons of K-Y jelly
that were used to do that.
BART: Those little details,
there's like a pivot point on the hip
that's like right at the pivot point.
So, it looks like the leg is swingin' from that point.
MILES: I remember Rob was really frustrated
that Verhoeven said,
"There's something wrong with the butt.
I don't like it. It looks like a butterfly.
It must be changed. We can't have a butterfly."
And the-- the Robo butt was a big point of contention,
for some reason.
And you don't see it very often in the movie.
I can't imagine the film bein' a success
without Robo team's make-up work,
because it really is just a guy in a plastic suit.
PETER WELLER: There's one line I didn't like.
ROBOCOP: What are your prime directives?
PETER WELLER: I didn't like "Serve the public trust."
It just seemed lightweight to me,
and Paul convinced me to say it anyway.
And uh, I like it now. I'm glad I said it.
Serve the public trust.
Because finally, what is a policemen
except serving the public trust.
Once this physique,
and the physicality of the robot became organic to me,
it became apparent
that I had to lower the octave of the voice.
Protect the innocent.
You have to go, "Bravo--"
[vocalizes]
You gotta relax it.
So, you're drinkin' hot tea during the day.
Not talkin' to people helps. Relax the vocal cords.
And the diction has to be human but robotic.
Uphold the law.
When I'm doing this voice, it's down here.
Stay out of trouble.
And yeah, they tweaked it in post a little bit.
STEVE LEE: They did a little bit of processing on Robo's voice.
Serve the public trust. Protect the innocent.
Uphold the law.
That was actually done on the dub stage,
so that they could control the amount of it
depending on where he was in the film.
ROBOCOP: Come quietly or there will be trouble.
STEPHEN HUNTER: And Robo himself had voice processing
that was put through some guitar stomp boxes.
ROBOCOP: You are under arrest.
And by the way,
Peter's voice was just perfect for this character.
ROBOCOP: Keep him talking.
And then, of course, there was Paul Verhoeven,
the crazy Dutchman.
This movie without Paul Verhoeven
is impossible.
The energy and the passion.
Verhoeven was the man.
PAUL VERHOEVEN: Thank you very much. Thank you.
And he was the man we tried to please.
[yells]
Action.
NANCY: The drive of the movie comes from Paul.
Hello. Hi. Hey. Come on, guys.
ED: It's impossible to imagine it without him.
PAUL VERHOEVEN: Pack up!
NANCY: He infused the set every day.
There's nothing there.
Just give me a little more there.
And he'd just walk on the set, and he'd say,
"Why are we not shooting?" you know?
And that's right there, you're ready to go, you know?
And uh, he'd act out all the roles.
Pop, pop.
And everything coming over here,#*
and then he was here #* "Phew!"
You're thrown from the window.
And when you're thrown from the window, #* "Boom!"
you're thrown from the other window.
So many gun.
He's like, "Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam!"
[yells]
"And so, give me that." And we're like, "Okay."
[laughs]
The Verhoeven mantra on RoboCop was blood,
I want more fucking blood.
Bloody, extremely bloody.
And he would scream that every day.
One thing he'd like to say,
I want sprouting blood! Sprouting blood!
Arms blowing off!"
[mimics explosions]
[mimics gunfire]
And we have [mimics gunfire]
[mimics gunfire]
JOST: What he always say, "Yeah, I mean, what is life?
Life is about sex, and about violence,
about fighting, and about blood."
I love this.
He just clearly really loved what he was doin'.
he was wildly enthusiastic.
He's such a highly intelligent guy.
And he loved actors.
PAUL VERHOEVEN: Go!
I think my influence and the style
has much more to do with the way I work with the actors,
which is I spend, I think, much more time with the actors
than you would normally do for an action picture.
Paul made us really care desperately
about those characters.
JON: I mean I never saw a director worked as hard as Paul.
But he was difficult.
Paul was a very volatile guy.
Paul was rather a mad man.
Yeah, he could be a monster.
He had attitude.
You could tell he was a-- a sexual man.
Full of energy, you know? Crazy.
Yeah, he was kinda manic.
Genius, brilliant director.
I thought he was a little maniacal,
but I thought he was a genius.
And he was a challenging director
to work with.
There was no question about it.
JON: Paul Verhoeven could be terrifying.
I mean, he's a brilliant guy
and a great cat to have dinner with, and so forth,
but he's another human bein' on a set.
CREW MEMBER 3: Dan, we're comin' up next.
PAUL VERHOEVEN: Come on, come on!
I don't think he trusted initially
the American crew.
I think there was some friction, because the American crew
had this sense of "We're Hollywood and you're not,
and we're gonna show you how to make a movie",
which was pretty funny,
'‘cause he like kicked their asses.
PAUL VERHOEVEN: Okay, do it again!
Do it again. Do it again!
Shooting with the crew is always the same.
I feel of that-- if that's a Dutch crew
or an American crew, I think,
filming all over the world is the same.
So, there is nothing specific to discuss basically
than normal filmmaking.
He treated people pretty poorly in many instances.
I've seen him go off on crews in ways
that you just would not want to be around
when that's happening.
Paul would get in their faces
and just frickin' scream at them.
"I want more! It's not enough! You're fucking up my movie!"
"What? Why?
You're conspiring to ruin my movie!"
I mean, he was just so crazy about it.
He would blow up and go running off.
Yelling and screaming, "Y'all! Boom, boom!"
[indistinct speech]
"This is crap!
You Americans don't know how to do it!"
PAUL VERHOEVEN: Wow!
The tensions were very high at that time,
because everybody had his own problem,
annoying things happened, and this and that.
It was always about things not being ready,
things that he had been promised.
I'll say this, it was always because
he was tryin' to push the envelope
not to get a nicer trailer for himself,
not to have a fancier hotel room,
it was always about the movie.
JON: He just was fighting everybody for the best.
It's only intuition.
I really go on intuition,
and I've learned that in 90% of the cases I'm right.
And in 10% I'm wrong.
And that's basically-- is enough.
The thing with Paul is that Paul's nuts.
But he's inspiring, man!
You know, you feel like you're in the deck
with Neil Armstrong, bro.
That's what you feel like working with Paul.
He's a quick, and inventive, and unsettled guy.
And that took getting used to, but once I got used to that,
which really didn't take a large adjustment,
because I'm sort of unsettled and-- and uh, restless.
One I got used to that, we got used to each other
that that's where we're gonna begin,
then it was phenomenal.
KEVIN KUTCHAVER: The Robo vision stuff.
I had a guy once ask me what computer I was using
back then in '87,
and I said, "I think I had a calculator,
so I could do my invoicing."
Remember that back then, this wasn't done on a computer.
This was all done photographically and--
And optically.
One of the things that was a little tough
was to try to come up with
what they wanted Robo vision to look like.
Let me see.
PETER KURAN: What I came up with was kind of a video line.
It-- it was an actual video,
it wasn't photographed off a video,
it was actual optical printing with two sets of lines.
One set of lines to lay in the first image
every other line,
and then the next set of lines,
and I kind of shifted it a little bit,
so it looked like it had kind of a jagged uh, appearance.
It was a very technical process in those scenes,
because there was gonna be a grid, you know?
"Give me a grid."
Give me a grid.
-BILL: Got it. -TECHNICIAN 2: It's there.
-Target. -TECHNICIAN 1: Check.
And coordinating everything
with what was gonna be on the screen later,
making sure that we were all looking
in a particular direction at the same time,
and it was a monumental task.
Now, follow.
It was basically followin' the pen.
KEVIN KUTCHAVER: It was like all hands on deck,
because the stuff was really, really tedious.
Things like the targeting, as an example,
would be uh, hand-drawn art.
We would actually, on a clear cell,
paint the cross and the box on separate layers.
We would then paint black outside of them,
cover them with Exeter paper and black tape.
That-- that's really, at that time, all we had.
It-- it seems like it was ridiculous
now to talk about it.
What, are you kidding?
This was in the '‘80s, right?
Yes.
KEVIN KUTCHAVER: We project the work print down,
line the art work up, plot it out,
and then bottom light the art.
I did a lot of optical printer testing
of different types of effects to show to Paul
and get an idea of what it was that he liked.
You'd have the crosshairs, animating.
Then you'd have another element of the box,
and either we could basically do a second exposure
where we'd have the box animate on and off,
or Pete could do that in the optical printer.
It really all depended on what the shot was at the time.
Pete could then go into the printer, and color,
and add a diffusion to give it a glow,
and do these multiple passes and stuff to give it a--
a kind of stylized look, so it wasn't just so raw.
To make it look
like it was some form of digital technology,
without actually using any digital material or effects.
All the visuals on Robo's POV came from sounds
that John Pospisil had made...
...From an ARP 2600,
which were beeps, and dips, and zips.
You could control these early analog synthesizers
to make any kinda sound you wanted,
but it took a very long time to do.
KEVIN KUTCHAVER: Most of the text came from like Kodalith on high icon,
high contrast film,
which gave you a stark contrasty black-and-white image.
There were pages of font that you could buy,
that you could basically paste up
like in the old publishing days.
Pete was really kind of the master of designing stuff
on the optical printer.
Voice stress analyzer 1, 2...
[vocalizes]
The voice analyzer,
that I actually photographed off of like an oscilloscope
and then composited that into the shot.
I had to envision
what the visual effects team was gonna do.
So, I would get a s-- uh, a sketch that I could see,
but it was very difficult for me to actually, you know,
do the timing,
except from the way the people read it.
You can sort of imagine it when it's written,
but how well it was done...
[vocalizes]
SAGE: ...that was really incredible.
Give me a full frame.
Say there was probably somewhere in the neighborhood
of 120 shots like that.
Oh!
[kisses]
I fuckin' love that guy!
Verhoeven came to me one day and he said,
"I need you to take Nancy Allen and teach her how to shoot,
'‘cause she doesn't know how to shoot.
And I want you to reach her to run like a man."
And she goes, "Oh, Verhoeven ."
It was very different than anything
that I had done before.
For me, what was great about it is that I had so many women,
young women, sometimes little girls,
write to me about that character,
and how it made them feel,
like they could be really important,
and do something really important in their life.
"Wow!
Yeah, a woman can be that tough, too."
You know, they put us behind glass,
so that they could dolly across in front of us
with all of us firing.
YOLONDA: They're all comin' down on it like a dolly, like--
[mimics dolly moving]
I mean everybody shootin' over their heads
and stuff, and I was like "Lord, I don't wanna shoot anybody."
[laughs]
They were blanks obviously,
but I just remember it being very loud and all that.
The noise and everything in reality was really--
It was deafening.
The Robo gun presented a very interesting challenge,
because it had to be this huge gun
that's bigger than all the others.
The scene in the shooting range, where you see it back there,
it had to stand out.
It had to be a reason for all those others guys
to stop shooting and look.
The actual firing,
they sweetened the hell out of that
with so many other guns.
STEVE LEE: And John Pospisil, he was our mad genius.
He made all kinds of synth sweeteners.
And just made it huge.
[yells]
JOHN: To see that-- that freakin' creation and--
And those cannons that he pulled out of his thing
and started blastin' away with, it was uh, it was--
It was kind of great. It was kinda-- it was very cool.
And I remember the entrance of-- of RoboCop into that scene,
and how-- how exciting it was.
To see that character in that full regalia,
with a gun, was just frightening.
OFFICER RAMIREZ: Hey, hang on, it's Super Cop.
Hey, Lewis, it's Super Cop.
Look at that fuckin' gun.
[laughs]
That fuckin' gun.
TYREES: That was so cool,
'‘cause I got to say "fuckin'" on film.
I thought it was great.
[Tyrees laughs]
At first, I was very interested
in the Israeli Desert Eagle as RoboCop's gun,
'‘cause that was a new gun.
But when we saw it with the costume,
it was like a-- a tiny toy.
RANDY: And they said my big problem is
the finger doesn't fit in any triggers.
And I said, "Well, you know, I have a gun in my car."
My car gun that I show-- being from Texas, you know,
we all have car guns.
I had a Beretta 93R in my vehicle,
and I showed 'em the extended trigger guard.
It allowed the RoboCop finger to go in with the glove on.
At that point, we sat down with the 93R,
and then Paul Verhoeven and I drew
what he wanted to see.
ED: And we sat down one afternoon and we designed that gun.
And it was one of the most creative moments of my life.
CLARENCE: Gonna need some major firepower.
RANDY: They wanted sides. I did the vent rib on the top.
We were adding texture, so that's why it's thin.
The object is to make it visually interesting
and to make it also function.
They were gonna do a lot of lower shots,
lookin' up, under the gun, and everything.
And I said, "Well, if we do that,
we need to put the flame out the side."
The three ports in the front are to give us the bowtie flame.
PETER WELLER: So, this is the gun.
And the first time I fired, it was on that firing range.
And it was loud. It was really, really loud.
RANDY: The gun is capable of firing three shot,
seven shot, or full auto,
depending on the counting mechanism
in the side that we put in.
The standard gun fires three-shot bursts only,
or semi-auto.
Semi-automatic, you gotta go, pull the trigger every time.
The bullet expands the shell.
On the set, you knew that was a cool gun.
And I think it's one of the coolest guns there is.
PAUL VERHOEVEN: My directing was more movement directing.
It was not about character acting, you know?
I mean, the character was like, "Bang!"
[chuckles]
MARK GOLDBLATT: The reason that they needed a second unit director
was because Paul was on a very tight schedule.
So, he had to keep moving, and moving, and moving.
And then in some of the sequences,
he couldn't get all the coverage that he wanted.
So, I shot close-ups of the targets getting shot,
and different characters reacting to RoboCop.
PETER WELLER: And when you fire blanks,
the blank will kill you if you're close to it.
Full loads are the capacity of powder
in a nine-mil shell
that's gonna fire a bullet, right?
A projectile.
You gotta put something in there for that compression
to shoot out.
RANDY: Those blanks, as far as I know,
are the most powerful blanks ever been used in a movie.
And you pull the trigger, and hold it down.
It's gonna freak you out, man.
PETER WELLER: And I was like fire one-handed, man.
I never liked doin' the police stuff, man.
I like holdin' it here.
This guy's really good.
He's not a guy, he's a machine.
OFFICER MANSON: What are they gonna do? Replace us?
NANCY: When he does the spinning of the gun,
and she remembers and recognizes that that's probably him.
That's someone who really pays attention.
This is what it says a lot about her.
She really pays attention. She doesn't miss anything.
'‘Cause that could be something
that you could forget in a second.
But she's very sharp in that way.
RANDY: Robo team made a leg that sits vertically,
and it's just to the hip.
One guys opens the doors with cable operation.
Another guy makes the holster go out.
Weapon goes in, holster goes in, doors close.
One of the many surprises about seeing the movie
was just the-- the-- you had no idea
what the sound effects were gonna be.
Well, back in the days before there was paper
and people used cuneiform on clay tablets,
there were things called "VCRs".
So, Robo mostly was a Betamax.
And a VHS, VCR. Loading movement.
And we cut them so that they matched action.
And when sounds match action, they tell the truth.
STEPHEN HUNTER: The lead editor on Robo was Dave Whitaker.
And he even wrote this-- this document.
It was like a 12-page document "How to cut Robo"
that had all the numbers of the library
and all the different servos.
Little diagrams on, you know,
the sound of this, and the sound of this.
And all the little--
[whizzes]
Stuff that they put in post.
For the whole movie, every little detail just
really helped to bring him alive.
STEVE LEE: John P is the mystery man.
You'd ask him to make something and he'd come back
with something a couple days later
that was just absolutely perfect.
You dropped it into picture and--
"Oh, yeah, that's-- that's exactly it."
He made a lot of sort of cheesy, synthy sweeteners and--
And things to accent stuff.
This is before the digital age,
and it was all cut on magnetic film.
STEVE LEE: So, you have hundreds of these reels,
sitting in a hallway, waiting to be dubbed.
And it was a glorious sight seeing all these dubbers
with all these reels of sound going back and forth in sync
while they dubbed the movie in the theater.
It's really a monumental job.
Even though the number crunchers were tryin' to you know,
"No, we're not spending another dime on this thing",
Sol Lomita got us another $200,000 or $300,000,
for the sound effects,
and it won the Academy Award for sound effects.
STEPHEN HUNTER: Just being there,
I felt as if I was walking four feet above the ground.
And then, when I got home from the Oscars,
Peter Weller had sent me two dozen yellow roses
to say "Congratulations."
Peter is not only a wonderful actor,
but he's probably one of the most disciplined people
I've ever met in my life.
I had to get into that animal.
And that's a method deal, man.
I just couldn't walk out in that thing and go,
"Hey, yeah, I'm Peter."
So, I talked to no one except the Robo team.
I listened to no one except Paul.
That's the guy who'd come up.
But everybody else was out.
When he stepped on the set, he was that guy.
The first day on the set, he announced to everyone,
"Call me '‘Robo'."
Robo, excuse me! Robo!
KURTWOOD: When I first got there, I said, "What's this Peter Weller like?"
And they said, "Well, I don't know.
YOU KNOW, I guess he only wants to be called '‘Robo'
or '‘Murphy'."
I was like, "What?"
[chuckles]
ROBOCOP: Clarence!
Once I was in there, they called me "Robo",
and you know, I don't give a fuck about--
You know, certain people would come up,
"Do people call-- really call you "Robo"?
You go do that in 105 degree heat.
You prep that for six months, and put on that suit.
Once I get suit on, tough shit. That's who I am.
Paul Verhoeven called me "Robo".
One last rehearsal, please, for Robo.
When Peter told me that
when he's in the police suit, I'm Murphy,
and when I'm in the RoboCop suit,
I'm RoboCop ,
I just looked at him and, "Sure."
And that-- and that irritated him to death.
[chuckles]
Don't you have a name?
So, I just decided that I wouldn't talk to him,
because uh, I wasn't gonna try to befriendly with some guy
and be calling him "Robo".
I clashed, at one point, with almost everybody
on that movie.
Clash, but it was a quick clash.
He was always telling jokes and stories,
and playing his trumpet,
which sometimes got on people's nerves.
He uh, plays a man jazz trumpet, studying Kendo.
Chases female cyborgs, you know, things like that.
[chuckle together]
Is he on this floor?
[chuckle together]
No. He-- he's great, he's terrific.
Fun at parties, hell of a guy. Really.
Wouldn't you say?
The working relationship was always good,
because I think, you know, misery loves company.
We both were in the same situation
all day long.
Both of us just, you know, sittin' there and goin',
"God, is this hot?", and he said, "Yeah."
"Is this miserable?" "Yeah."
PETER WELLER: And there were some difficult times,
really difficult times.
PETER WELLER: RoboCop was a-- was an obsessive discipline for me.
I am the future of law enforcement.
That says it all, doesn't it?
Thank you, Robo. That's good job.
Thank you.
What did I tell ya? Be lookin' for him.
The first day that we were shooting with the suit,
we scheduled a very late day.
-BOB: Reed! SGT. -REED: Yeah.
BOB: He needs a car.
And the shot was,
Peter walks through the police station
and catches the car keys.
He's wearing his kinda rubber gloves
and he-- you know,
he wasn't really supposed to look at it.
He was supposed to just catch it.
And the car keys would bounce at him.
No.
PAUL VERHOEVEN: Cut.
We must've shot that
from 9:00 at night to 1:00 in the morning,
tryin' to catch the car keys.
Thank you.
Sure, anytime.
It was that kinda show.
Go get '‘em, boy.
When I'm driving,
the Robo team would take the legs off,
so I could like uh, sit in the car and drive it.
And yeah, it was me driving most of the time,
with Jost shooting this wonderful stuff,
and Paul's in the backseat saying,
"Let's drive up here, let's drive up there."
You know that we spent months, and months, and months
creating a new police car.
We built the car for RoboCop ,
but they didn't take into consideration
that when he got in the car, he would have that suit on.
And he didn't fit.
PAUL VERHOEVEN: Of course, it was a disaster.
So, we then bef-- I abandoned
all kind of wonderful production design ideas.
I throw it all out of the window.
Yeah, there is this kind of strange person,
but rest is all normal.
Paul came up with the idea,
"Okay, a completely rundown police department
doesn't need to have very nice, wonderful, new, shiny cars.
No."
That car, we abandoned that and we used a normal car.
The new Taurus at that time we used.
♪ Taurus ♪
♪ Now, there is a personal car ♪
♪ That has exactly what we've been looking for ♪
PAUL VERHOEVEN: It was just in production.
Looked a little bit modern, so we took that.
CRAIG: Science fiction, it's very easy for it
to become sort of enmeshed in a world view
that's hyperdesigned, hyperfocused, and stuff.
And what I thought was really cool
about RoboCop was,
it really put a lot of that stuff aside
and just was what it was.
And I thought that just worked in service of the picture.
It couldn't have been better
that these things were just Ford Tauruses
painted flat black.
PAUL VERHOEVEN: I remember how important it was for the movie
that we didn't have so much money.
Because you come up with solutions
that are extremely simple and-- and effective.
It was interesting to see a gleaming, shining robot
against the crumbling infrastructure of Dallas,
standing in for Detroit.
I find that a very interesting juxtaposition of images.
A lot of RoboCop has reflections,
and I mean that literally.
Uh, they polished up the suit with oils,
and everything around him is just shining.
And that was intentional.
And it was Paul's way of saying
that this was a very steely, cold mechanical world.
GROCERY MOM: Will there be anything else, sir?
HOPHEAD: Yeah, empty the register and put the money in the bag.
We went in that liquor store
and it was a practical liquor store.
Hophead enters
and in passing this nefarious robbery,
he picks up a copy of uh, a Marvel Comic.
Strangely, they're all Marvel Comics.
There's a copy of Blade Runner,
which was also part of the origins of the script,
because the film inspired the idea of RoboCop.
And the issue he picks up is this one,
which is Iron Man 142,
and it's where Iron Man displays his new high-tech armor,
which is of course what RoboCop does
in the very next scene.
...two.
Fuck me.
RON: Avram Gold was our dialogue supervisor
I remember him having a problem with a scene one day,
and he came in to me, and said, "Ron, there's this scene.
There's this guy, he goes in, and he shoots up a liquor store,
and he only says two words, and he just repeats them.
It's "fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck--"
Fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me!
But you can't use that for the TV version
or everything else that he has to get ready.
So, he lookin' for-- "Ron, is there anything else?"
You know, we had to go through da-- No!
I never thought of any-- you know,
shooting anything else for TV,
or just to have other words in there.
So, yeah, you know,
they obviously had to re-- rerecord him.
Why me?
Drop the gun. You are under arrest.
Why me? Why me?
Why me? Why me? Why me?
[chuckles]
[laughs]
He's walking around there,
shooting at him all over the place.
Like, "Pop, pop, pop!" I mean, so on.
And I said to myself, "Well,
if he's getting shot all over the place,
we should show some damage on the armor."
Then Rob said, "No!
This is like an indestructible sort of like new armor,
so it shouldn't show too much damage.
I said, "Oh, okay, I get the picture."
Paul wanted him to pick up the guy
And throw him into this thing.
So, we built this big fridge with breakaway glass,
candy glass, and breakaway balsa wood.
It was kicks, baby. Kicks!
The timing of that, "God, that's great."
Thank you for your cooperation. Good Night.
ADAM: I was originally cast to be in RoboCop 1.
Uh, RoboCop 1 was filmed in Dallas,
and I was born and raised in Dallas,
that's where I got my acting career started.
So, I got a small part in that.
So, my part was that I'm a little tiny kid
and I have on like this little army jacket kind of thing,
and I'm walking around,
and I'm looking at the guy behind the counter
and looking at candy bars,
and so I take a candy bar, and slide it into my jacket.
That's when the guy comes in
and starts robbing the liquor store.
Give me your money. All of it!
And don't fuck around! Where's the safe, old man?
We-- we don't have a safe.
Open the safe, pops,
or I'm gonna blow junior here all over the candy rack.
GROCERY POP: Oh, don't hurt the boy. I'll open the safe.
You're stallin', old man!
You got the count of three to get that safe open.
One, two--
Drop it. You're under arrest.
Wow!
HOPHEAD: Fuck you, cop!
You're in a lot of trouble.
Oh, fuck me.
[yells]
ADAM: I'm like standin' there, you know,
lookin' in awe as a child at RoboCop, and he says--
Prisoner transport will arrive shortly.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Good night, and have a pleasant evening.
ADAM: Now, I stare at him and watch him walk out the door,
and so the end of the scene is me,
like taking the candy bar out of my pocket,
and putting it on the counter, and saying--
"How much for this?"
That obviously didn't appear in the original movie,
because Texas child labor laws at the time,
possibly even now uh, would not let a minor
stay up and work past midnight,
and it was, you know, a night scene,
and the shooting was running long
based on I don't-- things I wasn't aware of,
so they just cut that part out of the movie.
I mean I still got paid and everything,
'‘cause I did show up,
but, you know, it-- it was crushing.
It was like, "Aw, I was really excited
about doin' this thing.
It was gonna be fun."
Shit! He's fucked up.
Bad language makes for bad feelings.
ADAM: Long story short,
the casting director remembered me,
and so when RoboCop 2 came around, I was cast in that.
It's Robo!
[crowd cheering]
[laugh together]
I'd buy that for a dollar.
[laughs]
I think in some ways as a line
that captures the spirit of RoboCop ,
"I'd buy that for a dollar"
is just kind of an amazing little pop line.
The line that almost is meaningless
and yet sums it all up.
I'll buy that for a dollar.
[laughs]
I'm S.D. Nemeth
and I play the part of Bixby Snider.
This was one of the first,
if not practically the only role I ever auditioned for
in which I got cast.
BIXBY: It's not really the right time right now.
Maybe you can come back a little later on.
S.D. NEMETH: For me, it was a gas.
It was just actually playing myself.
I had done a character on radio, on KROQ,
called The Young Marquis.
THE YOUNG MARQUIS: Me your idol, The Young Marquis.
[young Marquis chuckling]
THE YOUNG MARQUIS: Special guest tonight.
Wow, we've got a whole studio full!
S.D. NEMETH: Actually, this Bixby Snider part...
Bixby, who is this?
Oh, uh...
S.D. NEMETH: ...was just The Young Marquis.
THE YOUNG MARQUIS: You mean me!
[young Marquis laughing]
Except behind a camera and not just a microphone.
Uh, well, it's a-- it's a birthday present.
Uh, um, someone sent me something
uh, '‘cause it is my birthday.
Well, look at this. I wonder who could have sent it!
[babbles]
When I found out that Paul Verhoeven
was gonna be the director, I was just tickled pink.
[laughs]
S.D. NEMETH: I had rehearsed the scene the night before
with a tall blonde gal.
Her name was Heather.
Happy Birthday, babe. She's from me!
Oh!
[laugh together]
S.D. NEMETH: We got out parts down
and from then on it was like the Three Stooges.
Well, hey, can I have you both?
-Sure, why not? -Sure, why not?
-We've had our shots. -We've had our shots.
[laugh together]
I'd buy that for a dollar.
[laugh together]
I don't know that any of us ever got that
that was gonna beco-- become an iconic line.
I'd buy that for a dollar.
[chuckles]
It was kind of almost a-- a sort of mystery
why-- why he was saying it.
I'd buy that for a dollar.
Corny, silly.
It was like-- it was like a-- a bad commercial at that time
that didn't necessarily appeal to your sense of humor.
Oh. Oh.
-Bixby! -Bixby!
[cheer together]
We had a massive food fight as I recall.
Showed up on the set,
and I've never been plastered with cake and frosting so much.
[laughs]
Some of it is now a merciful blur.
Wow!
[laughs]
Wow! Did you see that?
[laughs]
I gotta go get a piece of this myself!
It was a pleasure to work with beautiful young girls.
Ooh, wow!
[laughs]
I'd buy that for a dollar.
[grunts]
And with a nice crew, loved it. Loved it.
[laugh together]
It was a real gas, let me tell ya.
BIXBY: I'd buy that for a dollar.
[Bixby and women laughing]
DONNA: It was an extremely long night
and everything just unfolded.
Paul Verhoeven, he said,
"Understand that you're a really good girl
and you foolishly made a really bad mistake
of walking down this ally, you know, coming home from work.
And I'm like, "Okay."
He goes, "And then you're gonna be attacked.
So, go all out like a good girl would, you know?"
And I went, "Okay, so basically that means '‘Don't be tough',
you know?"
[screams]
In the movie, I played the Creep.
Don't touch me! Get away! Get away!
We don't want your bag!
We want you!
Well, first, we have to go back to wardrobe,
because I chose these stomper boots
and I couldn't really move.
And if you can see me, I'm kinda like--
you know, I'm...
[yell together]
Take it easy!
SCOTT: #*Unknown actors, like we hope to do various roles
and it was nice to be in the uh, criminal element.
And I bleached my hair out,
but the humidity, it lost its kinda cool spike.
At the time, my hair looked like that.
[chuckles]
Take it easy! We don't wanna hurt you!
CREEP 2: That's too much hair!
I bought three wigs in case we needed to uh,
you know, keep cutting, and keep cutting.
We'll give her a haircut!
No!
[laughs]
SCOTT: William had a knife.
He said, "I'm gonna cut her,
I'm gonna cut her, you know? I'm gonna cut her hair!"
And then Paul said, "Yeah!" He got inspired.
He says, "Yeah, now you point to her crotch
and you say, "There's more hair down there."
And he laughed maniacally, and I went "Oh, my God."
I ca-- oh, rea-- uh, really? You-- you want me to say that?
Uh...
What?
There's more hair down there.
[both laugh]
SCOTT: It was pretty bold at the time, you know?
I just remember being a little shocked
as an actor.
I was like "Whoa! Okay, we're goin' there."
[laughs]
No!
PETER WELLER: Paul is now an inspiration.
'‘Cause the second that I come out of that thing,
Paul is in seventh gear. No waiting, man.
I'm in a golf cart, a car, or whatever, man,
I'm in the thing, I got the guns,
I'm gonna be ready to go.
I mean, not a second wasted.
Him and Jost have gone hit the deck.
RoboCop as a figure should be bigger than life.
Higher than life.
Stronger than life.
That's all what the mystery of RoboCop is about.
Jost was a brilliant guy.
I mean, he was doing stuff so far ahead of his time.
The moment where RoboCop is walking up
to confront the rapists,
you see his shadow looming, and getting bigger and bigger.
Well, in reality, his shadow would be getting smaller
and smaller.
So, what they did was have RoboCop walk backwards
in that sequence.
Nobody thinks twice about it.
I worked with the camera in a low position,
so he seems to be higher than he actually is.
So, I enlarge him, I stretch him a little bit.
I had an idea for Robo himself,
that Robo had to have attitude,
because he-- he became less talkative
as a character when he became Robo.
So, we decided we need attitude drones.
They slightly changed that
depending on whether he was pissed,
whether he was relaxed.
So, it's just another subtle way of moving the story forward.
Everything you're doing in a film is telling the story,
and sound effects are no exception.
Let the woman go. You are under arrest.
Shit!
PETER WELLER: Robo doesn't ever say anything with intentionality for humor.
He just says things from a position
of intentionality for instruction.
That's it.
The intensity of being picked up
and waiting for that squib to go off between my legs,
you know?
And I can remember very clearly,
he's grabbing me as hard as he can,
and picking me up, and back, and up and down,
and we had to make sure we hit this certain height,
you know, so it looked appropriate to the gun height.
He's gonna kill her!
The climactic moment
where he uh, gets shot in the bullocks.
[screams]
JESSE: RoboCop shoots him in the crotch.
People are like, "Yeah, mother fucker,
you deserved that shit", you know?
[laughs]
Oh, my-- Oh, my God.
Because I can see the blood squirting out of his--
[screams]
By the way, when I saw that with an audience,
they-- the audience went crazy.
[laugh together]
[screams]
What they did is
they took one of those very poor sponges, you know,
the sea sponge type thing,
and they soaked it in the blood,
and then they shoved it in his underwear,
and scored everything.
And I remember it going off and dropping, and just going,
"Oh, my God!" And I was so into it.
What you see is very real of me backing away,
going like, "Oh, oh, oh", you know?
PETER WELLER: Beauty about Robo is
he's a straight man to the world.
In other words, Robo just says what's so.
"Your move, creep."
Your move, creep.
PETER WELLER: Bang, you know?
No explanation, no fat on that, no icing on the cake.
That's the deal.
PAUL VERHOEVEN: We all know that Jesus doesn't say much anymore
after His death.
And basically, if you look at RoboCop his-- his-- his--
The monotony his-- of his voice,
the simplicity of the lines
correspond really with somebody that is partially,
you could say, a zombie.
[screams]
Thank God.
Then the woman runs up and throws her arms around,
and says "thank you", and you get this moment
where she realizes he's just a machine,
and he's very cold, and she has this confusion.
If you watch the film again, you'll see that moment.
Madam, you have suffered an emotional shock.
I will notify a rape crisis center.
PAUL M. SAMMON: And you know,
there was no reason to stage it like that,
but it's a really interesting intimate human emotion
and reaction.
I knew no matter what happened commercially to RoboCop ,
that man, we were makin' somethin'
that was speaking!
[♪♪♪♪♪]