[♪♪♪]
[ RoboCop theme music playing]
[♪♪♪]
PAUL: I mean, the stop motion
is still very interesting, I think.
It's different than digital, you know?
There's an-- it has its own world a little bit.
There's something special about stop motion.
[gunshots]
CRAIG: All the flash effects were done
as a separate pass.
So, what we had to do is then
you got the one frame that you want.
Now, you have to turn the lights off,
isolate the flash tubes, and you've got to put
this little strobe unit into the end of the gun.
You got to wrap it in some orange gel,
and you had to take some cotton,
and sculpt the cotton into the shape of a gaseous,
-you know, explosion. -RANDAL: There was always
that kind of anticipation after you finished the shot.
What's it gonna look like tomorrow?
Because something that you worked so hard on,
there may be a glitch, or some little thing,
or light could have burnt.
Somebody could have bumped a little something on the set.
You'd have to redo the whole thing the next day.
CRAIG: Unfortunately, throughout the process,
the animators would occasionally get shocks.
[laughs]
And I always remember, you know, you hear this...
[groans] "Jesus Christ!"
[chuckles]
And for whatever reason, from my own exposure,
to me, it was kind of funny.
I'd be cracking up like, "Oh, there goes another one."
I know exactly how they feel.
-[gunshots] -[♪♪♪]
The fight scene, they would be flying through the air
and through the glass doors.
We had ramps built. So, I could not quite run up,
but launch myself through those glass doors,
and then another one up against the wall.
And then the mask came off.
They'd have to screw it on,
because I had a permanent cut across my nose,
'cause every time I fell, it just bopped me on the nose.
There's one little blue screen shot there,
which is like, you know,
a guy doing a backflip over the camera,
which was added to one of the ED-209 shots.
PHIL: There were a few shots that I really needed
to be a little bit smoother, so I came up
with like a poor man's version of Go motion.
I would just drive a wedge under the table
that I was working on, so the table was stable,
and I'd animate the puppet, and hit the camera,
and just slightly wiggle the table,
and got a-- got a motion blur.
But I had to make sure that the table
was wiggling the right way, so the motion blur
was the right way, and all that stuff.
NANCY: I can't imagine
really anyone doing a better job than Peter did in that role.
I didn't get
that he was gonna make us care desperately for RoboCop.
ANGIE: I just thought he was wonderful.
I thought his part was a lot more difficult
than people give him credit for.
PETER WELLER: I don't wanna act unless I am transforming something,
and it's not called "technique".
Technique is like, how you get to say something,
what takes you to the personalization of it.
Some people say, "A technical actor?" No.
You're either bullshit or you're saying something.
But every good actor knows when he's saying something.
CRAIG: We needed a shot
that we couldn't get contact-wise any other way.
So, we built a little RoboCop.
RANDAL: I sculpted this little 8-inch replica of RoboCop.
-[gun shots] -[explosion]
And it was a fairly quick shot,
but it shows you how much work needs to be done
on even shots that-- that pass in fractions of a second.
Where he's shooting the rockets out of his arm,
they built explosives into the set.
And as I walked to one, and turned away,
the rocket was on a wire,
then it went a whole lot faster than I could get away.
And as I was turning away,
all the debris went through, the suit and into my arm,
and then knocked me across the hallway.
They had to cut the suit off. I went to the hospital.
They released me later on that day,
but my arm was all swollen, embedded with, you know,
whatever the material was, and started to swell.
Like I said, it was all practical.
You just had to do it.
PETER WELLER: And then a beautiful scene
that ED-209 trying to tiptoe down there,
and he can't get down. God, what...
Is that genius or what?
CRAIG: For the scene where ED-209 falls down the stairs,
for the shots where ED-209's looking
at his feet, trying to figure out
how to stay with the placement and stuff,
those were shot on an actual miniature.
And that was really not very big.
It was, you know, kind of a duplicate
of a location we found out in Dallas, Texas, there.
So, went out there, took measurements,
took photographs.
For him tumbling down the stairs,
we got the thing set up, and started running
at as high a frame rate
as we could get out of these Mitchell cameras.
And basically, Phil would pop the thing,
the robot would tumble down the stairs.
I'm off camera, below the camera,
trying to catch it,
because if it hits the ground, I've gotta fix it.
Once he hits the bottom of the stairs,
then we're back to a photographic plate
where we've got a shot of RoboCop, you know,
kind of in the background,
and ED-209 in the foreground, writhing about.
CRAIG: John Davidson told me
that they used the sounds of pigs being slaughtered
[squeals]
for the writhing and agony moment there...
which was pretty effective.
[♪♪♪]
MICHAEL: And then we shot the scene in the garage, fire at will.
LT. HEDGECOCK: Prepare to fire.
MICHAEL: That was just a dynamic, wonderful scene.
The thing is, I've got 75 background actors
behind me with all kinds of weapons.
We have orders to destroy it.
Everybody in Texas does not know how to handle a weapon.
[chuckles softly]
Fire at will!
[gunshots]
Miguel Ferrer and I became very good friends.
And we would play SWAT officers.
[gun shots]
So, we would be up all night doing that kind of stuff.
We ran around Dallas at night, and drank too much,
and did crazy things.
And so, that was fun of what I remember of it.
PAUL POWER (OS/ON): The shootout stuff,
I mean, it says that in the script,
but I envisioned that fully, with all the bullets
falling on the ground, and all that stuff,
that's-- that's all mine.
I mean, listen, at that time, people are paying
$5 a ticket, right? You-- you got to give them
their 5 bucks' worth, you know?
It's like, "Fuck, push that envelope."
GREGOR: We had about five or six
RoboCop suits in different states of disrepair.
You know, some were the battle-damaged suits.
We spent a couple of days just tearing those suits up,
took dremel suits to 'em, paintbrushes,
and just really wore those things out.
MARK: They shot some kind of compound into the chest plate,
and it would create sparks.
RUSSELL: They're called, "Zerk guns".
They're like paintball guns, and you know,
whenever they hit the hand, you know,
it's like they're standing about 10 feet away,
and you just hope that they're a pretty good shot.
MARK: We pumped in some fluid
oozing out of the chest plate, like chemical fluid,
and some of the life-support stuff
that Robo has in his making.
-[shots] -Halt it!
MICHAEL: I had Randy Moore next to me,
fortunately, because he had an AUG,
and Verhoeven said, "What I want you to do is
I want you to hold that up next to Michael's face."
And he said, "We can do that,
but you're only gonna get one take."
"Why is that?" "'Cause," he said,
"It'll probably take the skin off his face."
"Oh, no, no, no, no. Don't do that."
ED: The way Peter is moving
and the way he's kind of falling back,
it's not real, but it looks beautiful in a way
that looks naturalistic, but it's not.
It's all very planned out. It's very precise.
That's actually me falling over the side of those rails.
There was no pads down there.
I actually went to the ground each time, and probably did it--
I don't know, probably 10 times.
-[shots] -[body thuds]
I-- I still hurt because of that.
[chuckles]
[body thuds]
ANGIE: Both of the female characters,
they're two different female archetypes.
One is the domestic goddess, the homemaker, the wife,
and the other one is more the independent woman who
-doesn't have any children... -Murphy!
ANGIE: ...who is living in the man's world.
-Murphy, it's me. -ANGIE: And I think
that's one of the things that makes the movie work
is because it is a guy's film, and they've got
all this masculine energy,
but these two women rounds out the humanity.
[♪♪♪]
JOAN: I came to be involved
in the project, because my husband,
Kurtwood Smith, was cast as Clarence Boddicker.
Hiya, Barbara.
JOAN: He said, "Well, I think I'll ask 'em if they would read you,"
and that's how I got involved.
KURTWOOD: And the part, of course, was the secretary.
We kind of like, played around with it a little bit.
Listen. I'm here to see Dick Jones.
KURTWOOD: You know, put the chewing gum on her desk.
And when I'm done, I've got some free time.
Maybe you could fit me in.
[laughs] But it was fun. We had a real good time.
He's expecting you, Mr. Boddicker.
JOAN: He would just have this look of evil, gleeful evil,
that is really not a part of who Kurtwood is,
or not-- not a part that I've ever seen.
Hey, Dickie boy. How's tricks?
DICK: That thing is still alive.
RONNY: I spent a lot of time trying
to get at the essence of acting, and it's--
it's a really complex thing.
He's a cyborg, you idiot!
How technical and simple it has to be at once.
His memory is admissible as evidence.
Yeah. The technical stuff has to come through,
and if it ever shows for even an instant, then--
then our bullshit senses say, "Uh-uh."
You involved me!
KURTWOOD: It's important to me
that Clarence works with Dick Jones.
He doesn't-- he's not a toady, you know?
Well, the scene had been rewritten.
It was not what Paul and I had talked about, basically,
and that it had become pretty much
of a yes-or-no-sir scene.
Well, listen, Chief.
KURTWOOD: "I said, Paul, this is exactly
what we talked about at breakfast
that I didn't want to happen, you know?"
He said, "Oh, you're just trying to make the scene
all about you," and kind of stomped off.
And I said to Jon Davison...
Jon understood what I was talking about,
and you know, it's actually better scene for Ronny,
because it went from being a yes-or-no-sir scene
into one where Dick Jones is manipulating me.
One man could control it all, Clarence.
They're the two villains that everybody loves to hate,
and-- and he got such a joy out of calling me, "Dick."
Take a look at my face, Dick.
[laughs]
And Dick Jones didn't think that was funny.
[chuckles]
You got access to military weaponry?
We practically are the military.
PAUL: There is this beautiful scene
when he sits there in this steel factory.
I guess we're on strike.
I wasn't sure what you needed.
What you would call a personal human scene.
You asked for this?
PAUL: I think the scene is very beautiful.
The helmet wouldn't fit on his head, you know,
with the prosthetic 'cause it was just--
everything was too big.
So, Paul had that worked out
where you didn't have to actually see him
lifting it off his head.
ROBOCOP: You may not like what you're going to see.
BART: But now, he's like, "Well, what about all this black stuff,
the chin strap, the neck piece?"
It's like, just suddenly, that's gonna be gone
and we were gonna take a piece and like,
put some cuts in it to where he could be like,
lifting it off his head, and Paul's just like,
"Eh, nobody's ever gonna notice."
STEPHAN: Ta-da! You know, all of a sudden,
like this thing just vanishes.
BART: And I was like, "How could they not notice?
It's there, then it's not there."
But they don't.
It's you know, you're so into the scene.
STEPHAN: I remember the first makeup test that we did.
We shot under green neon light. It looked awful.
Paul was confident that he could make it look good
with controlled lighting, but he wanted to see it
under its worst circumstances.
So, we're screening the test footage.
Rob's sitting there going, "Oh, that looks like crap.
No, you can't shoot it that way. That looks bad."
STEPHAN: And I was like devastated,
'cause this just looks like dead flesh.
BART: And then Rob just gets up and walks out.
I remember Paul is out there, and they're almost
getting into like, a physical altercation.
And Jon's there, trying to calm Verhoeven down.
And Rob's over Jon's back just mocking Verhoeven.
-[chuckles] -[grunts]
Yeah. That kind of thing. [chuckles]
I mean, a very, very genius guy, Rob Bottin.
Difficult guy, but top, top.
He built a forefront
that looked like part of the head was missing.
So, from the side, you would see it
going like this, yeah, bop, which is not possible,
and it's like you're cutting the head.
STEPHAN: The final makeup was not an easy one to pull off.
It was all in one piece. There was no margin for error.
And the face took six and a half hours.
Stephan Dupuis, genius.
Three hours of putting that thing on,
and three and a half hours of making it up.
And I would go into zen mode, zen meditation mode.
STEPHAN: There was a very particular way
of it being applied, as opposed to start from the edge out.
It had to be started like in the middle of the appliance,
adjusted to fit the prongs
to the back of the fiberglass skull,
and then work that way, and then work this way
so that it would like, fit and blend,
and uh, there was no kink,
because you couldn't hide anything.
Then, you know, if there was a kink somewhere,
it would like, show up on the screen like big time.
It was 21 days for that face.
I was going to put that face on when the crew would come in
from dinner at 1:30 in the morning.
And then I got to put on a suit.
So, that's like, an eight-and-a-half-hour day
before I've even turned to camera, man.
It was two and a half hours to take it off,
'cause they had to pull it off,
otherwise, my face looked like a zit.
You can't just rip that stuff off.
MILES: You know, RoboCop gets shot in the head,
so I had to carry that bullet hole over into the makeup
that he wears without his helmet.
I remember thinking, you know, "God, when I was a kid,
I took apart the telephone once,
and there's that little disc with the dots in it,
and he'll just have one of those for an ear,
you know, where his ear should be."
His organics need to be supported.
So, I thought there should be some,
probably tubes, coming out,
maybe feeding into the skin, you know?
PETER WELLER: When I take off the helmet,
if you'll notice, the voice softens.
Murphy had a wife and son. What happened to them?
PETER WELLER: It was a small adjustment.
It's not that octave. It's this octave.
Where did they go?
The most important line in RoboCop is this:
"I can feel them, but I can't remember them."
I can feel them, but I can't remember them.
And that's the saddest, most excruciating line in it.
And it cuts to this wide,
and here's this steel mill that is decrepit.
It was once shiny and beautiful, and then here's RoboCop...
Leave me alone.
DEL: ...who was once a shiny thing,
and he's all beat up and shot up.
That's what it is to be alive, is who we love, our memories.
PETER WELLER: The bewildering gift
of this film is loss and rebirth.
But the travesty and the drama,
and essentially, the tragedy of it,
he'll never get it back. 'Cause it's gone.
[♪♪♪]
There was an area called "Deep Elm" down in Dallas.
It was sort of like an art district.
JOST: The art department built
all these shops with empty windows
so that you could see the lights and everything.
It was nice, very nicely done.
[glass breaks]
[men clamoring]
There was something about the grittiness of that
that really worked well.
And you had the skyline in the background.
So, there were things that were practical.
BRIAN: It was a bigger production than Dallas was used to,
which made everybody work harder, made for long hours.
I mean, one time, I did four 20-hour days.
I mean, that's the kind of job it was.
And the discomfort of it all,
and the violence of it all, actually created
a lot of what you see on screen,
and a lot of it's really authentic.
JESSE: We hung out, and we talked,
and we went, and we drank together.
We just kind of played off of each other.
It was like everybody kind of understood
where they were coming from as a character,
and we just threw it all in, and it-- it-- it mixed up well.
-Hey, Emil. -[car door closes]
-Hey. -How's the Gray Bar Hotel?
Not bad. I got to keep the shirt. Nobody popped my cherry.
-[Clarence laughs] -Most of them went above
and beyond the call of duty with their roles,
and really made them come to life with unique characters
rather than just the bad guy.
Hey!
First, they let me out of jail for free,
then look what I found in the prison parking lot.
A brand-new 6,000 SUX,
still got the factory sticker on it.
-Hey, Clarence! -[laughs]
Joey's got a car just like yours, man.
[laughs]
What do you think, Clarence, huh? Huh?
[both laugh]
KURTWOOD: I always saw this character
and kind of the gang in general as guys that were having fun.
I had had some experience
with the-- the Barrett M82, .50 caliber, semi-automatic,
and so, I showed it to 'em. They liked it.
Whoa! A new toy! Can I play?
RANDY: We purchased three of 'em.
So, we had four total.
-CREW MEMBER 1: Take one! -[gun shots]
-Ooh, shit! -[laughs]
-Nice car, Joe! -Let me try it, fuck!
-Let me try it! -Hey, watch your mouth.
Cobra assault cannon.
State-of-the-art, bang, bang!
They're like 50-caliber machine guns that you mount on boats.
That's what they mainly use them for.
And they were pretty hefty.
I think there were probably about, you know,
40 or 50 pounds.
KURTWOOD: We had a dummy, of course.
But we had to have the real ones when we fired them.
Clarence, come on!
[gun shots]
RANDY: The Cobra assault cannons,
initially, we were gonna put a camera
where it appears to be an eyepiece
that was gonna be forward,
and the back end of the scope was going to be a screen.
There wasn't the budget to build four or five working scopes,
and so, it was just a big block
with all the fins and everything on it.
In terms of preparing to shoot,
they said, "Here. Okay, hold it this way.
Okay, pull the trigger."
Whoo!
[laughs manically] Yeah!
[laughs]
They was like, "No. We didn't have a lot of prep."
I just remember trying to get them in the car.
Fired, then I get in the car, and I was like...
[imitates gunshots]
CLAPPER: Parker.
DIRECTOR: Take it out. And action!
The thing I get most quoted for is, "I like it."
[gunshot]
-Whoo! -I like it!
PAUL MCCRANE: And most people
will come up to me, and say, "Oh, I like it!"
So, I say, "That'll be $5."
I like it!
PAUL MCCRANE: And that line was not my invention.
That actually was scripted.
And I think it was the boom operator,
if I remember right.
And he talked about it reminding him
of a Chevy Chase film where he says,
"I like it" in some crazy way, which I actually hadn't seen.
[laughs manically]
I like it!
PAUL MCCRANE: Just his saying that triggered
this idea in me, and that's why the reading
came out the way that it did.
I like it!
PAUL M. SAMMON: Originally, there was a scene
where Clarence's gang go to a pet shop,
and there's a little puppy in a window.
And they have those guns, and they point it,
and one of them goes, "Nah."
And they turn around, and they start to walk off.
But then they turn back, and they kill the puppy,
and they blow up the pet store.
Now, if you know anything about film taboos at that time,
you were never supposed to kill a pet.
-Wow! -[exclaims]
I like it!
"I like it!" Boom!
[explosion]
PETER WELLER: It was a Friday night.
They shot all night, and I had a hot date.
She wanted to go to the set.
And man, they had done something to that street.
And that was one of the scenes where, you know,
we had a big fight
in order to make sure the actors didn't get too close.
And then Paul would say, "Okay, get a little closer.
Actors, would you get a little closer?
Get a little closer?"
Of course, there was a lot of stunts.
JOE: Yeah!
[exclaims]
And there was a lot of explosions.
[Emil exclaims]
And some of the explosions were extraordinary enough.
[gunshot, explosion]
PAUL: There's an explosion, basically, when they have these new guns,
and they shoot in the street.
And I remember that the actors were nearly blown away.
CLAPPER: Hey, make a camera mark.
PAUL: And background.
Background action.
JESSE: Now, it's a real street, right, that they're shooting on.
So, they buy out one side of it, they load it up,
'cause they're gonna blow it up.
On the other side, are stores and people living above it.
So, the AD comes out with a bullhorn, right?
And he says that the people that are in their apartments,
he says, "Please step back from the windows."
"Go back. You're not safe there. Go back."
"These are live charges.
Please step back from the windows.
Actors, stand right here." [laughs]
So, we were just like, "Dude."
Shit.
And I looked at Kurtwood,
thinking, "If they're not safe, what are we doing right here?"
But we hear, "Roll, and action." And I pull the trigger.
[explosion]
And all I remember is a wall of flame
coming straight at me.
[explosion]
And we were all like... [screams]
EMIL: Heads up, you guys!
[explosion]
You can see even the actors doing this, you know?
Because it was much bigger than everybody thought.
[explosion]
PAUL MCCRANE: I turned around,
and Kurtwood Smith's jacket is smoking.
RAY: We were just close enough
to feel some of the little pieces of glass
hit us on the side of the face, a little bit, little--
tiny little slivers.
And we had a couple of blood spots on our face.
And that was a $500-bump, as I recall.
They actually ended up paying us stunt pay for that.
-LEON: Whoo! -CLARENCE: Go, go, go, go, go!
Hey, the guns are trick, Clarence.
[chuckles]
JESSE: And stuff is blowing up and blowing up.
I said to myself, "I need to sit back."
And I sat back, and a piece of glass comes...
[exhales sharply]
...straight through the truck.
I was like, "Dude, this is, like, way too real."
PAUL MCCRANE: My favorite thing about the whole thing
was that Paul afterwards came up to me,
and he said, "You know, normally, I don't ask an actor
to do something that I won't do myself,
but this time, I think I don't do it."
No.
RAY: That night, when we blew up that street completely,
was one of the most fun nights I've ever had in my career.
But charity work ain't your style, man.
[explosion in distance]
What's the real deal behind this turkey shoot?
Delta City, man.
I figure it's the future of organized crime.
Good business is where you find it.
Goin' to the steel yard, round 'em up.
LEON: All right. Cut the whole street. We're movin' out!
CLARENCE: Come on, Emil, get your ass in the truck!
I could tell from the dailies that the action was working.
You know, the action was really working.
[♪♪♪]
ED: There was a sequence in the third act
where there was a car chase on the way to the steel mill.
And when we were in Dallas, it was on the schedule.
I looked at that one day, and thought,
"We don't really need this."
We could just go from here to here.
And so, I brought it up in a production meeting,
and they were all like, "Fuck."
And Paul went, "Yeah, yeah, we don't."
'Cause that was like,
a half a day or a day of shooting.
And it's not saving money.
It's more like saving the audience time.
So, you know, I expected them to be really happy with me
for doing that, but they weren't.
They just were like, "Yeah, go away." So...
[chuckles]
STEPHAN: I remember at the hotel,
going out with the Robo team with Rob and drinking a lot
with Peter Weller,
and then Peter and him would get into it.
And they were like fucking around with each other
all the time, you know?
Rob's a sweet guy.
Maybe-- maybe he doesn't like me.
I don't know. I-- I mean...
STEPHAN: They got into it like,
"I'm making more money than you are,"
and so on and so forth. [laughs]
PETER WELLER: I called Rob, and apologized to him.
And I apologized to him again for any kind of wound
that he might have suffered from my insolent mouth talking
about whatever the difficulties of movie-making were.
Because he was nothing more than inventive,
and creative, and fantastic.
I have to tell you, I must have been very obnoxious,
'cause at a certain point, Jon just stopped talking to me.
-And-- and it was like... -No.
ED: ...you know?
And occasionally, he would say something,
like he'd come by and see me doing something,
and he was like, "Oh, there's the writer
fucking everything up again."
No, I don't wanna go there.
And Jon Davison fired me off the picture in Dallas.
Right before we were gonna leave Dallas,
he said, "You're wrapped."
"You probably have enough."
And I was like devastated.
I was just devastated that you would separate me
from this movie.
And Paul Verhoeven had to go to him, and say...
PAUL: (over telephone) "No, we have to take the writer with us
to Pittsburgh."
[♪♪♪]
PETER WELLER: When RoboCop practices his aim, the baby jars are the metaphor.
What RoboCop is doing there is annihilating
the force-fed problem. And that's how technology
is thinking of him as their baby.
He's killing it.
[gunshot]
And he's annihilating the thing that technology gave him
to keep him sapling.
My targeting system is a little messed up.
PETER WELLER: And he's asking another human being for help.
He is becoming Murphy.
[♪♪♪]
[gunshots]
Can I help you?
Aim for me.
ED: In the abandoned third draft,
there may have been a romantic idea there.
It sounds like something Paul would have wanted to do.
NANCY: I had no idea about any of that until we all did a Q&A.
And I heard that story. I thought,
"Oh, that's interesting. I never heard that before."
In some ways, Paul and other directors are always trying
to get a kiss in at the end of a movie.
It's not always necessary.
Yeah. I'm glad it-- it didn't go that way.
That would have been kind of strange.
More to the left.
Here.
ED: One of the things that's cool
about the relationship between them is
it's a non-romantic, a non-sexist,
in a way, relationship.
And I think that Paul really embraced that as well.
I figure that's dead-on.
Thank you.
PAUL: The scene was written
in the original story for a car cemetery.
You see all these cars on top of each other.
That was written for that, basically.
But then for some way, we couldn't find it.
And then somebody was talking about a steel factory.
[gunshots, explosion]
JESSE: When we were shooting Joe's death scene...
CLARENCE: Dammit!
JESSE: ...first of all, falling with a 45-pound gun,
you really gotta position yourself,
so you don't break a finger or something.
Looking for me?
[groans]
JESSE: Man, when that shit blew up,
I had bruises on my chest like for a month.
They hit so hard, I was like, "I'm okay. It's okay."
"I'm-- I'm all right."
Boy, I had to try to man up behind that,
but you know, tears were kinda like
coming out the side of my eye.
I was so glad I was laying on the ground,
nobody could see me. That shit hurt. [laughs]
[♪♪♪]
PETER WELLER: The process of making a movie makes everybody an asshole.
"Why is my Winnebago not in front of the studio?
I have to walk!"
You know, that was me. I did that. I became that guy.
And hopefully, I'm not that guy now,
but I was definitely that guy to some people.
And I'm sure a couple of people thought
that I was, you know, uh, not necessarily a nice guy.
I can think of two people, and I probably wasn't.
RANDY: When we were in Monessen, Pennsylvania,
shooting the steel mill,
Peter's upstairs. We were up two or three floors.
You had to go upstairs to get to him.
We had an explosion behind him.
We'd make the explosion hot. We were ready to go.
I went upstairs, and I was carrying,
I don't know, about eight Oreos you know, in a stack.
I'd hand him his weapon. I say, "Peter, safety's off."
And he wouldn't take the pistol.
And he says, "Robo wants an Oreo."
And I looked at him, and I go,
"No. It's just you and I, Peter.
Robo doesn't get an Oreo.
If Peter wants an Oreo, Peter can have an Oreo."
And he clip-clops in the suit over to the edge of the railing,
and Peter starts bellowing, "Robo wants an Oreo."
And when the steel mill just echoes,
"Randy has Oreos" or "Robo wants an Oreo."
And Steve Lim over the radio goes,
STEPHEN: (on radio) Uh, Randy, do you have Oreos?
So, I stuffed that whole stack in my mouth,
and then crunched them, and let 'em fall down
three stories onto everybody below me.
And I, "Not anymore." And Robo got upset.
I haven't got a damn clue
about Randy Moore and his fuckin' Oreos.
Randy Moore's a friend, but half the time,
I don't know what the hell he's talking about.
So, he's got all these stories from RoboCop.
I don't remember 'em.
RANDY: Steve Lim's going,
"Can we get this shot? And then Robo can have an Oreo."
And Peter said, "No." So, they had to cut.
They were rolling. They were ready to go.
Now, we're hot on the explosive.
They had to send a PA up the stairs.
They feed him an Oreo.
And now, he's got Oreo in his teeth.
So, then the PA has to pick the Oreos out of his teeth.
And then he says, "Okay, I'm ready,"
and then we shot it.
[explosion]
So, after that, Peter would always say,
"Robo wants an Oreo."
So, I had a gentleman that worked with me.
And his official title should have been
The Peter Feeder, because that's what the crew
called him, as "The Peter Feeder",
because for some reason, weapons had to feed Peter Oreos.
Randy, love you madly.
I don't believe one fucking word out of your mouth, bro.
[♪♪♪]
PAUL MCCRANE: I thought Ed and Mike's script
was really good and really smart.
And I thought the film improved on the script,
which I was really happy about.
RUSSELL: There in that scene, it was one of those, you know,
just survival.
[car revving]
RUSSELL: Well, he doesn't really run,
but he gets out of the way very fast.
I mean, it was one of those things
that you can only do
what the suit would allow you to do.
Okay! Now, I've got ya!
RUSSELL: You're standing there, and as he's coming at you,
you just have to get out of the way
at the very last moment.
[gunshots]
And one of those things is you just got to time it
to where you go, "Okay.
How fast can I move in this suit?"
Everything was very meticulous. Peter would correct me,
and he goes, "Okay, do this, 'cause this is what I would do."
BART: I like the melting man gag. I think that's a lot of fun.
You go in this tank, and you wash out,
you become a monster.
Those are the kind of things that I think are funny.
MILES: I remember Rob coming into the room, and saying,
"Oh shit, we've got to create this makeup for this character."
He gets thrown into a vat of toxic radioactive waste,
and he starts to melt.
[splashing]
PAUL MCCRANE: The toxic waste section was a stunt guy
that did the actual roll out of the stuff.
But then getting up, obviously, was me.
[groans]
MILES: We have pictures of the actor.
I did some tracings of him, and then Rob
brought me a picture of a guy who's got stung
by a wasp on his eye, and his eye was swollen up huge.
So, I incorporated that into the design.
I think he just said, "Go for it."
He said, "Imagine that the guy's skin
is made of ice cream and it's starting to melt
off of his body."
[groans, screams]
PAUL MCCRANE: We shot that over two days.
The first day, it was six and a half hours of makeup
before we started shooting,
where Rob Bottin's team, great, great guys,
literally were like gluing this torso prosthesis on me
every square inch.
BART: I think we had two different stages on the head.
I think the first stage was mainly this side,
and we used a fair amount of his face over here.
Also, added this little road rash.
That was a continuity thing from when he fell off
the motorcycle at the gas station.
EMIL: You're dead. We killed you!
And then when he comes
staggering out a little later and gets hit by the car,
then we had a facial piece on the other side as well.
[♪♪♪]
STEPHAN: We were eating, sleeping RoboCop, you know?
We were in the shop working at night,
repairing stuff,
and then shooting it during the day.
It was nonstop.
[♪♪♪]
GREGOR: I think we showed up to work at 3:00 in the morning
and didn't leave until 2:00 at night.
So, it was a long, long day.
We shot it,
and it was about two or three hours to take it off.
The next day, they got it down to, as I recall,
about three hours to put it on.
[screams]
MILES: Hands were part of it,
and he wanted to see finger bones sticking out.
And I said, "Well, are you gonna have a melting effect
or is this gonna be all done in rubber?"
"No, no, no. We're just gonna do it all out of rubber."
"Okay. So, you want like, melting skin like hanging down
like it's dripping?" "Yeah, yeah, yeah.
"It'll just-- it'll work.
We'll just wave the ends of the fingers,
and they'll just kind of dangle, and it'll work."
I tried to take
physical positions that seemed to reflect
what he had designed.
I looked in the mirror once I had the thing on.
[whimpers] Help me.
[screams]
PAUL MCCRANE: The vocalizations I did
and all that kind of stuff were just my playing with things
based on what Paul asked for and what Rob had built.
[screams]
[gasps, screams]
RAY: My favorite line of the movie,
Leon comes running around the corner,
Paul comes up to him,
and his fingers are melting, and his face is melting.
And Leon does not want him to melt on him.
So, he says, "Don't touch me, man!"
-[groans, whimpers] -Don't touch me, man!
PAUL MCCRANE: It's one of those things
I'm glad that I did, but I wouldn't particularly
wanna do it again.
[♪♪♪]
JOST: There's one shot with the wheel cap coming loose.
I mean, this was not planned that way.
It just happened.
I was in the camera, and I heard it like, whee,
went over my head.
Maybe it could have ended with another credit
at the end of the film for two DPs,
the one before he died and the other one who took over.
GREGOR: I also helped set up the big splat.
I helped dress the dummy to look like Emil,
and took all the old prosthetics,
put it on there, and then helped load the thing
with all the methylcellulose slime.
CRAIG: I remember just screaming, you know?
I just-- it was so funny, just this big splat.
[screams]
CLARENCE: Shit! [laughs]
It was extremely funny, because he's blown to pieces.
[tires screechin, thud]
Oh, God.
[groans, chuckles]
MICHAEL: Verhoeven has a great sense of humor.
His use of humor where people wouldn't even see humor.
It's like, "Oh, this is fine. Oh."
[laughs mockingly]
It's really nice to have been a part of something that uh,
seems to have made a mark, you know?
You wanna live forever?
[groans]
[screams]
[laughs]
There's no guarantees in this business about anything,
however good you think it is.
JESSE: Things got a little bit
contested between crew and-- you know, and Paul.
So, the crew had a countdown.
That said, you know, "20 more days with this,
and 15 more days of this, 10 more days."
Verhoeven, I felt, was a little on the tough side.
He had an attitude of, you know, maybe very militaristic,
you might say.
ED: We were miserable, I guess,
to be around, and all we wanted to do
was make this movie all the time.
So, by the end, we were the only people
who would talk to each other. I mean, no one would talk to us.
The producer wouldn't talk to us.
The whole crew hated us.
And we were always alone in the restaurant.
And everybody was snarling at us or we were snarling at them.
Everybody was suffering, and it was hard.
I mean, it was a hard shoot.
But at the same time,
every day, you loved being there, 'cause you knew
you were making a great film.
SOL: That famous scene
and the chase between the cars going through the area
and all of that, it's a rough look, okay?
If you wanna put it that way, that's what it had to be,
because of the apocalypse of the period, you might say.
NANCY: At the end of the shoot,
we ended up in Monessen, Pennsylvania.
I guess it was mid-November.
So, East Coast, it was really cold.
I'd never been squibbed before.
That is quite an experience that I would not wish on anyone.
[gunshots]
NANCY: In a strange way,
feeling those little thumps and bumps around your body
help you with what it is you have to do.
Worse than the squibs? The water.
The absolutely disgusting, rusty water
that I had to get into that was freezing cold.
So, I'll take the squibs any day.
[♪♪♪]
PAUL: For me, it had that very specific atmosphere,
you know, because of these enormous amounts of steel
that were there.
There was these enormous walls.
It really felt like Troy or Jerusalem, you know?
Ed and I talked a lot
about the man in the iron mask, uh, a quest for identity.
But the Christ metaphor, Paul pretty much brought.
-Bye-bye, baby. -ROBOCOP: Clarence!
[♪♪♪]
PAUL: I had built something
under the water, basically, so he could walk there
because I wanted him to be Jesus walking over the water.
Okay. I give up.
PAUL: And now, he says...
I'm not arresting you anymore.
"I'm not going to arrest you anymore.
I'm going to kill you."
And that's, for me, the American Jesus.
RAY: I had to run out on that catwalk
on the top to get to the crane booth,
so that I could drop the steel down on RoboCop.
And I saw how high up it was, and it was kind of scary,
to tell you the truth.
PAUL: RoboCop comes over the water,
and then the other guy pulls the handle,
and then all these beams fall on RoboCop.
RUSSELL: They had a dummy there
that it actually-- all the big, heavy beams
actually fell right on him.
Die, you bastard!
Wow.
I got him, Clarence!
I got him!
-[gunshot] -[grunts]
RAY: That black costume
that I had on, they also put on the dummy.
They gave me that costume after it was blown up.
It's in tatters.
It was blown all to hell, but um, I still have it.
I always have it. And all I have to do is find it.
RUSSELL: And then whenever
he's all entangled, and the beams
were all fake ones, but that was Peter.
PETER WELLER: And I can't get out of it.
And then Kurtwood in a desperation,
comes over and stabs me with that spike.
[grunts]
[screams, groans]
Sometimes, the violence was very, very direct and--
and-- and real.
[♪♪♪]
PETER WELLER: There was just a discussion
with Paul that I should take this
as if there is, you know, a nerve center
somewhere responding to it.
So, the body's response is all I'm doing
is like in the agony of the robotics.
STEPHAN: When he stabbed in the neck,
that was what I called the Paul Verhoeven "take that".
BART: For whatever reason,
as you would work it and just kind of handle it,
the mechanism would start getting a little sloppy.
And it would like, just go off by itself sometimes.
So, Paul's like, "Let me see the-- the hand",
'cause he's gonna set up the shot.
And they like pass the hand over to him,
and just the motion triggers it.
The spike comes out, and it's just like,
probably like, that close to his eye.
And he just like looks over at me,
and I'm like, "Oh, I didn't do it," you know?
And as he gets close...
Sayonara, RoboCop!
[clicks]
PETER WELLER: ...the cop takes over.
And then it's like the cop takes vengeance.
[exclaims] Boom.
[Clarence groans]
STEPHAN: Paul is just like, "Give me this cup."
And then he fills it with fake blood,
and the camera's on-- on Peter, and it goes like splat.
It was not subtle, but hey, it worked.
PAUL: [indistinct speech]
[clapper grunts]
-PAUL: And action! -[groans]
KURTWOOD: I had no doubt that that movie was gonna be a hit.
First of all, it was much more in the comic book vein
than we had seen before.
And there's so much more to it in terms of what it had to say
about machines and men.
Lewis!
Murphy, I'm a mess.
PETER WELLER: Nancy reminded me.
She said, "Don't you remember?"
At the end of it, you know, when I say,
"They'll fix you. They fix everything."
They'll fix you.
They fix everything.
That's my line.
There are notes that I gave to Jon Davison.
"Can we do this? Can we change that?
Can we..." whatever.
JESSE: Murphy says, "They'll fix you. They fix everything."
And I was like, "Wow." [chuckles]
And I was just floored.
I was just knocked out
by how good I thought the film was.
[grunts]
[car whooshes]
[♪♪♪]
CRAIG: So, at the end, when RoboCop approaches the building,
ED-209 is guarding the building there.
His upper torso swivels over.
So, this is one of the things we kind of built
the capacity for into the full-scale prop.
He had a hinging point.
That was one of our big live-action movements
for ED-209.
CRAIG: When RoboCop destroys ED-209,
the day before, they had done the actual shooting
of Peter Weller with the actual cannon.
Boom!
[gunshot, explosion]
CRAIG: And the blanks
were strong enough that they rattled
all of the windows in the entire building,
you know, almost to the point of shattering.
Yikes. Is that fun, man.
CRAIG: This was, of course, quite a big deal.
And a lot of police came out.
And they tried to arrest Paul Verhoeven.
How are you doing?
CRAIG: And Paul Verhoeven's like,
"I don't have a driver's license.
How do we arrest you?"
[laughs]
So, the next day,
when it came time to blow the robot up,
which should have been a big destruction scene,
I think everybody was very gun shy.
So, the charge ended up being a lot smaller
than they might have wanted to be.
[gunshot, explosion]
So, yeah. We went back in, and optically added
explosion elements to that to sort of get the actual
full, you know, extent of destruction.
Once the thing was blown up, you cut back to it.
That then was the actual stop-motion puppet.
[robot whirring]
PHIL: It had a lot of moving parts to it.
I was doing an in-camera composite with smoke
and all sorts of things
that had to go at a certain time.
CRAIG: They had to very trickily,
sort of, animate in the smoke elements.
A lot of these things are done in-camera.
So, you're basically sort of animating elements
to follow a moving object.
PHIL: I was about halfway through the shot,
and Jon called me up, and said, "Hey, you know what?
Can you do something funny at the end of the shot?
'Cause the movie's too serious."
So I'm like, "Yeah, okay."
JON: (over telephone) Good.
PHIL: And so, the thing with the foot was a very last-minute thing.
You know, at that point, I just took it farther.
I had him, you know, walk in as like a drunk thing
and then have like, a little whirligig spinning.
And then he falls over,
and does the thing with his foot.
JON: You know, we were budgeted 9,995, and we were at about 13.
So, we were over the 10 percent contingency.
And the completion bond company had every right
to take the picture over and just finish it themselves.
And they didn't have to do the effects.
They didn't have to put sound effects in.
They could take it over.
And Mike Medavoy wouldn't let 'em do it.
He had the faith in the picture to tell the completion bond,
"No, you're not taking it over.
And we'll pick up the overages," and uh, it saved the movie.
[electrifying tune]
STEVE: John P. made a lot of great
synth sweeteners and sounds to accent things.
And one of the best ones that I love
is when the doors swing open in the boardroom
at the end of the film.
And there's that great, cheesy, synthy whomp
that has no business being there whatsoever.
But it works.
BART: They're shooting the boardroom stuff at the end.
So, we get him all made up with the makeup.
And we had him ready, and they weren't getting to it.
And we kept sending word up like, you know,
"He's been in the makeup for a couple hours.
It's gonna start breaking down. You know, what's going on?"
STEPHAN: Paul was shooting
like all the wide shots and everything but the makeup.
Paul could only shoot it for five hours,
'cause the face would essentially collapse.
And the edges were peeling off everywhere.
And Stephan Dupuis had begged.
Like, "Shoot the close-ups first."
And he didn't.
GREGOR: Instead, he decided
it was more important to shoot all those action shots.
And by the time it came to shooting the close-ups,
the makeup was not acceptable.
STEPHAN: And of course, the makeup was fragile.
I mean, it was all in one piece.
It was not easy to apply, 'cause you couldn't fuck up.
And they just kept
putting us off and putting us off.
And at some point, Stephan just went upstairs
'cause craft service was up there.
So, he's up there like getting some coffee or something.
And Paul sees him, and Paul's just like,
"I don't know when we're gonna get to it!"
You know, just kinda like, screaming at him.
And Stephan's just like, "Oh." And he goes back downstairs.
He goes, "I'm not going to set until he comes and apologizes."
So, uh, then I decided to act like a fucking diva.
Stephan just said, "I'm not shooting this makeup.
In fact, me and my whole team are walking off the set now."
BART: So, then we're like
sitting in the trailer, and they're like,
"Okay, they're ready for him."
And he's like, "Nope. I'm not gonna go."
And I said, "Okay.
He's not coming on the set, because the makeup
is fucked up now. You didn't listen.
Okay? Lesson learned? I hope so."
Stephan essentially
let production know that no one, no one could knock on that door.
BART: Peter's like,
"Well, I'm not going if you guys aren't going."
And so, we're all just sitting there.
And then finally Verhoeven comes down, and he's like...
-Well, I mean... -BART: He goes,
"I guess you want me to say, 'I'm sorry,' but I can't."
STEPHAN: So, we had it out
in the trailer, me, the producers, and Paul.
And yeah, that was very stressful day.
Yeah.
How can we help you, Officer?
Dick Jones is wanted for murder.
Obviously, the first time you see RoboCop,
there's a lot of processing on his voice.
PETER WELLER: (over device) Yes, I understand.
STEVE: As he gets more human, they pull it out.
My program will not allow me
to act against an officer of this company.
It's a social critique
that went very specifically about corporate power,
corporate greed.
These are serious charges.
PAUL M. SAMMON: These impersonal killer executives.
What is your evidence?
PAUL M. SAMMON: The businessmen
who are out there trying to one up each other.
I had to kill Bob Morton, because he made a mistake.
[gasps]
DICK: (on tv) Now, it's time to erase that mistake.
And just raised it another notch
where they literally do kill each other.
[gun clicks, board members clamoring]
PAUL M. SAMMON: And it's not only forecasting,
it's putting its finger right on it.
DICK: I want a chopper now!
MICHAEL MINER: Jon suggested a way
to invalidate Directive 4 at the end.
We'd all show up
at the office every day, and we'd kick stuff around.
Anybody tries to stop me...
JON: You know, saying,
"Oh, what about this, or what about that?"
...the old geezer gets it.
And I, as a joke, said, how about "You're fired"?
I never thought
that the "You're fired" line would work.
I-- You know, and Paul, and Ed, and Jon were going,
"Yeah, it's gonna work. Yeah, it's gonna work."
I said, "You know, I don't know."
Dick, you're fired!
And it worked beautifully.
So, you know,
even when you're really involved in it,
you can be wrong. Right?
-Thank you. -[groans]
-[gunshots] -[board members clamoring]
RONNY: They put squibs front and back, big heavy loads.
And I'm not blowing smoke, when they put those off,
I practically went to my knees, and I was physically ill
for about an hour after that happened.
That hurt.
They made a mistake.
And they came to me afterwards, and said, "We fucked up."
[chuckles]
-[woman screaming] -[gunshots]
[Dick screaming]
[screaming fades]
ROCCO: I had a little bit of stop-motion experience,
and I talked with Jon Davison, and he asked me
about the possibility of doing it
as a stop-motion character.
And I told him that I'd be willing to try it,
and um, thought that I could do something that looked good.
It ended up looking kind of iffy.
[screams]
[scream fades]
The Rocco Gioffre shot
where he falls out the window is a little dodgy.
That guy falling out of the building at the end
with the really long arms. Oh.
We could have done better. [laughs]
I don't know what happened to that,
but I was-- I was disappointed.
Dick, I'm very disappointed.
ROCCO: Of course,
I'd like another crack at the Dick Jones thing.
There's some stuff that I would-- would do
very differently.
Although, I don't think that it's the fault
of stop motion that that looks the way that it does.
It's the proportions of his arms in relationship to the lens
that we chose and the way that it looks distorted.
RONNY: The way this shot
was supposed to work from what I heard
was my character was gonna go out the window.
They were gonna have ostensibly a camera down halfway.
They were gonna articulate my character coming down,
down, down, down toward the camera.
And then they were gonna flip the camera
and take my character away until he landed in the street.
[thud]
RONNY: Well, obviously, that didn't work.
That would have been great.
That's the reason they made that little doll
to look exactly like me.
[indistinct chatter]
PETER WELLER: There's nothing like RoboCop.
I mean, there isn't.
That has a social message like this
that gets you on four or five different levels.
Verhoeven's power, I mean, he knew
the end of that movie is...
Nice shooting, son. What's your name?
PETER WELLER: "What's your name?"
Murphy.
PETER WELLER: "Murphy."
PAUL: I'll never forget that.
Before Peter Weller could answer Murphy...
Nice shooting, son. What's your name?
...the whole theater in one voice said, "Murphy!"
Yes!
That was so amazing.
But like, "Murphy!"
That was a moment that you will never forget,
you know, that people were so into the movie.
It was like this transformation from human to robot,
and back to human.
It lives because of its theme.
And the theme is executed right down the line, man.
And the theme is resurrection.
[♪♪♪]
MICHAEL MINER: When the film was tested,
it was actually a fourth media break.
And there was a sequence in which Bixby Snyder
is arrested as a pedophile.
And Nancy Allen is in the hospital
being interviewed, having survived the shootout.
Excuse me, Your Honor.
Anne, ever consider another line of work?
No. I like being a cop.
Well, the original ending did have Anne Lewis saying,
"If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."
It parrots something that you hear earlier in the film.
If you can't stand the heat,
you better stay out of the kitchen.
You know what they say.
If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
STEVE MINH: I don't know about you,
but I'll sleep a little better tonight.
I saw the dailies.
I didn't really like it very much.
The audience always felt
that Murphy was the way to go out.
So, that fourth media break was never shown.
It was one of those things
where when I heard they weren't using it,
I was sort of relieved, because it just seemed so blah.
You bet!
Next time you see a cop, smile. Thanks for watching.
[♪♪♪]
FRANK: We were on a tight schedule.
I was done with RoboCop probably 10 days
after we finished shooting.
There wasn't like the four-hour cut of RoboCop.
There was the-- If RoboCop's 114 minutes,
there was the 118-minute cut of RoboCop.
That was the rough.
CHARLES: First of all, I was all for it being a very violent movie.
I was interested in those ideas and Paul was, too.
And I was surprised
when we were even shooting these sequences.
I was thinking to myself,
"There's no way these are ever gonna make it.
It's never gonna make it on screen."
I think Paul's idea was actually, "Push it
as far as you can push it,
and then we'll dial it back later."
If you can't push the envelope,
you know, don't write the letter.
We wanted to grab people by the throat,
and give 'em a good time and a real good ride.
FRANK: Our biggest problem
on the editing of the movie was with the MPAA.
And so, we had to cut it,
and cut it, and cut it eight, nine times.
You know, we had to go back to back, back, back, back.
But that original version basically is really funny.
[gunshots]
It's safe to say
the ratings board did not get the satire.
Of course, they gave us an X.
And so, we made a few trims, and sent it back,
and we got another X.
So, Paul went back in, and he kept cutting away
the shot where Peter Waller loses his hand,
because it was too graphic.
It was supposed to be so big,
so too much, that it in a way, lost its impact.
And the more you cut it down, the more real it became.
And somehow, those censors just didn't see that.
In a way, they made the violence worse for us as a viewer.
FRANK: We had this one shot
where they shoot him in the head,
and it was a complete move right from his face,
all the way to the back of his head.
[groans]
And the MPAA wouldn't allow me to use it.
I could only use the impact just from the front
and then the back.
And it probably was more violent doing it that way
than just showing the whole move.
ED: There was a shot of the floor.
It was a wide shot.
And the floor was covered with blood.
It looked like a butcher shop floor.
In the first preview of it, 10 women got up
at that moment and left the--
the screening room. It was just amazing.
[exclaims]
ED: I think the first thing I realized
was red was a problem. Just red, the amount of red.
[whimpers]
JON: We had a preview,
and about the highest rated thing in the movie
was Emil getting hit by the car.
And the MPAA said, "Absolutely not.
You cannot have that. It's decapitation."
And God bless Mike Medavoy, because to his credit, he said,
"We are not cutting that shot.
We'll go to the mat with the MPAA on this.
We're not taking it out."
RON: Jon Davison made the whole crew T-shirts.
One side would say "RoboCop,"
and the other side would say, "Fuck the MPAA."
JON: It was like, "Well, wait a minute.
If they wanna play games, we'll play some games."
Okay, okay. I get a kick out of it.
TERESSA: You end up wearing them down, you know?
You cut maybe a frame out.
But you keep sending the same stuff back
and they eventually give in.
[chuckles]
They changed the rules
after that movie about how many times
you can submit a film.
[indistinct chatter]
ED: There was a moment
in the cutting room where I remember Jon and Paul
immediately started getting into a fight
and Sol Lomita, who was the head
of post-production at Orion, who was a very tough guy,
starts yelling at Paul.
And Paul starts yelling back.
And I said, "Wait a second, guys.
What if we cut the arm out?"
Because I always thought it looked shitty anyway.
"Let's cut the arm out!"
[groans]
And they both looked at each other.
"Okay." And that was that. And then we sent it in.
And with the arm out of it, we got the R-rated.
[gunshots, screams]
[screaming fades]
When I came back from this movie,
I just felt like I was dead.
It was a very challenging movie to work on.
Constant tension and-- and conflict.
People were exhausted.
ED: We had all had this terrible
rep party where everybody behaved badly.
And on the plane the next day,
there were people who hated each other,
but we were all so hung over that we couldn't even like...
It was just like... [groans]
You know, after finishing RoboCop,
I decided that I was going to go to the mountains
and raise ducks for the rest of my life.
It was that bad.
[♪♪♪]
ED: When the picture was about to come out,
the head of marketing at Orion Pictures said,
"I cannot market this movie.
It's impossible to m-- to go out with a movie called 'RoboCop'."
[chuckles]
NARRATOR: RoboCop, mechanical body, human memory,
the ultimate law enforcement operative of the future.
RoboCop was scheduled
to come out, I think, after Labor Day.
And that summer, the big blockbusters
from the studios just didn't cut it.
And it turned out, there were slots
that became open.
PAUL M. SAMMON: Orion didn't have much of a budget for marketing.
It was a small-- you know, it was a low-budget picture.
And I said, "Don't position it against something,
you know, that's going to be bigger."
So, they put it out in the summer.
NARRATOR: RoboCop, the future of law enforcement, rated R.
Starts Friday, July 17th at a theater near you.
Orion made a trailer, and it was pretty terrible.
NARRATOR: The summer's new superhero
is America's new super hit movie.
RoboCop.
I really love that guy.
NARRATOR: Rated R.
And so, I hired a friend of mine, Miller Drake,
from the New World Trailer Department.
And he came in, and spent a week,
and cut the trailer.
It is my great pleasure to present to you...
RoboCop.
MARK: Orion Pictures was putting together a trailer.
And they didn't have any music from our movie yet,
because the music hadn't been written.
ROBOCOP: Let the woman go. You are under arrest.
MARK: So, they utilized
Brad Fiedel's score from Terminator .
You have the right to remain silent.
[glass breaks]
You have the right to an attorney.
-What is this? [screams] -[glass breaks]
It's not a great trailer, but it's an awful lot better.
"The future of law enforcement.
RoboCop."
[gun shots]
NARRATOR: RoboCop, the future of law enforcement.
ED: And of course,
when it was accepted, it seemed like,
"Well, what other title could there be?" You know?
It is a perfect title in a way, because it tells you
exactly what the movie is.
I was told I was almost gonna be the poster for the movie,
because my character with the machine gun
being pulled through the wall,
with the two RoboCop arms sticking through
was quite a photograph.
So, it was one of two or three that they were considering,
but they went with the right one.
PAUL M. SAMMON: They managed to come up with an iconic shot,
which is Robo getting out of the cruiser.
"Part man, part machine, all cop."
And that was actually a still that was done
by the on-still photographer named Deana Newcomb.
And they just essentially, what we would now call,
"photoshopped it".
That became the iconic image.
PETER WELLER: And it's become an iconic poster.
Somebody came up with the ad thing on the-- on the poster,
and said, "This cop don't stop at no donut shop."
One of the great marketing things ever.
NANCY: I thought it would have a very limited audience.
I thought, "It's so strange.
It's so different than anything."
And I thought, "This is just not gonna work on a large scale."
MICHAEL MINER: Then the premiere
at the Academy Theater, 900 people,
my family in the audience. Wow.
We went to the premiere,
and I-- I thought the movie was fantastic.
I just thought it was great.
You know, "here I am in like the place
in Hollywood show business.
Wow, man!"
I mean, it came out in July of '87, and people loved it.
NARRATOR: Everybody loves RoboCop.
CALVIN: Holy shit!
We got a monster hit here.
NARRATOR: RoboCop, two thumbs up.
SISKEL: (on TV) RoboCop is a wonderfully funny,
inventive, and agreeably violent piece of science fiction.
And I can't remember the last time
I put all those adjectives together.
NARRATOR: Newsweek calls it, "Slick, lively.
Audiences will eat it up."
-Wow. -Wow.
Wow. This is something special.
NANCY: It opened to such a huge box office and a reception
from you know, across the board.
YOLONDA: I don't think anybody knew
that it was gonna be as big as it was.
PAUL: It was so fantastic.
I had never seen that in my life, you know?
The day I saw the film, it was lightning in a bottle.
NARRATOR: He's a stainless steel, unstoppable Clint Eastwood.
PETER WELLER: (on TV) I think you should run to see this movie.
And not only because I'm in it,
but because, well, we'll talk about it later.
Go see it.
I will.
BOB: (on TV) There's a new guy in town.
Wow. This is different than anything I'd ever seen.
BOB: (on TV) His name's RoboCop.
PAUL M. SAMMON: It was really something,
and pretty impactful on the public.
People saw it, and they wanted to see it again.
-WOMAN: RoboCop. -MAN: RoboCop.
Oh, yeah, RoboCop! That's so cool.
CHARLES: People thought that movie was off the chart.
The tone, everything, the humor.
NARRATOR: RoboCop is dead-on!
Both as a thriller and an unexpected comedy.
NANCY: Truly, it's an interesting story
and it has a lot of depth to it, but just on an action,
you know, shoot 'em up, and blow it up,
and bloody it up.
You know, just on a popcorn, crazy summer movie level,
it works on that, too.
The movie has a lot of high-tech special effects.
It's an effective summer thriller.
I enjoyed it.
MILES: When I left the theater, I felt sick to my stomach.
I couldn't believe what I'd seen.
I had no idea working on it that that film
was gonna be what it was.
Like, takes your viscera,
and makes you feel part of the deal.
TERESSA: It has some guts to it.
And I think that's because of Paul.
A lot of people deserve credit for this film.
The foremost, I guess, is the highly regarded
Dutch director Paul Verhoeven.
We were kind of like dumbfounded
that, "Wow. So, that's what Paul was--
was doing."
And Verhoeven, you know,
as difficult as he was to work with,
you know, he had a vision of what he wanted,
and he got his movie.
PAUL: We went to a restaurant
opposite to the theater in Westwood,
and we're sitting there, and then saw this line of people
that went like this,
and they go on the streets, and then the side street,
and around the corner.
But seeing them going, I mean, you don't see
that much anymore this way.
It was a success, because the budget
was 13, and it made 120 or something
in the world, you know?
So, I'm still getting money from them, you know?
I owned half the movie,
and I gave pieces of it to 13 or 15 people
that worked on the picture.
And to this very day, we're still getting checks.
Still get some very decent residual checks from RoboCop.
"Hey, man. Did you get the last residual check?"
"Yeah, I got it." "All right!"
RAY: That'll give you an idea
of how popular that movie was and still is.
JESSE: People stopping you on the street
and asking you to do the laugh.
You get the laundry, folding your clothes,
and say, "Man, do that laugh! Man, do that laugh."
I'm like, "I can't do that laugh."
-[chuckles] -[laughs manically]
People have said to me,
"Hey yeah, RoboCop." I say, "Yeah, yeah."
Mm! [smacks lips]
Tastes like baby food.
FELTON: That's the one line they never forget.
Knock yourself out.
It changed the world for me. And I can tell you,
I got out of two speeding tickets because of it.
[chuckles]
CALVIN: Motorcycle cop pulls me over.
He goes, "License and registration."
Flips up his shades.
"RoboCop, get the fuck out of here."
"Have you ever seen RoboCop?"
And of course, right there, the beat.
[gasps]
"We have it on a loop in the station.
We watch it all the time!"
We got onto that subject and off that ticket went.
DIANE: My friend's son was like, "Oh, yeah.
At college, we all watch RoboCop like every weekend.
I went, "You do?"
He goes, "Yeah." He goes, "And you?
Everybody knows you. You're like the coke whore."
I said, "I think I was a model."
[laughs]
The thing that is most interesting to me
about all of this and I could not have predicted it,
but I couldn't be more pleased,
is that this is somehow like this cultural thing
that young men particularly, but some young women, too,
really embrace.
JON: I'm always amazed
when people come up to me, and say,
"My dad took me to see that movie
when I was 8 years old, and it changed my life."
And I thought to myself,
"Why would your dad
-take you to see that movie?" -I don't know.
"I saw it, and I was way too young."
And you know...
And "My brother took me there and I shouldn't have seen it."
"Oh, I saw this movie when I was 8,"
or "I saw this movie," and I thought,
"Where were the parents?
You know, what was going on there?"
Murphy.
JON: It's a wonder you're not, you know, a complete serial killer
or something. I mean, God!
And it's almost-- it becomes a rite of passage,
and kids would sneak off
to see it at other people's houses.
"My uncle sneaked me in and let me watch his VHS.
And it was cool!" "This is my favorite movie.
-Don't tell your mom." -RONNY: This is, sort of,
their touchstone film in lots of ways.
It tapped into your, sort of, sense
of-- of absurdity.
It was all the makeup,
and the faces dissolving, and guns firing.
You know, it's that hardwired of the charge of it all,
you know, and the fascination with it all.
KEVIN: I showed my kids,
and they thought ED-209 was kind of funny.
And I'm like, "What's wrong with you?"
So, I took 'em out of the will, I kicked them out of the house.
NARRATOR: Kids, look up to him.
Stay out of trouble.
ANGIE: I think as long as in a violent film, there's a hero
that's a good role model for kids, then you know,
it's got to be okay.
Can you do that, Dad?
There's an interesting thing about
action films and action characters
-that are horrifically violent. -[groans]
And then the fallout
of the film begs to the commercial world dolls.
Drop it!
NARRATOR: RoboCop and the Ultra Police, each sold separately.
Criminals, give up.
I didn't expect all of the merchandising.
That was a surprise.
NARRATOR: RoboCop and evil ED-260
face off with rapid repeat cap firing.
STEPHAN: I mean, RoboCop, right?
So, the kids want RoboCop costume, you know, and stuff.
What do you expect from the studios?
NARRATOR: The helmet, the look, the power of RoboCop.
PAUL POWER: The idea of RoboCop
appealing to kids and everything didn't surprise me in the least.
I expected it.
I went, "Wow. This is a comic book film.
There's no comic book."
And then I think Marvel did the comic after.
And it was just a natural.
Well, the audience for the comic was never really very clear.
I think it was clearly--
it had to be for younger age group.
Although, I was never really totally certain why,
because actually most comic books,
certainly by then, were for late teenagers,
early 20s.
But you could tell that the stories
were starting to go in a direction
that you might expect a good continuation
of the movie to be coming up with.
You still couldn't show people's heads being blown off
or anything like that.
Actually, to my relief, because the older I get,
the more squeamish I get.
MILES: It was fantastic seeing RoboCop
come out in all these different iterations,
the games, the toys, you know?
I mean, I like to buy 'em.
I must have put $100 worth of quarters
into uh, that machine.
-[fires shots] - Don't move, creep!
It was bitchin'.
AUTOMATED VOICE: Thank you for your cooperation.
NARRATOR: (on TV) After being mortally wounded
in the line of duty, Officer Murphy is outfitted
by OCP with bulletproof titanium robotic parts.
When it came to the cartoons
and all that stuff, you know, that stuff wasn't anywhere
near as violent as the feature.
NARRATOR: (on TV) He has become the ultimate super cop.
RoboCop.
And I was very impressed with the guy who played my part.
I bet you don't think I'm a very nice person.
ROBOCOP: I think you're scum.
[laughs evilly]
It just blew their little minds.
It's okay, Murphy.
It's me, Lewis.
[laughs]
So, it was fun. You know, it's fun to be part of that.
PAUL M. SAMMON: You will have a time as a child,
where you'll see a picture which will shape you
the rest of your life.
It gets into your head and into your heart as a child,
and it becomes a loved thing.
And it really has a power and a motive force
the rest of your life.
PETER WELLER: One of the most remarkable things is that
a mom came up to me, my age, with a kid
in his 40s, and he said he was on the wrong side
of the law when he was 12.
And his mom showed him RoboCop.
He says, "I saw RoboCop, and I wanna be a cop.
I left my friends," changed his playground,
and became this cop, man.
That's a service that I can never dream
that any movie would do or be of,
is that change a guy's life.
PAUL: I know that Ed and I,
we talked for a moment about the sequel,
but I think the studio felt that we were not fast enough
and went other ways.
JON: Orion was in financial trouble.
Because it was successful,
they immediately wanted to do another one.
[systen clatters]
Taking over, creep.
[fires shot]
MICHAEL MINER: The misfire of the sequel,
and then number three was just horrible.
NARRATOR: He's taking the future.
What in the name...
NARRATOR: And giving it back to the people.
RoboCop 3.
ED: But that's more aimed at children to make it PG-13.
So, then more people would come.
And some people like 2.
I don't know too many people who like 3.
ALLAN: You know, it set the stage
for the rest of 'em, but they always say
the first one's the best.
There's that first flash when you get hit in the face,
and that was probably what the first movie was.
And then everything else was just body shots.
[♪♪♪]
ED: In the time since that film has come out,
it's grown a massive following.
DEL: It's really difficult to get a movie that works everywhere,
and RoboCop works everywhere.
And it's still popular to this day.
PAUL: The success of RoboCop
is more basically that it's still there now
than that it was such a big success. That--
The idea of landing a superhero
within the consciousness of Western civilization,
I feel very lucky to have been a part of that.
KEVIN PAGE: RoboCop predicted,
sort of, the decadence of what our media is like today,
I think, and-- and our politics.
You better be careful, man.
-I hear Jones is a real shark. -Who asked you, twerp?
We were so on target.
[gun shots]
The movie is so precise,
and there is really nothing in the movie
that I would say that was not good.
RAY: There are parallels
you can draw to our-- our daily political life,
our daily social life.
There are aspects of it that are still true today
and becoming more true every day.
It also forecast
the militarization of the police,
how the police are all decked out
in these body armor and kevlar vests,
and they have this massive military presence.
-[gun shots] -Halt it!
PAUL M. SAMMON: Violence is on the rise,
citizens are defenseless, the businesses are corrupt,
people build big products that don't work.
ARNE: And now, we have robots taking over all kinds of jobs.
So, it's become more of a reality than ever.
PAUL M. SAMMON: And all of that, unfortunately,
and alas, has now gone up a whole order of magnitude
in today's society.
It's prophetic.
ED: I think we made a joke
about human nature, and politics, and society,
and we had, sort of, a snapshot we created.
PETER WELLER: It's about the American tragedy,
and that's the legacy of the classic.
The first glance, it's about this.
Second glance, it's about something much more profound.
JON: Looking back on RoboCop,
what really sticks with me is a lesson.
Time heals all pain.
The crew got thrown together
in this big cauldron with this great story.
MICHAEL: Ed Neumeier and Michael Miner, the writers, were brilliant.
Add to that a brilliant director.
GREGOR: RoboCop was a miracle.
It was the right people at the right time
coming together to make something different.
PAUL: I think what plays a part here
is my relying on intuition and not knowing.
I think that RoboCop is the best movie I made.
Drop it!
PAUL M. SAMMON: The '80s just happened
to be a time when Hollywood had finally discovered
that they could make A movies out of B movies,
and they just went wild with it.
Who are you?
Being in RoboCop
is like being in a little time capsule,
just a super cool,
frozen-in-time pop culture moment.
STEPHEN: We get lucky,
and we get to work on a show now and again that resonates
and has some relevance beyond just the entertainment.
The Tigers are playing tonight.
KURTWOOD: I'm proud of the reaction
that I've had to my work in RoboCop,
to know that you've had an effect on people.
-It's pleasing to me. -[mumbles]
ANGIE: Wow! I can't believe it.
It has made such an impact on people for so long.
RAY: I think every successive generation
discovers it for themselves,
and it becomes a whole new thing all over again.
NANCY: The thing that has sustained it,
I think, through the years is the fact
that there is a heart and soul to it.
Murphy, it's you.
ED: I also think there's a sort of an optimism in it also,
which says "We'll go on somehow, you know?
We'll bumble along.
And some people will be fools, but somehow,
right will prevail."
And in some ways, RoboCop stands in for that.
Your move, creep.
ED: He is that character
that will take us through, that says,
"We can cope with these changes of technology or politics."
PETER WELLER: I am proud to have been part of it,
and it is unique, and that's why it lives.
-Dead or alive... -You are coming with me.
And there's a punch in the face
-[glass breaks] -and the heart with RoboCop.
About your world now that'll be resonant
for a long time to come.
Thank you for your cooperation. Goodnight.
[♪♪♪]