The making of RoboCop

THE MAKING OF ROBOCOP
"Basically, it's the story of a violent cyborg with an identity problem.- That statement, by cowriter-coproducer Edward Neumier, neatly encapsulates -RoboCop- a high-impact blend of action, humor, science fiction and satire.

CHAPTERS:

The Making of RoboCop

Creating ED-209

Death of Murphy

The Melting man

"RoboCop came out of a reaction to the later Eastwood and Bronson action pictures," Ed Neumeier commented. "if Dirty Harry wanted to get a cup of coffee at a diner, then first he had to kill five guys to get it. The excessiveness of these films struck me as a kind of desperation, an indication of how ludicrous the genre was becoming. It also suggested the implicit humor in that excess."

Collaborating on the script with Neumeier - himself a former studio reader and development executive - was Michael Miner, an experimental filmmaker who has worked extensively with director Alex Cox, shot numerous rock videos and recently directed his own screenplay, Deadly Weapon, "I always wanted Robocop to be a movie that had its roots in comic books," Neumeier continued. "Just before we wrote the script, I had been reading a lot of comic books for a certain studio -and I had never really read them before. Particularly of this sort, which were of the modem neurotic superhero - Iron Man, Spider Man, Machine Man - the superhero that sort of had trouble being a superhero. Even though he had all these powers, there was something going on inside -he was a superhero with a headache. At the same time, there was a huge renaissance of ad u It comics going on. Suddenly there were all of these young artists producing their own books that were very mature, very driven kind of comics, And they weren't for kids anymore. Discovering that, I thought, 'Gee, we should do a movie! - because comics books are a lot like movies."

When their screenplay was finished, Neumeier and Miner took it to director Jonathan Kaplan who expressed enthusiasm for the project. The next step was to find an appropriate producer. At the top of the list was Jon Davison, a New York University alumnus and classmate of Kaplan who had spent his spare time in college operating the St. Marks Cinematheque repertory movie house and organizing film retrospectives at New York's legendary rock palace, the Fillmore East. Davison had first moved to Los Angeles to help rewrite the script for Kaplan's NightCall-a Roger Corman production - eventually moving up to a post as New World Pictures' director of national advertising and publicity. At the same time, Davison was producing his own low-budget Corman classics -including Joe Dante's first feature, Hollywood Boulevard, for only $58,000 -before breaking into mainstream moviemaking as the producer of Piranha, Airplane!, White Dog and the Dante segment of Twilight Zone - The Movie. "Not long after I had bought the RoboCop script," Davison recalled, "Jonathan Kaplan was offered Project X at Fox. He took it, which left me without a director. There then followed a long process of talking to many people around town, but everyone was turning us down. Finally, someone suggested the Dutch director Paul Verhoeven. I had seen Paul's work since Turkish Delight and was a big fan of his Soldier of Orange and Spetters and The Fourth Man. In fact, Paul and I even had a couple of meetings regarding another project, an adaptation of Charles Bukowski's Women. But I never expected him to take on a film like RoboCop. When he did, frankly, I was a bit shocked."

Although Verhoeven had initially turned down the project, a second reading of the RoboCop script convinced him that the story had merits beyond its action formula. Director in hand, Davison now cast Peter Weller - a cult favorite for his performance in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai - in the lead role of police officer Alex J. Murphy, an ordinary cop who is executed by a vicious gang of street criminals, then transformed into a near-indestructible crime fighter. To prepare for the role, Weller assiduously spent four months training with the New York-based mime Moni Yakim in order to properly convey the movements of a very tough, but somewhat confused cyborg attempting to deal with big city crime while striving to regain some semblance of his former humanity.

"Now that the film is so popular," Phil Tippett reflected, “everyone's kind of forgotten how difficult it was to make. But it was. For any number of reasons, RoboCop was a very tough shoot. Yet I still really enjoyed working on this picture. And I know a lot of other people who feel the same way. It was an unusual project. Not only did it have an excellent production team - which is a good reflection on Jon Davison who pulled everyone together - but there was also very little ego involved. Everyone was just concerned with getting his job done in the best way possible to make the picture work. In light of some of the pictures I've worked on in the recent past, that's a refreshing attitude. Most movie people, it seems, have been involved in the business for years, and to them it really is just a business -they're not interested in filmmaking anymore. RoboCop wasn't like that - which to me made all the difference in the world. Honestly, from the bottom of my heart, I can't tell you how meaningful it was to be involved finally in a motion picture where people really cared."

NEXT: Creating ED-209