Original subtitles

One genre-bending film

that broke all the rules.

There's a new guy in town.

One tragic hero

who embodied the human spirit.

Murphy, it's you…

And one iconic title…

Who is he? What is he?

…that changed science fiction.

RoboCop?

They're changing that title, right?

You must be kidding.

Yeah, fair enough. Maybe some context is in order.

You see, this violent dissection of American culture…

I'd buy that for a dollar.

…was directed by a European. Go!

…whose sophisticated approach to filmmaking…

Paul's a world-class director.

…can mostly be defined by…

"Bigger." "I need bigger. I need bigger."

Which was a big problem for those on the crew…

Everyone had a horrible time on RoboCop.

…who were all feeling the heat…

Sweating our balls off.

…of the tight budget…

Which was not a tremendous amount of money.

…tight schedule…

That just immediately set them back.

In super hyper-crunch mode.

…and very tight suit.

Can't take a piss.

This is the excruciatingly…

Agh! …painful story…

Parts were rubbing him wrong. …of how RoboCop…

I am the future of law enforcement.

…gracefully hobbled…

It's gonna look like that? …into cinematic history.

Really action-adventure.

Forever cementing the undeniable fact…

Ooh. …that…

RoboCop is a brilliant title and a brilliant film.

Exactly.

These are The Movies That Made Us.

In the early '80s…

a movie was made…

And I was like, "What's it about?"

…that inspired filmmakers…

"It's about a robot."

…and wannabe filmmakers alike…

It was just the biggest set I'd ever seen in my life.

…which left everyone asking…

What is this shit?

They also asked… "What is this movie?"

No, not RoboCop, if that's what you're thinking.

He's talking about the movie that very directly spawned it.

Called Blade Runner. They said, "It's about a robot." That's the robot.

Of course, it is. Sean Young.

And I remember my first response was…

That's not a robot. Okay.

Well, this movie about robots that don't look like robots…

They were designed to copy human beings.

…inspired this movie about a robotic policeman otherwise known as…

RoboCop. Which is what?

This shiny hulking mass of justice…

You are under arrest.

…which was created from the residue…

Clear. …of a real human man.

Left behind from an excessive use of force…

Good night, sweet prince.

…and reassembled into a mighty…

…sharp-witted…

Stay out of trouble.

…sharpshooting "robo cop."

This guy's really good.

But when the morsels of his humanity

leak into the remnants of his brain…

We killed you. …through the help of his partner

and the haunting memories of his family… Can you do that, Dad?

…he's able to rid the new Detroit streets of the criminals, the corruption…

You're fired!

…and the competition. You're illegally parked.

All in a day's work for Officer…

Murphy.

And while the events of this film

are set in Detroit in the near future,

its origins can be traced to Burbank of the 1980s.

Specifically Warner Bros. Studios.

My office, which was in a trailer, was on the backlot.

Where a young script reader, Ed Neumeier, was pondering his existence.

When you're a reader, you're very frustrated,

'cause all you wanna do is something else.

You read thousands of scripts and most of them not very good.

But despite his dissatisfaction…

I would get done with the day

and instead of going home, I would just go to the set.

But not just any set.

Blade Runner.

There were so many people on the set, that they didn't know who was working.

And so, Ed secretly embedded himself…

…amongst the crew's art department.

I made trash for the streets by filling big garbage cans filled with newspapers

and making them wet, then spreading them around.

I did that three or four nights in a row.

And it was there on the Blade Runner set

that Ed had himself a bit of a moment that would change science fiction forever.

It was, like, four in the morning and I remember looking at that car,

which was called a Spinner.

And I was thinking about what I thought a robot would be in that world,

and I suddenly had this image that came into my mind,

of a robot standing next to that car on that street.

And then, the title came into my mind, which has never happened before or since.

It was RoboCop.

Which just as quickly fused

with another idea that Ed had been dabbling with.

I had this notion of corporate execs killing each other,

and that all kind of came together that night.

Wiping the trash from his hands,

Ed got to work on his very first feature script.

It was actually thought then that your first script

shouldn't be science fiction, because they're very expensive.

So, some might have thought that writing RoboCop first was…

Risky business. Yes, but what wasn't was…

Risky Business.

As in this movie.

Which for Ed, turns out, was more of a safe bet.

My big breakthrough was I read a script called Risky Business.

A party?

I liked it so much, I wrote an 18-page report on it.

And when the movie came out and hit, I was offered a job as an executive.

Pretty neat.

At just 25, this young executive had it made.

However…

Now, I had always wanted to write.

And he wanted to write RoboCop.

It was an ongoing outline for a number of years,

and I would keep going back to it and keep going back to it.

And then…

And then, he realized he needed help.

I was looking around to write it with somebody,

but I didn't have anybody in mind.

Abusing his executive powers for the good of RoboCop…

You know, I was auditioning people whether they knew it or not.

For his perfect partner in crime.

Or in the case of Mike Miner, an almost perfect partner in crime.

Ed and I are very different personality types.

I am a little bit more of an experimental filmmaker.

Maybe more than films?

Experimented with psychedelics.

A "leap before I look" kind of person.

And with seemingly nothing in common,

Ed might well have leapt the other way.

He said, "I'm shooting a rock video about a robot."

So I told him about RoboCop, the story. And he just immediately said…

"My God! Let's do that. We'll write it together." I said, "Okay."

This guy's gonna be your new partner.

And once Ed had the help he so desperately needed…

I said, "I'm gonna go away and I'm gonna write the first act."

Okay.

So, I took ten days off from my job as an executive.

I said that my grandfather had died and I had to go, but I told a lie.

Funeral's tomorrow.

And the studio sent me flowers. And I still feel bad about it today.

And after overcoming his guilt…

I wrote the first act, and that was as far as I got.

And upon reading this action, sci-fi, corporate murder story…

Na-na-na-na. Mike had a note.

He kept saying, "Why is this funny?" And I said, "Well, it should be funny."

Na-na-na-na-na…

It played to my sensibility, because I have a twisted…

and ironic sense of humor.

Well, give the man a hand!

And completely embrace that tone.

And we then went down that rabbit hole together.

Emerging six months later with a script

unlike anything Hollywood had ever seen before.

The RoboCop script hit the desk of virtually every studio.

We just gave it to anybody.

Most of the people we brought it to enjoyed the read.

But they all said…

No.

Eventually, it worked its way to Orion.

And in case you don't know what Orion makes…

They make movies that get a lot of recognition creatively.

They also made this one. The Terminator.

But not everything they made

was a critically acclaimed box-office smash.

Look at this one. Flesh and Blood isn't very good.

Forget the flesh of Christ! Let's drink!

Well, you can't win them all,

but still, when this script that had been all over town,

written by two unknown writers,

hit the desk of the senior vice president of Orion…

I said, "What is it?" And he said, "It's called…"

RoboCop.

And I said, "You gotta be kidding."

The "he" to whom Barbara refers was legendary producer…

Jon Davison.

One day, he called me and said, "I think this is kind of interesting."

Which was encouraging. But Barbara, as you'll remember…

"You gotta be kidding."

…still needed to be convinced.

And Jon's answer was, "Read it."

And I said, "Okay."

It was a brilliantly written script,

and I was just completely convinced I had to make it.

But before she could do that,

Barbara would have to convince her boss, Mike Medavoy.

I'd been a part of seven Academy Award movies.

And if you look up there, you'll see eight Golden Globes.

I don't think RoboCop is one of them.

Spoiler alert, it isn't.

However, clearly, Mike had a good eye for which movies to make.

I thought the concept was really strong.

And for a hitmaker like Mike Medavoy,

it was looking like the stars were aligning for Orion.

Suddenly, they were optioning it and we were signing papers.

And RoboCop… Thank you.

…was ready to roll.

No. In a bit, that is.

We need something more.

And that something was a director.

And that's when they started to literally go through

the alphabetized list of all these people.

And toward the very, very back of the Rolodex, they found…

Paul Verhoeven.

Dutch director Paul Verhoeven had made a name for himself

directing film and television with European sensibilities.

I said, "You know, this guy has got a nasty cynical side."

"His violence is very direct and consequential."

And he'd already recently directed a movie for Orion.

His first for an American studio, in fact.

Very sadly, it was this one.

And as we know… Flesh and Blood isn't very good.

Verhoeven lost them a lot of money.

But keep your enemies closer or, you know, the person that the…

the… I don't know what the right phrase is…

Well, Barbara's got one for you.

You gotta be kidding. You're joking.

Flesh and Blood, it went incredibly over budget.

I had to fly to Spain.

Where she delivered the first of what would be many scoldings

for Paul Verhoeven.

I said to him, "You have them up there,

right at the edge of this rampart and they're not properly hooked up."

Are you all right? I'm fine.

They must be forcing her to say that.

At which point, he ran up to the ramparts…

and is waving around and screaming back at me…

… "It's not a bit dangerous."

While I'm below just watching him along with the entire cast.

You bastard!

It was a nightmare, and it didn't do any business.

And now you're saying Paul Verhoeven? They were.

What, are you crazy, man?

The more they thought of it…

…somehow, the better the idea seemed.

I always felt at that time that Europeans do America better than Americans.

Foreign filmmakers making films about America,

you know, give it a little bit of a different flavor.

Specifically…

These people have not eaten too many cheeseburgers.

And so, the consensus at Orion was…

He'll be very good if he'll do it.

Okay…

will he do it?

He goes, "RoboCop?"

And then he reads a few pages,

and the opening is all this carnage and stuff.

He goes, "This is everything I hate about America."

And he throws it away.

But fate had other plans.

Now, his wife picks it up.

Reads it. He comes back and she goes,

"Reread it, there are things here you missed."

And he rereads it and he goes, "My God."

"There are things I missed. There are layers here."

In fact, RoboCop…

Has got layers and layers…

It's like a 60-layered cake.

But Verhoeven still wasn't quite convinced.

So, I called him up.

And what Barbara said to Verhoeven

was so extraordinary, so convincing that…

Well, we'll tell you later.

For now, all you need to know is that Verhoeven said…

I like it!

That was that. Okay, that was easy.

So, the veritable Verhoeven made his way to America,

and RoboCop was all systems go.

Ed and Dave were busy rewriting with the new director.

Paul Verhoeven came in and made it all that much better.

And we spent many days, nights, and weekends writing a second draft.

And a third, and a fourth, etcetera.

We tugged over every line.

We discussed every moment in that script many, many times.

You are gonna be a bad motherfucker.

It was all happening. Suddenly, we were hiring people.

Jon Davison had access

to the most talented, low-budget, independent technicians on the planet.

He knows how to make a dollar look like three dollars.

I'd buy that for a dollar.

Don't you mean… $3.

Well, he'd definitely need to, because…

Orion wanted us to make the movie for the cost of Terminator,

which was seven something.

Which was not a tremendous amount of money.

In other words… Very cheap, and I don't think we could.

Pretty simple math, Bob?

And so, Orion decided, "Okay, we can spend the extra money."

Yeah. Upping the budget to…

Ten million, seven hundred and some-odd thousand dollars.

Which is peanuts, really. But that's what we needed for the movie.

Now, speaking of nuts…

there was one task that only the bravest could face.

A job so important that if they failed, the movie might.

The suit. The suit?

We mean this suit.

The first person who took a crack at it was Chris Walas,

who is known for The Fly and stuff like that.

It wasn't what we wanted.

It looked like someone threw up on a guy in a wet suit.

And I remember Jon saying, "Okay, I gotta call Rob Bottin."

Well, here's the thing about Rob Bottin.

He did it.

As in the movie, The Thing.

As well as The Witches of Eastwick and Innerspace.

However…

You know, Rob is a perfectionist, and he might not be on your timetable.

Sounds familiar? You gotta be kidding.

Great, and so, Rob sprang into action,

first dialing up concept artist Miles Teves.

He said, "How are you at drawing robots?"

And I said, "Fantastic, I love them."

Even though I hadn't drawn a robot since I was a kid.

And after a crash course in robotics…

We looked at all the robots in movie history.

…Miles was ready for direction.

The director wanted him to be sexy,

heroic, and also show kind of a lineage of Detroit

from its golden days of automotive design.

Makes sense, considering… Detroit is

the manufacturing capital of the world at the time.

The idea of a designed suit was like another cool car.

So, Miles got to work. Drew for hours and hours and hours.

And after a week, left his pile of drawings

in the capable hands of Rob Bottin.

But there was much more drawing to be done,

because RoboCop has a nemesis.

We got two robots in this. One's a man in a suit. What's the other?

This is…

A terrifying enforcement droid…

dedicated to peace and…

…urban pacification, but designing and executing…

Probably not the right word to use.

…ED-209 was a breeze because, unlike RoboCop…

I said, "It shouldn't look like a man." He said, "We'll get Phil."

That would be Phil Tippett, who,

when it came to stop-motion animation,

was the man.

He had done the Walker sequence in Star Wars.

But even this seasoned veteran of the silver screen

had a common reaction to his first read of the script.

I didn't quite get, um…

it, I mean, it seemed kind of silly to me.

Silly or not, this job was easy money for Phil.

And a little bit harder for the guy he delegated the job to.

"Here, you wanna do this job?" "Design a giant robot?"

Unlike his mentor…

I'm like, "I'm in, you know." "Okay, cool."

Craig wouldn't think this script was silly.

I read the script. I thought it was silly.

But I'm in.

And soon he was banging out drawings

that drew on numerous inspirations.

Kind of a combination of just bad automobile design…

mixed with helicopters, tanks…

even things like killer whales.

The head of the thing is kind of like a carbon fiber killer whale head.

Collaborating with the writers…

I had a Japanese model, and it was called a Glaug trooper.

I said, "Well, this is what I was thinking for ED."

The director…

"What is this? Certainly this looks like... It's like some stupid plant."

As well as Rob Bottin and his crew.

We never talked. Or not.

He's doing that. We're doing this.

All for the one thing:

a movie with a shoot date fast approaching.

You know, Rob is a perfectionist, and he might not be on your timetable.

He wasn't.

Rob Bottin said he needed six months

from the time we cast the lead until he could have the suits ready.

So, we hadn't cast the lead at that point.

Well, the time had come to find out…

Who's going to star in RoboCop.

The very first person

that Paul Verhoeven wanted to portray RoboCop was Michael Ironside.

He goes, "Okay, first thing we have to do is rewrite the script."

"And I want RoboCop to have a harem."

Let the professionals do their job. They said, "See you later, Michael."

And hello to…

Arnold Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger wanted to be RoboCop.

He and Mike Medavoy had become close friends at Orion Pictures

because The Terminator was an Orion picture.

So, Arnie said to Mike…

I'll be back.

And then they started to design

with Rob Bottin the RoboCop suit to make it fit Arnold.

Your clothes.

Give them to me.

But it turned out looking like the Michelin Man.

But it's true.

It was just too exaggerated.

It was too big.

If you're gonna have something this large, there's no drama.

This thing is indestructible.

It's unstoppable. I thought, "Nah, this is not gonna work."

Get out.

But one of the most interesting was Peter...

The one and only, Peter We... Fonda.

Peter Fonda.

Peter Fonda actually walked into the production office, unannounced,

and said to the casting people, "Here I am. You've found your RoboCop."

They really hadn't.

But they were able to find, at least what it was they needed to find.

A directive, you might even call it.

What are your prime directives? One, he had to be skinny.

The second thing was, they have to be incredibly physically fit.

Three, he's gotta have great chin and great lips.

This holy trinity

of skinniness, strength, and supple lip beauty,

led them to conclude…

We should cast for a long, long time, and just see everybody.

Hoping RoboCop would walk in that door.

In the meantime, plenty of other people did.

Miguel Ferrer walked in, the room cracked.

And I remember Jon Davison looking at me going…

And that was it, that was Morton.

Hell of a guy, really, wouldn't you say?

The same thing happened with Kurtwood Smith.

You probably don't think I'm a very nice guy.

Well, that's the thing, most probably would.

Clarence Boddicker was just great. He didn't seem like a bad guy.

Which was by design.

I always had him as wearing glasses. I wanted him to be considered smart.

I based him on the terrorist, Carlos the Jackal,

who was known to throw a hand grenade into a crowded marketplace.

But this would-be-killer hadn't quite blown up yet.

I was still kind of a struggling actor.

So, I get the script sent to me for RoboCop and I went, ""

And I went, "Well. Maybe it'll be fun."

But like those before him…

There are layers.

…Kurtwood had skipped dessert.

It's like a 60-layered cake.

That once he bit into…

Then, all of a sudden for me, it went from, ""

to playing this villain,

who I was determined to have a lot of fun with.

Bitches, leave.

And then… Murphy, meet Lewis.

…there was RoboCop's partner.

Lewis was always meant to be just a partner and not a love interest,

and that was important to me at the very beginning.

And in the beginning…

Stephanie Zimbalist was the first person to be cast as Lewis.

Known for her hard-nosed detecting on TV's Remington Steele,

Zimbalist was the very example of a strong, equal, female counterpart.

And then she couldn't do it.

There's only so much room in one's schedule for counterparty.

Anyway, I'm glad it worked out for me.

This lucky lady is Nancy Allen,

who, when it came to playing…

A gender-neutral female character.

I like to turn men on.

Probably isn't the first person you'd think of, but…

I'm an actress.

An actress who was more than prepared to play this part.

My dad was a cop for almost 30 years in New York.

And I thought, "I know this character."

She was just right, and she got it.

But in order to slip into character…

She's pretty tough.

…Nancy was going to have to slip into something else.

When I was talking to my friend about this character,

she said to me, "You know, you're really feminine."

"What if you wore men's underpants under your costume?"

Now why would you want to do a thing like that?

Because it kind of affects how you feel, so I tried that.

Gotta jock it up a little bit here.

And as Nancy got in touch with her masculine side,

the film was about to get in touch with its RoboCop.

Because after a long seven-month search…

Peter came in.

What, again? Here I am.

Not Peter Fonda. Peter Weller.

Now the reason they went with Peter is, they made Buckaroo Banzai.

Raking in a profit of... It didn't actually make a profit at all.

But it was big in Japan, so…

The studio was interested in him.

And Weller was interested

in auditioning for RoboCop in his own special Weller way.

He didn't wanna read on tape.

So, Paul and I went out to lunch with him,

and then Paul had him read with me.

But I remember I was really nervous. Don't worry. You got the part.

And so, obviously, did Peter Weller…

Get your armor and suit up.

…because he fit those directives to perfection.

Peter Weller was a marathon runner. So, you've got two right there.

Go on. What about the most important one?

If you look at Peter, Peter has a Cupid bow, he's got wonderful lips.

Three out of three. It's you.

And while Peter Weller was the total package…

Pretty neat.

…he was also part of a package deal.

He had been schooled by a mime expert in the New York theater scene. Moni Yakim.

He had asked for us to hire this guy as a movement coach.

He worked on certain moves that allowed Peter to look more robotic.

Which would prove quite useful.

Just as soon as there was a suit for him to wear,

which would only take about six months to create.

Assuming that is, that all those designs were squared away.

And Rob said, "This isn't working. The director doesn't like it."

He had become very bulky.

He sort of had this huge, sort of cylinder for a chest

and a helmet that looked kind of like a stylized Greco-Roman helmet.

So, after six months of hard work…

We're at that stage of

completely reconstructing from the ground up.

You can't say you weren't warned.

He might not be on your timetable.

And he wasn't. So, Miles did what he does best.

Just drew for hours and hours and hours.

Except this time, he was in… In super hyper-crunch mode.

But Miles would really have to get the lead out,

as production was quickly gearing up to load up

and move out to the film's setting, Detroit, Michigan, kind of.

We didn't end up shooting there. There was a good reason.

I mean, the question was budget.

And we went to Dallas, because we got a good deal there.

I gotta hand it to you, you sure can pick 'em.

Besides, it wasn't just about the bottom line.

Dallas had some particular things when we scouted it

that really worked for our script.

A script set in the future.

Dallas was perfect for us because at that time,

it had this period of growth

where they had a lot of interesting modern buildings.

So, with a location and a cast,

there really was just the one thing that they were waiting on.

What happened was, I brought in a book…

Not just any book.

This exact, super sexy Japanese robot book.

…from the Japanese illustrator, Sorayama,

and he was known for drawing these sexy chrome robots.

And what did Rob Bottin make of these sensual synthoids?

I remember he picked the book up and said, "This is it."

"If we can take this aesthetic and graft it onto Peter Weller,

we can make this work."

It looked immediately right.

And it just was like, "Wow, that's fantastic."

Then Peter went in and they molded his body and his head…

so that the whole suit fit him well.

But this last-minute scramble to redesign the suit

put Rob and his team behind.

And when shooting started in early August, 1986…

They didn't have a suit.

I thought we agreed on total body prosthesis.

And so that just immediately set them back.

And so, they had to start, because they had a very short production window.

So suddenly the schedule got flopped around.

Scrambling to find anything that didn't involve the star.

There ain't a lot to shoot without Weller.

There's a bit. The very first shot

was the confrontation between Dick Jones and Bob Morton in the executive washroom.

Fucked with the wrong guy.

You're out of your fucking mind.

Well, that's one shot in the can.

There must be more they could do.

After all, time was money and... There's an idea.

"I'll buy that for a dollar." I'd buy that for a dollar.

That was the first two days of shooting.

They shot vignettes for the television.

And the inspiration for this fictional knee-slapper?

Is a direct spoof of Benny Hill,

the English comedian who would grin impishly to the audience.

Did you see that? The show was called It's Not My Problem!

Which, in itself, was a subtle nod to Paul Verhoeven.

If we would come to him with, like something wasn't working

or we had a problem, and he often would say,

"Well, certainly, that's not my problem."

"Well, that's your problem, not mine."

But it was increasingly becoming Paul Verhoeven's problem,

because after all the dollars were spent

shooting all of the scenes that didn't require a robo-suit…

We ran out of stuff.

We sat around just like, "My God!"

Stewing in the Dallas heat.

It was a billion degrees there.

Just sweating our balls off.

An idle cast and crew were left to pass the time

watching Peter work on his body movements.

There in an empty parking lot

in 95-degree Texas heat

was Peter and this mime marching around the parking lot.

And we thought, "It's gonna look like that?"

Well, they were about to find out,

because after two weeks…

It comes finally.

And finally, the crew could spring into action.

And Peter, he sprang into the new suit.

Ready to make up for all that lost time.

We all got there in the morning and…

I would say it was at least eight hours.

It took him ten hours.

Twelve hours.

The first time, I think it took 14 or 15 hours to get him in the suit.

And they lose the entire day.

And what went through my mind was either we're going to be here

for the next six months…

or they're shutting us down tomorrow.

Now, meanwhile, Paul Verhoeven,

who has got a lot riding on his shoulders for the show,

is going completely crazy.

But while Verhoeven was fretting lost time,

Weller was about to find himself plunged into his own crisis.

After spending four months of rehearsing with Moni Yakim,

once he gets into the suit…

The director just didn't like it. It wasn't a sort of robotic movement

that we ended up with in the film. It was a different thing.

He did have this weird thing he did.

Robo, come on in.

He was trying to look like a ballet dancer,

and that just simply didn't fit into the concept.

I imagine I might've been thrown into a panic by that,

because nothing I've thought about works.

I can't do this, I can't do that. I can't even take a piss.

Can't use any of this stuff, and so he's furious.

And as for the hot and sweaty crew…

It was just like, "Please, we just all sat here for ten hours waiting."

"Just get on the damn set."

Awkwardly stumbling forward with the shoot.

So, we don't have him kick open doors and flop in like Lloyd Bridges from Sea Hunt.

Verhoeven directed it so that RoboCop would be revealed in layers.

Layers and layers and layers…

Layer one.

A plastic covering comes off the POV.

Layer two.

We see the POV walk by a video monitor,

and that's the first time you see the suit.

Layer three. RoboCop is walking behind frosted glass,

and then eventually emerges. And the final layer…

He's behind this wire mesh holding cell.

But their suit problems couldn't be disguised

by clever direction for long.

In the meantime,

at least other people were hitting their stride.

I really liked driving the car.

I'd better drive until you know your way around.

Paul liked it when I drove the car.

He thought I was more reckless than the stunt driver.

Hit it!

I don't know what came over me when I got behind that wheel.

It was clearly the same determination and drive

that came over Kurtwood Smith.

The first day that I shot

was when RoboCop dragged me into the police station,

threw me up against the counter and said… Book him.

The first thing I did was go to Paul and say, "Paul,

how about if I spit blood on the desk?"

And Paul was like, "Yes, let's try that."

Boom! That was it for me and Paul.

From then on, we were on the same channel for the rest of the movie.

But for Peter and Paul, they were fighting over the remote.

There was already quite a bit of,

shall we say, resentment brewing over the director-actor relationship.

And thus ensued a dance of sorts.

So if all of a sudden, you're doing these balletic samurai moves,

which is what Peter wanted to do…

it just didn't jar with the conception.

Or Verhoeven. Paul is a perfectionist.

He wants a look. He wants a performance. He wants a mood. He wants…

…Peter Weller to understand one simple prime directive.

You are playing a machine that doesn't know it's a man.

Not a man that thinks he's a shiny metal ballerina.

I think that caused a crisis in the actor,

and it made him very insecure about the movie.

So he started to kind of fight back in other ways.

And ironically… It all came down to his prime directives.

Serve the public trust. Protect the innocent. Uphold the law.

He didn't want to say them, he wanted to come up with his own versions of them.

And they went from these one-line things to these baroque amendments.

They were like, "Four score and seven years ago,

when I became a cyborg…" Blah, blah, blah.

And Peter just kept resisting.

Which, under these circumstances, really didn't go down well.

We don't have the time to rewrite the movie.

We gotta shoot it right now.

With the situation quickly spiraling out of control…

Medavoy called Weller's agent and said… Jesus, you really screwed up.

No… What he said was much worse.

"I will fire your guy and eat several million dollars…"

You're our product.

"…if he doesn't get in line and say the prime directives as written."

To which Peter replied… "I'm not gonna say your lines."

The production said, "Okay."

"You can leave."

And they started really looking for other people.

And that was a big crisis for this production.

But a big opportunity for somebody else.

"Here, I am, you've found your RoboCop."

I'm Peter Fonda. Not Peter Fonda. No!

This man. Stunt coordinator, Gary Combs.

I'm the stunt guy, I'm not an actor.

Not yet, at least.

One night, this producer of this show, he called me. He said,

"How are you with dialogue?" I said, "What do you mean?"

I'm talking to you. What do you say?

"You're gonna be RoboCop."

And so, he was.

At least just while they figured out what to do with Peter,

who Gary was nothing like.

There was never a complaint. He did everything he was supposed to do.

All the stuff that they were doing were just reactions.

I was in the suit, so you couldn't tell the difference.

But Peter Weller could.

I think that jostled him a little bit like, ""

"Maybe I shouldn't be such a…"

Okay, okay.

There was a big "come to Jesus" moment, if you will, between Peter and Paul.

Paul basically said,

"Look, we're both upset. Let's move on from this."

"Shake my hand and there'll be no more problems."

And Peter Weller stared at the hand and shook it.

And from that moment on, well, we'll see.

Skip forward a couple of weeks in production,

and things were moving along at a decidedly quicker clip,

with no small thanks owed to…

…Paul Verhoeven.

There's a certain energy on the set. There's like this machine…

Action! It's constantly moving.

Go! And Paul was the engine.

He was the driving force.

Which is a very polite way of saying…

He hated waiting for things.

Okay. Next shot. Thank you very much. Thank you.

You know, putting mics on people and all of that,

he doesn't wanna be bothered with that.

And about those mics…

The sound people said, "We can't get it, we have to wire them."

And Paul lost his shit.

"They're conspiring! They're conspiring to ruin my movie."

Peter said to me, "Did you see Paul?"

Paul was literally sitting on the ground

with his legs crossed, his head in his hand,

because he had to wait for something.

If Paul thought the entire crew was conspiring

to make just his life miserable, well, he was wrong.

Everyone had a horrible time on RoboCop.

No, we didn't have a good time.

And the reason why? "You trying to fuck my movie?"

Well, we can only speculate as to that.

But there was no doubting why Peter Weller wasn't having a good time,

putting that suit on every day.

It ain't easy, pal.

It was painful. He was getting blisters. Parts were rubbing him wrong.

I can feel them.

Which in turn led him to rub crew members wrong.

Like poor Gregor here,

who helped squeeze Peter into that suit every day.

I'm having a bit of difficulty getting in,

you know, something screwed in on his ankle and he's like,

"Can you get somebody else over here to do this?"

And I looked at him, I go, "Hey, Peter. Fuck off."

And he looked at me, he goes, "I like you."

And we were good from that point on.

And while he didn't want to be in the suit,

Peter did, however, want to remain in character.

Do you have a name?

I had been told, Peter only wanted to be called "Robo."

Just Robo?

Go, Robo!

And I thought, "Well. I'm just not gonna talk to the guy."

Rob Bottin refused to call him Robo.

So he would, you know, just aggressively, like, "Hey, how's it going, Peter?"

"That's Robo." "Yeah right, Peter."

And while on-set tensions threatened to flare up at any moment…

it was an altogether different type of explosion…

"Bigger. Bigger. I need bigger! I need bigger!"

…that would mark the end of the production's time in Dallas.

The gas station scene, I think, was one of those scenes where

the effects crew had heard enough from Paul about how much

he wanted "bigger, bigger, bigger," in terms of the effects and explosions.

When I overheard one of the guys saying, "He wants big? We'll give him big."

The gas station explosion

was far too big to have happened in a downtown area.

It broke windows for, you know, a couple of blocks away.

I imagine it set off a lot of motion alarms in the area.

It also genuinely set into motion law changes in Texas.

And with that, the RoboCop crew had definitely outstayed their welcome,

and headed to their next location.

Where did he go? Pittsburgh.

Yeah, we went to Pennsylvania.

At a shuttered steel mill which was stunning and spectacular.

And it was here that a spectacular display of violence

was unleashed on all these rotten baddies.

They were the worst people in the world, but they were just having the best time.

But as for the cast and crew…

It was like the rest of the movie. It was always uncomfortable.

For some, it was uncomfortable in a…

Dirty, disgusting water.

…kind of way.

I refused to put on a wet suit

under my costume because I was afraid I would look fat in the water.

I'm a mess.

I got in the water. It was freezing cold. That was a really big mistake.

But for others, it was uncomfortable in more of a…

Face was all swollen up. Eye was super puffed up.

…kind of way.

Extraordinary hours in a makeup chair.

And while McCrane worked out the appropriate sound…

…it was down to our friend Miles Teves… Yeah.

…to work out how someone might look when they're melted down by toxic waste.

I just started drawing skin melting off of the bones of the guy's hand.

We sculpted the flesh hanging down, put weights inside the ends of the flesh,

so they would hang down properly.

Help me!

I did the wasp-sting eye. It was actually a lot of fun.

Nice someone was having fun.

I had to feed him lunch, because he couldn't eat with the melted face.

Nobody could really eat lunch that day.

I had to hit this guy with the car. It was a pretty good dummy.

And they throw watermelons and pig intestines at the windshield.

And I was the guy that tossed the gak.

I know Paul wanted bigger and more grotesque all the time.

But amidst the explosive grotesqueness,

the biggest bloodbath was the budget.

You know, we're up to $12-million-and-bleeding range.

That's right. The budget was a veritable gore fest, hemorrhaging cash.

Paul had a lot to do with it.

And for Barbara, well, perhaps she was wrong going Dutch.

You're asking, "How did I let this happen after Flesh and Blood?"

Because by this time, we knew how Paul shot.

Or we should have.

The production and Orion Pictures

soon found themselves at a bit of an impasse.

When the studio is getting all worked up,

you know, you try and come up with something you can give up.

But Paul Verhoeven was in no mood for concessions.

He was having an argument with one of the producers over money.

And all of a sudden, we hear, "Just tell me if you're going to fuck me!"

"Tell me you're going to fuck me, and then I will know

if you are going to fuck me!"

Luckily, it wouldn't come to that,

all thanks to a little…

Glitch. No, not glitch.

"Glitch" is the wrong word. More of a clerical error.

Late in the production,

the studio sent Jon Davison some paperwork.

Somebody screwed up in business affairs,

because it was something that should've been signed in pre-production.

Which was months ago.

And it said the movie is budgeted for ten million 700 some-odd thousand dollars.

And signing here, it says that you can make it for that.

And I said to Jon, "You know, you can't sign that,

because we're already well over that."

He called his lawyer, the lawyer called the Orion guys and said,

"He won't sign it. He'd be falsifying a document."

Which, of course, would be a very blatant…

Crime.

You can't sign to a lie, and they didn't.

With shooting well on its way to completion,

Orion had no choice but to own up to its boo-boo.

Just kidding.

And we did the right thing, I think. Gave them money they needed.

And they bumped the budget up to, I think it was 13.9.

And so, Orion agreed to say,

"Okay, we'll finish in Pennsylvania, we'll regroup in Los Angeles."

And with the pressure off…

Paul Verhoeven was so… Happy? And relaxed?

He was so unhappy and miserable.

He said, "They're giving me two more, they're giving me 13 million."

"This is a 17-to-20-million-dollar film."

"How do they expect me to do this film for this amount of money?"

"This is not possible!"

But eventually Paul was able to collect his nerves.

And the production came back to Los Angeles

to complete the final and arguably most important part of the movie.

The scene where Murphy gets killed by the gang.

Well, what have we here?

And that was a wild set.

First, they blow off his hand.

Then blow off his arm.

Then they blow off his head.

It's…

Na-na-na-na-na…

Just… awful.

While the set was teeming with enthusiasm at the beginning of the day…

Paul directed the scene with a great deal of vigor.

"Now, you kill him."

…the morbid scene unfolding began to take its hole… sorry, toll.

It looked so real, even there.

It was surprisingly like… ew. And everybody on the set felt it.

And the only one who felt it more than Peter Weller

was the other Peter Weller.

The prosthetic Peter Weller that Rob Bottin had built,

it was extremely lifelike.

And then the thing sits up. Go!

Paul had set up this great tracking shot and you hear this, "Shoot!"

The back of his head blows out, and there's a hole that you can see.

Okay, let's get out of here.

And that was a strange moment, like, everybody was like…

Yeah.

It was a grim set.

And at the end of the day, it was, thankfully, a wrapped set.

Okay, let's get out of here.

And I remember Arne Schmidt going,

"Is this okay?"

You know, that's what editing is for.

Which was already underway.

I didn't see a rough cut.

I saw scenes on the movie, all of it, Frank Urioste was putting together.

And I thought, at that moment, that we had lightning in a bottle.

After finishing the first cut,

a preview screening was organized to see if audiences felt the same way.

People were laughing right away, and I thought, "This is good."

Twenty minutes in, things got bumpy.

We had some walkouts. Let's get out of here.

When Murphy got murdered,

it was so intense that ten people got up and they left the room.

Red alert. And the nightmare begins again.

Because the film is quickly hit with an X rating.

This was completely unacceptable.

We got a problem. An X rating would mean no HBO.

It'd mean no cartoon, no action figures.

And most importantly, no RoboCop bubble bath.

There were just all kinds of implications of this movie being an X-rated movie.

But when Verhoeven was asked to edit the film down to an R rating…

He fought every second of it.

Of course he did.

He said, "I'm not gonna do it. It will never be released."

But that wasn't Verhoeven's call.

Medavoy had to say, "Give us a break." Yeah.

"We've done everything to get this movie made."

"Do what you're supposed to do."

And what Verhoeven was supposed to do,

contractually speaking,

was deliver an R-rated film.

You know, so we did have to make some changes.

They were painful, I'm sure, to Paul, but they were totally necessary.

Though not entirely extensive either.

You're talking about seconds.

It really was seconds.

Which was just enough to earn the film its R rating.

Thank you, sir.

And the next time we showed the movie, only one person got up and left.

And with its new R rating,

the film was ready for its opening weekend.

RoboCop will bombard movie theaters on July 17th.

But how would audiences react

to this action, sci-fi, robot, corporate, murder movie?

After I finished shooting, I thought, "Who the hell is gonna see this movie?"

We all thought it was gonna be crap, I'm pretty sure.

I had seen the movie, you know, 400 times

and I thought, "Well, I'm not even gonna go."

Couple friends of mine said, "No, you have to go."

And at last, after a grueling production

marred by setbacks, recuts, and…

"Tell me if you're going to fuck me."

…more setbacks,

Ed and Mike's passion project was finally on the big screen.

Nice shooting, son. What's your name?

And at the end when he says, "What's your name, son?"

And he says, "Murphy," the audience roared in a way I could not anticipate.

It actually almost made me cry. It was astonishing.

That's when I realized people really like this movie.

People were going nuts and we knew we had a hit on our hands.

It was a thrill.

It's a good movie.

I remember sitting in Medavoy's office.

There was a guy on a telephone, a payphone.

He was out in front of a theater in New York, saying…

"They're coming out! They're laughing! They like it!"

And Medavoy who'd been there went, "It's a hit. It's good."

America's new super hit movie, RoboCop.

And I didn't realize how much people liked it.

RoboCop!

Thanks, RoboCop.

It was an interesting period.

Now playing at a theater near you.

And very quickly, people stopped saying…

"RoboCop? You must be kidding."

And… "They're changing that title, right?"

It seemed kinda silly to me.

And instead, people started saying…

RoboCop.

That's a fucking awesome movie.

In fact, some even say…

It's a perfect story, perfectly told.

And like all perfect stories, RoboCop is timeless.

It's an adventure about a guy who gets turned into a robot if you want,

but you can also see it as a sociological thing about cops.

And about corporate America.

This whole kind of notion that

the new power figure in the world was the business executive.

You just fucked with the wrong guy.

It's about how a country is broken

and it requires one individual to restore order to the broken place.

Well, it certainly took more than one individual

to make this masterpiece.

The right decision was made at every step.

And a lot of those decisions are thanks to this lot at Orion.

None more so than Barbara,

who, despite everything…

…managed to convince Paul Verhoeven to look beyond the title…

"This is everything I hate about America."

…and to see the… you know what.

Layers and layers and layers…

My argument to Verhoeven was,

"You can make a machine, and you can make man machine-like."

"But I'm telling you, this is about a man who becomes a machine."

"But inside the machine…

the man remains."

"That means there's humanity."

"And that means we have a hope

for the Earth and the world."

Murphy, it's you.

And Paul, he let me get all of this out.

And then, he said, "Okay, I'll do it."

And we're glad he did.

Because, really…

it wouldn't be the same without him.

This is Paul Verhoeven's film.

It's his vision.

From Verhoeven's vision

to Peter Weller's performance,

really, it was the idea Ed Neumeier had on the Blade Runner set, decades ago…

Thirty-three years ago today, the movie premiered.

…that's led us right here, to the streets of new Detroit.

This is Dallas City Hall.

I missed the top of the building, but it was perfect for a matte painting.

There was a lot of pressure, and not a lot of time.

We were always sort of fighting to get the movie done.

The main thing we did here was Robo versus ED-209 at the end.

"You're illegally parked on private property. You have…"

Twenty seconds to move your vehicle.

'Cause whatever happens,

this corporation will live up to the guiding principles of its founder.

Courage, strength, conviction.

To tell you the truth, making RoboCop,

I mean, it was hard and it was scary,

but it was such a cool thing that we were getting to do this.

And we knew it, and we worked very hard.

And many people who worked on it

feel that was one of their most creative efforts.

I'd better drive until you know your way around.

It's one of the greatest achievements of my career.

It makes me feel very fortunate to be part of film history.

Murphy, I'm a mess.

It was very special, and something I can't thank them enough for.

Sayonara, RoboCop.

Paul and Ed in particular.

We will meet each new challenge with the same aggressive attitude.

Wow. It's good to be back.

One of the things that I really wanted to do as a writer

was write a script where you wanted to turn the pages fast,

where you kept reading.

Yeah, I think this is the place where Kinney…

Yes, sir. Come up and give us a hand?

Yes, sir. Picks up the gun in a threatening manner

and points it at ED-209.

Please put down your weapon.

Well, we got the blood out of the carpet.

I never thought, "I did this."

I mean, I think it's fine to have an idea

and to write some good lines, and to have a good story.

That was hard enough.

RoboCop was just a series of great pieces of luck I had.

Well, really, we're all lucky…

…Ed came up with the idea in the first place.

I got lucky,

because I got Paul Verhoeven. I got Mike Miner, my partner,

I got Jon Davison, and I got Rob Bottin,

Phil Tippett and a hundred other people who did an amazing amount of work,

and that's why it's so good.

And it turned out much better than I could have hoped for.

Well, for all his humbleness… It's good to be back here.

…Ed and the RoboCop team shot the perfect movie.

Nice shooting, son. What's your name?

With the perfect name…

Murphy. "You must be kidding."

Actually… So, RoboCop.