Peter Weller Talks Robocop's Suit

he he was great um I do want to say this is that credit with credit is dude and it's been there long enough because I got chastised for it I didn't mean any harm but whatever the communication was between Paul and Rob boutin about the suit I knew that had been measured for the suit and if you see a credit up there from Mo yaken mon yaken is they're making a documentary about him now at the BBC he's been the instructor of movement at jul University for a long time he studied with Marcel marel under Jean Louie Baro anybody know who Jean Lou Baro is no okay Jean Lou Bar is the father of French mime if you ever see the greatest movie I ever made and I mean the great everybody's favorite movie matter of fact I was a dinner with Mike Nichols one of my mentors he said what's your favorite movie I said children of paradise he goes not that not that that's everybody's favorite movie it's like saying Marlon Brando's your favorite actor you can't choose children of paradise but John Baro who one of the great mes ever and in Children of paradise and Mo studied with him and we had developed this very Serpentine liquid sort of movement it was almost like Tai Chi with staccato ends to it and the it's it it just Bears saying that whatever the communication was between Paul and Rob Rob boutin the suit didn't come in ready to shoot and we were shooting two weeks of other stuff and Murphy stuff before the suit came in so the RoboCop stuff didn't didn't start till good 20 days you know this no I didn't that had to scare the studio like crazy because they didn't well you know Orion is had a reputation of being very hands off and very lazy fair and very trusting of its Talent everybody liked to work for a Ryan and but they were getting nervous and then the suit came in and the inner suit you know like there's a wet suit inner suit like I said I have to do these warm-ups to her it took me three hours and we were shooting to put on the inner suit and then another seven hours to put on the OS suit it's 10 hours and it was on a Friday and I was like I lost my mind and Ed new was kind of like running a muck great guy but we're all we were all caving and raw was extraordinary nervous because this thing was not working looked great it was not working we shot one little scene I still see it I'm not going to tell you what scene it is but you know I don't have I don't have control of the arms yet I really don't know how to work the suit it's not really liome I'm trying to fight it it's a mess there's one scene that we shot on that Friday and then we all kind of fell apart Paul threw a fit Rob threw another fit Ed tried to get into the mix I got into Ed's face about getting into it then I said I'm not I this is not going to work for me I don't know I'm going to do 10 hours a day and everybody just went home yeah I get a call on the dead of night it's on a Thursday as a matter of fact get a call in the dead of night from uh my agent who's my one and only agent and they just retired said uh Peter uh Paul wants to fire everybody uh he doesn't like Ed anymore and he's always hated Rob and now he's afraid that you're going to give him a rutar Hower because him and ruer Hower are old friends of rutar Hower always beats him up he's going to get another rutar thing out of you and I said well look the suit doesn't work and uh he saidwell what can you do to heal it and um I said I don't know man 10 minutes later the head of Orion Mike Meto still good friend calls up and says it's all falling apart here and we're really thinking of pulling the plug on this movie because it's not working what can we do to make it work uh I don't know I I said you know my agent just called I can make peace with these guys but I don't know how we're going to solve this suit thing he says okay I got an idea what if we did tests with it over the weekend we get a warehouse and we start doing see what we do to make it work and I said to Mike you got to bring mon Yen back down here fly him in tomorrow pay him off from his Jewel yard thing but get him down here because he's the guy that designed this and that's not what not working so we meet in this Warehouse on Saturday and Orion is really about to pull the plug on this flick because of this not only the suit consternation but nobody everybody's in a panic okay so we meet in this Warehouse there's Rob he's scared Paul's pissed off he's scares John's trying to manically hold it together we don't let Ed new Meer in because he's 20 years old he's bubblegummer he's got opinions for everybody and all he is is oil on all of fames I'm standing I'm trying to put on his thing and in comes Mo Mon's an Israeli French War veteran solid quiet mime a dancer and he walks in he's the only voice of reason and he really saved this film I always say he saved the film I said it in this documentary of BBC cuz while these guys are flipping out Moy goes up to Rob and Paul says what can we cut can you cut out the elbows cut out the wrist cut out all the joints cut out the rubber just tear it out and they start doing it and you know Rob didn't want to do it Paul said I don't know what said John Davis say just do what he says and they started cutting right then he started removing pieces of the plastic it's sorted like this titanium like plastic that were like inhering my my elbow so forth then he had pulled out the bottom of the shoes then he pulled out like the backs of them and finally he made something that I could just barely start to move in then he took me aside and said this now bear with me this is one of the things that this is one of you know every every crisis is an opportunity and it's definitely one of the beautiful things just as Paul's direction did that made this more of a organic thing for me and you say the robo thoughts yeah how everything slowed down right Mo said listen he took me aside he says I have just to work with Peter for for about 45 minutes so they're setting up all these tests what they're going to do is they're going to do tests they're going to look at the tests they're going to send them back to LA on a Sunday they're going to print them on a weekend in 24 hours Mike medavoy and Bob bste are gonna get on the phone say whether this movie is going to be made or not so Mo's just calm man and he comes over and he says listen you have to slow everything down I have to slow everything out you have to make it really really exaggerated don't fight this thing it's never going to be liquid it's always going to be like really slow and started working on this stuff with my man I can't do it now but I was really really good at it then because you have to make each one of these movements really slow with like a big head turn you have to click this stuff off and I said man it sounds it feels so phony it just feels phony it doesn't feel you know hip it feels like like bad Opera and he said do it and he said even bigger he said got me to do this stuff even bigger pulling the gun bigger head bigger working this inner suit and then we shot not much of tests Harry we sh probably about 40 minutes of test right walking turning slow pulling out gun slow I had that's how slow it had to be I go out of the place I said I don't know Moy he said Peter it' be absolutely perfect here's the difference between an Israeli french guy who's been in war and a bunch of movie people he said I said they're they're all they're all in a panic he said yeah they're all in a panic because they're all afraid he says the kid's afraid because he's a kid and it's his first movie he says the designer's afraid because he's too he's too just he's just too sensitive Paul Ren's afraid because he's Dutch and then he then he stopped and he said to Peter the Dutch are depressed I really say he said yeah they're inventive but depressed so I walk I say so it it's going to be fantastic FC you know it didn't it felt like horrible it felt like really the wheels had come off and he was absolutely certain that medavoy would see this thing and be ecstatic and the next Monday we get up and John Davis comes medavoy is ecstatic and Paul is still I get it Paul go no I don't think it's so ecstatic I think it's got problems and whatever and Mo's just standing behind him going Mooney gets a film just about the time the Blockbusters started doing video stores so Moy said I said but Mo it still feels bad so Moy stayed for 2 weeks working with me just moving that suit and he said you got to watch this film This Is Us with film history and so forth and you guys with film history because it's all connective tissue there's no film made in a vacuum they're all ripping off somebody else and even the first films are ripping off narrative art and that narrative art is ripping off some mosaics on a wall and those Mosaic on a wall are ripping off the caves of Lasco you know which are 2,000 years ago and that's ripping off Egypt it it it's all one connective tissue that's why I study art history art history is film history you know it's just visual connective entertainment that like I said leverages the intelligence and gives you aesthetic Delight so he says watch this film and he shows me sergy eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible anybody seen that movie Yes okay it's a silent movie you ever seen it like three and a half hours long okay the guy that plays it was an opera singer dancer named Nikolai chasov he was not a naturalistic actor you know he was like a guy of the stage the movie is very naturalistic stylized but it's basically naturalistic so you see these naturalistic performances the first time you see Ivan I mean I put this thing on he says you have to watch this movie get this first time you see Ivan the tble checkers off go takes this step and goes like that and it is so phony I mean it's like the bad the worst Dracula imitation you've ever seen and he turns and just like zoom into his face I said really mon keep watching okay it's like watching also children of paradise we see are letti with that I see you can't watch this for two minutes five minutes into to it you'd follow the end of the Earth give her the credit cards the house everything you know going down the tub the same with Nikolai cherkos off I watching there 10 minutes in you can't take your eyes off him and everything is like really pronounced and I get it that eisenstein's making this like abstraction of a horrific guy because if the guy's just natural it's just facts in history but he wants to show you the abstraction of this bad beast and man two days into this I said that's it it's a beast it's just like the Golem it's exactly the Golem it's a beast caught trapped no I always thought the uh but that only came after four days of of doing this stuff that only came after Mo after fil M died that only came after Moy came in before that was more like Spider-Man and that problem gave me the character and subsequently the movie so originally the movement was going to be very much really yeah really really liquid wow yeah I'm glad you had problems I'm glad it did too man you know I mean it's astounding isn't it I mean you know you don't give up was it like the first time you saw you moving as RoboCop mixed with those sound effects because the sound effects of the movement of it just gives an immense power to the movement and everything cuz it's all it all feels Perfect all of a sudden you can imagine it being different uh I loved it I I you know it was I was absolutely thrilled I was absolutely thrilled that they didn't tweak it m you know didn't do any stop Mo stop motion animation tweaks to it that they really used my except for the like I say the one scene where I couldn't make the suit work but from the time I'm getting out of the chair on getting into the thing you know and also with the head off and all the stuff with clearance you know then I I was really into it and when they added that it was it it I I I was thrilled with it I was absolutely thrilled with it

Channel: John Ary

Views: 1,549,852

Keywords: Peter Weller, robocop, suit, costume, armor, moni yakim, movie, harry knowles, aintitcoolnews, ain't it cool news, aintitcool

Id: 66uduSIp-3k

Length: 12min 12sec (732 seconds)

Published: Sun May 12 2013