MONEY INTO LIGHT: EDWARD NEUMEIER TALKS ABOUT 'ROBOCOP'
EDWARD NEUMEIER TALKS ABOUT 'ROBOCOP'
Ed<br>Neumeier had a highly lucrative life ahead of him as an<br>exec at Universal in the '80s when he decided his future lay in<br>screenwriting. His first script was ROBOCOP (1987) - one of the<br>most critically acclaimed, loved and prescient SF action movies ever.<br>Ed reunited with the movie's brilliant director, Dutchman Paul<br>Verhoeven, a decade later on the superb STARSHIP TROOPERS. Ed<br>has continued to write and produce movies, including STARSHIP<br>TROOPERS 2 - HERO OF THE FEDERATION (2004) and STARSHIP<br>TROOPERS 3 - MARAUDER (2008), the latter also marking his directorial<br>debut. I spoke to Ed about the making of the classic first<br>ROBOCOP movie.
The<br>story goes that you were offered a Vice-President position at<br>Universal but you turned it down in order to develop your ROBOCOP<br>screenplay. What was it about the script that made you believe in it<br>so much?<br>Getting ROBOCOP made into a film was much more fun<br>to me than being a VP. It's not fair to say I turned down the VP<br>position, but I was certainly in line for the job. Writing was really<br>what I wanted to do. I actually took two weeks off work to write the<br>first act up in Northern California where I grew up.
How<br>did you end up collaborating with Michael Miner on the script?
He had gone to UCLA at the same time as me, but I had not known<br>him there. I first met him when he came into my office during the<br>time I was an executive at Universal. Michael was a cinematographer<br>looking to write and direct his own films, and I showed him my<br>treatment for ROBOCOP. I had been working on it for some time. We<br>decided we would write all the next drafts together from then on, and<br>that I would produce the movie and he would direct. Later on we<br>showed our work to producer Jon Davison, and he asked if he could<br>produce it instead. Jon had a good business relationship with Mike<br>Medavoy and Barbara Boyle at Orion.
How<br>did you divide the work with Miner?<br>It<br>was always one of us sitting down typing or the other pacing the room<br>or sitting down. It's a good way to get the energy going. Later on<br>other films we'd write separately.
What<br>did you want to achieve with ROBOCOP?<br>I wanted ROBOCOP to be a<br>franchise character that could play to both kids and adults. I knew I<br>was going for a hard 'R' rating, so I knew it would have to be kids<br>in spirit. It was important that everybody related to it as an<br>adventure about a guy who shoots bad guys. Robocop is essentially a<br>gunfighter - with a headache! I also wanted to do a combination of<br>action and humour. The ongoing notion of humans and machines<br>misbehaving was always amusing to me, and I had this idea that an<br>action movie could also be a political satire of sorts. The ironies<br>of politics and violence have always interested me. I was also<br>interested in the guile of capitalism. In the film, it's mostly<br>peppered in through the 'media breaks'. The most absurd commercial is<br>the one for the 'Nuke 'Em!' board game. It's absolutely hilarious.<br>It's a grace note that has nothing to do with Robocop but has somehow<br>become part of the film's world that people have embraced.
Was the character of Robocop influenced by any particular movie characters or film actors?
He<br>was always a bit of a cipher, so we always thought of John Wayne in<br>that they have similar codes. We also talked about Jesus and<br>Frankenstein. I worked out some rules for what we could and couldn't<br>do with Robocop. For example: Don't put him on the telephone. Don't<br>put him on a bicycle. Don't have him fly or use machine guns. They<br>did some of these things in the later movies, but they never worked<br>well.
How much of an influence was BLADE RUNNER (1982) on<br>the script?
As a young man I was on the set of BLADE RUNNER. I<br>was desperate to work in movies and I was a reader at Warners. STAR<br>WARS (1977) was a big influence on me at the time. It was impressive<br>that you could make a fantasy film that big. Walking around the set<br>of BLADE RUNNER I was intrigued by the production design, but also by<br>the idea of robots being presented as very human. The key turning<br>point in the development of the ROBOCOP script was the idea that the<br>hero was going to be a man who is turned into a machine. It gave the<br>story great dramatic tension and relatability. What does he remember<br>about his past as a human and how does he feel about it?
Was<br>THE TERMINATOR (1984) much of an influence?<br>It wasn't an<br>influence at all because it was being done at the same time we were<br>doing ours. I did see THE TERMINATOR before ROBOCOP went into<br>production, though. I took Michael Miner, and funnily enough, Stan<br>Lee, to a screening of it at Paramount. We had pitched ROBOCOP as a<br>comic-book to Stan, hoping we could later make it into a movie. After<br>seeing THE TERMINATOR Stan said "Boys, you're never going to top<br>that!" So it never worked out as a comic-book. The true<br>influence of Cameron's movie was that had it not been a hit for<br>Orion, they never would...