Cinefex 32: Robocop & Innerspace

by Paul M. Sammon, Janine Pourroy

RoboCop
Shooting RoboCop
Article by Paul M. Sammon

Big city crime has turned Old Detroit into a combat zone. Decent citizens can no longer venture forth onto the streets, day or night, and even police officers are prime targets for murder and mayhem. Clearly something must be done. The answer as proposed in Jon Davison's production of RoboCop is a new breed of urban crime-fighter — half man, half machine, all business. Engaged to create this cyborg superhero were film director Paul Verhoeven, actor Peter Weller and makeup effects artist Rob Bottin. Also contributing to the futuristic ambience were ED 209 supervisor Peter Kuran, matte artist Rocco Gioffre and a host of others who discuss in detail their experiences on this most explosive of box office hits.

Innerspace
Inside Martin Short
Article by Janine Pourroy

For most directors, getting inside one's characters is an intellectual exercise. But for Joe Dante, Innerspace represented a literal opportunity to explore on film the inner workings of a human being — specifically, supermarket clerk Jack Putter who, as a consequence of a miscarried microscopic submersible pod manned by test pilot Tuck Pendelton. Enlisted to design and produce the innespace footage was visual effects supervisor Dennis Muren of Industrial Light & Magic. Mixing anatomical realism with dramatic fancy, Muren and his associates produced both miniaturization effects and macroscopic excursions through the innermost recesses of actor Martin Short's eyes, ears, blood stream, stomach and lungs.

Paperback

Published November 1, 1987

About the author

Paul M. Sammon has written for The Los Angeles Times, The American Cinematographer, Cahiers Du Cinéma, and Cinefantastique. His fiction has appeared in many collections and he is editor of the best selling American Splatterpunks series. As a film maker Paul M. Sammon has produced, edited and directed dozens of documentaries on films such as Platoon, Dune, and Robocop. He is the author of Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner and his latest book is about the making of the movie Starship Trooper directed by Paul Verhoeven (Robocop).

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

From November 1987, back when making-of pieces didn’t include pictures of people sitting around computer screens or paragraphs that include the phrase ‘particle simulation’, this is a great read. Paul M Sammon takes a very indepth look at the production of “Robocop”, with plenty of time devoted to the whole array of visual effects, from Phil Tippett’s stop motion to Rob Bottin’s innovative make-up work. The second article, on the making of “Innerspace”, is equally thorough and explains the difficulties Dennis Muren and his ILM team faced with the questions of scale and how to make the inside of the body palatable to the average cinemagoer. Informative, well written, if you’re interested in the behind-the-scenes workings of films, I’d very much recommend this.