JOSE PADILHA ON THE ROBOCOP REBOOT

Will you still call him Alex Murphy?

Alex Murphy is Alex Murphy, man. You can’t call Batman some other name. Bruce Wayne is Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent is Clark Kent, Alex Murphy is Alex Murphy


What are you going to do with a studio budget on ‘Robocop?’

Spend it. [Laughs] Listen, I always try to make the best film I can. If I can have one year to shoot a film, I want one year to shoot a film. If it’s not possible, I’ll try to make as best as I can in the timeframe that I have. I don’t know exactly, because I’ve never done a movie with a huge budget, but I do know that the producers in this film, the studio are filmmakers. It’s the people from Spyglass, Jon Glickman, Roger [Birnbaum] and Adam [Rosenberg]. They make films. They are not only studio execs. They are producers too. So they know how to make a film and it’s very good for me because it’s pragmatic. Once you give me the budget, whatever the budget is, the most important thing to me is that the money spent goes towards the screen. That’s what counts. If I have a beautiful five star trailer, that doesn’t change anything on the screen. It’s better to have more film, more footage, more takes. It’s that that concerns me and the guys that are making Robocop are very wise this way so it’s cool.


Do you want to redesign Robocop and ED-209?

That I can’t tell otherwise I’m going to give the movie away. We are already doing that, working on the designs so I do already know stuff. Listen, the design has to match the script. You don’t design something out of the blue. You design something that makes sense inside the dramatic universe that you are exploring. So that’s what we’re doing.


Does anything remain from Darren Aronofsky’s work?

I haven’t read Aronofsky’s script. Aronofsky is a great director. I love his films. I am very proud because I saw Pi in the opening Sundance screening and I loved it. So Aronofsky’s great. I have my own take on Robocop. I know what his take was and it’s totally different. It’s a different thing, different kind of film, even different period in time so I haven’t read his previous work.


The original 'Robocop' was very much about the corporations of the ‘80s. Would your take be able to address today’s problems like the banks and mortgage lenders?

[Laughs] Listen, there are the constants and the variables in this world, right? Some things change and some things never change. Corporations controlling people are a constant. It’s the banks now, it’s going to be something else 30 years from now. It was something else before. This is the way economics works. So we’re not making a film about mortgage, that I can tell you.


Will you stick around for ‘Robocop 2 and 3’ to make sure they don’t suck?

That’s funny. Let’s do one first, then we’ll talk about two.


My favorite part is that the corporation creates him and owns him, but he remembers who he was and they can’t own that.

That’s the greatness of the concept. That’s the concept of Robocop in a nutshell. That’s the heart and soul of the film. It’s that conflict between stuff trying to own you and you trying to persevere. That’s the heart of the story and it has to be. Any Robocop that’s worth that name has to talk about that.

JOSE PADILHA'S FILMING PHILOSPHY AND TECHNIQUE

What is your philosophy on shooting action?

My philosophy is to go for it, to try to get the risky shots, to try to get the shot that you may not get in one day because it’s worth it. So I like my connecting shots, which is let’s say I’m shooting a scene of a helicopter with the protagonist overseeing the invasion of his land. I want to have the same shots, the face of the guy inside the helicopter, he’s looking down at something, and the camera goes and sees just the moment where a bomb explodes in his lap. In order to get that shot, you have to time the camera, the helicopter, the camera has to go to the right place, the explosion has to set off. It’s hard. It’s much easier to shoot in separation. You have the face, you’ve got the helicopter. I try to go for the connecting shot because I think it brings action to life. It also gives you a better sense of geography which I think is important in action scenes. So that’s my philosophy. Go for the connecting shot and run the risk of not making it through the day.



And your camera is always moving in all the shots, isn’t it?

Yeah, I don’t like fixed cameras. I think it’s an idealistic thing but I like my movies, not only the camera, I like everything to move forward. I don’t like my story to halt. I like the audience to wonder what’s coming next. This has to do with the relation of one scene to another. Like you set up a scene in a way that makes people want to know what’s going to happen. But it also has to do with the way you move the camera. You move the camera in the way in which people are [wondering] what is the camera going to show now? So everything is about creating this expectation in the audience of what comes next: the shooting of the camera, the writing of the script, the direction of the actors. This is what I try to do.

Although most Americans are not familiar with the Brazilian director, hi last film Elite Squad 2 is in contention for best foreign film at the Oscars. But Robocop will be his first big Hollywood movie, and it sounds like a bigger budget will not go straight to head. This is his chance to make a mark in the industry and he plans to make sure most of that budget ends up on the screen and not too luxurious items.

I haven't seen one of his movies just yet, but I am a little nervous about seeing a Robocop movie that is filmed with a majority of handheld camera techniques. I'll keep an open mind of course since this director has been praised for his action sequences. To see him come out and say that he doesn't care for fixed cameras will have me clutching my motion sickness pills when I go to see old Detroit again.