RoboDoc: The Creation of RoboCop

Everyone came out like, "This is really good."

My name is Calvin Jung.

I played Steve Minh in RoboCop.

It just kinda struck me as being kinda funny.

Jesse Goins, I played Joe Cox.

I like it!

We had a lot of laughs.

We joked around a lot.

Think you can outsmart a bullet?

I'm Paul McCrane and I played Emil.

Why don't you let us take over from here, Emil?

I'm Ray Wise.

I play Leon Nash, number two bad guy on RoboCop.

Yeah.

The original RoboCop.

Well, give the man a hand.

Kurtwood Smith.

Yeah!

I'm the man in Old Detroit.

And I played Clarence Boddicker.

Cops don't like me, so I don't like cops.

When I heard the title,

I thought this is gonna be terrible, horrible, ridiculous.

And I read the script,

and I thought it was really cool.

I had played a number of sort of very sensitive

or fragile characters in my young career.

Hey, could-- could you sign my head?

Yeah, sure.

And I, around that time, told my reps

that I wanted to go up for bad guys.

And they thought I was out of my mind.

And so, I just sort of started refusing auditions

for the type of parts that I'd been doing,

just 'cause I wanted to branch out,

do something different.

You're in the wrong business.

This is one of the things that they were able to get me

in the room on.

I'd been in LA for about seven years

and done some work.

What was cool about the audition was

Paul was great, and he said, "You know, just--

Just give me what you got.

Just give me what you got", you know?

And so-- so we did.

I was brought in to audition.

I met Paul Verhoeven,

and then as I got up and I was leaving,

the casting lady ran out, she says, "Calvin, he loved you,

but he thinks you're too pretty."

Ancient Chinese secrets.

I was like, "What the fuck? Too pretty?"

I said, "No one's ever said I was too pretty."

Unless you want your fuckin' head blown off.

She says, "I'm pullin' for you."

And then um, I think a day later I got the call.

My agent, we got-- I got the gig.

How did I get involved? Well, let's see.

Uh, how many years ago has it been?

You try to interfere with another one of my properties,

and they won't be able to put you guys back together

with Krazy Glue.

I went in and I read, originally for Murphy.

Double wages for the lead men.

I was all set to play Murphy.

I wanted to play Murphy.

Nice shootin', son. What's your name?

Murphy.

But, I got the dregs.

I got the part of Leon Nash,

which turned out to be not such a dreg after all.

I was still kickin' around uh, playin' uh, mostly bad guys

on television.

He's calling up information on the A-team.

Bad cops, or bad administrators.

I'm Clarence.

Had a really nice role finally in a feature

called "Flashpoint".

Think about it, whiz kid.

Turned out that one of the producers of RoboCop,

Arne Schmidt, had been the first AD on that film.

Arne uh, was the one who would actually say,

"Yeah, see this guy."

Well, you heard the man, hotshot.

They asked me to audition for two roles.

Clarence, and Dick Jones.

Based on things I'd done in the past,

I assumed they were more serious about the Dick Jones role.

I work for Dick Jones! Dick Jones!

But Clarence, of course, was the more fun part.

So, I was really excited when I was Clarence.

We're all theater-trained actors.

Theater-trained actors understand

what ensemble work is,

whereas people who wanna be movie stars,

they really don't get that.

So, that was really easy for all of us.

Because Jon Davison wanted to make sure

we were kinda multicultural, the gang became, you know,

every color under the rainbow.

I think the diversity of our cast,

that transcends into the acting,

leaves a memory for people.

Erica Phillips, she was the uh, costume designer,

and she wanted to know what I wanted to do,

and it ended up that she and I just went shopping.

I think she took into account the way I looked.

I kinda had kinda the widow's peak look,

and the hawk nose, and um, aquiline, I like to say.

And uh, she saw that look,

and she felt that I would look the best in black.

I had a very clear idea in my mind about

what they were like.

That they did have a kind of military look to them,

but with a scarf, you know?

We added things to it, you know, like the sneakers,

you know, rather than boots.

So, we all had some input.

The sort of weird beard thing that I did was uh--

I'll take credit for it, that was mine.

I knew I wanted to do something a little odd hairwise.

So, I walked onto the set with it

and showed it to Paul, and he said, "Yeah, I like that,

so keep it", so I did.

My ex-wife, when we were dating,

she says, "You weren't in RoboCop!"

I go, "Yeah, I was the guy with the bandan--"

"No, that was a Mexican guy!"

I go, "No, it's me."

This is the all, the all-seeing eye.

Leon's glass eye.

My medallion that I wore all through the movie.

So, quite a bit of action. A little shrapnel.

But as you can see, still looks pretty good.

Shit!

I loved it.

We were in the truck and Kurtwood looks at the money,

he says, "You burned the motherfuckin' money!"

You burned the fuckin' money!

I had to blow the door! What do you want?

It's as good as marked, you asshole!

You stupid, stupid...

Now, that's not the way

that a normal military leader might behave

in that kind of a situation.

And that's 'cause he's k-- kind of loaded all the time,

you know?

Clarence, he's the kind of guy who could run Old Detroit,

but could never run Detroit.

He didn't go that far.

But within his world, he was the man.

Clarence Boddicker, unofficial crime boss

of Old Detroit,

now sought in connection with the deaths

of 31 police officers.

Today, he's at large.

So, we were all on location, in downtown Dallas,

and in the van when we were first shooting it--

We got a cop on our tail!

I wanted to play it kinda full go,

including kicking the back of Paul McCrane's seat.

...and do it! Just do it!

Paul didn't particularly enjoy that part.

Oh, for God's sake.

We were like little kids playin' in the sandbox.

Yeah!

I did some things in RoboCop that now that I think about it

uh, it was crazy.

Why did I ever do them?

Hangin' out of the back of the van,

with no really safety lines on us.

You know, if I had slipped and fallen out of the back,

I would've been run over by the police car.

Ed and I worked on scenes pretty much on the set.

You know, he was always looking for kind of hipper ways

to say things.

When it came time to throw the guy out...

Leon, pick him up.

...I thought, "I just throw the guy out, you know?

I should say something to him, you know?"

This guy burned the money.

This guy screwed this whole thing up.

And so, I wanna say something nasty.

I thought, "Well, you know, I'm gonna throw him out.

let's see if he flies."

Can you fly, Bobby?

Clarence, no!

Can you fly, Bobby?

The part wherever they throw the guy

out of the back of the truck on to the car,

and the car spins around,

whenever they threw him out of the car,

that was in Dallas.

When he landed on the car, that was me here in LA.

If you look real close,

you can see that it's me on the hood of the car,

spinnin' around.

I certainly know

from my father being a police officer