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The September Screenwriters Series: Edward Neumeier · Cinema Yūgen

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G'day. That's right. It's that time again.
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Time for Cinema Eugenics.
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Music.
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The September Screenwriters Series continues.
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Eugenics with Edward Neumeier. Now,
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does his name really need an introduction i'll say a couple of films you'll
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know straight away robocop starship troopers he also wrote on anacondas the
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hunt from the blood orchid which,
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oddly enough i like more than the first anacondas or sorry the first anaconda
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but anacondas i actually like anaconda is better than anaconda just like i like
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aliens better than alien and And, yeah,
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I'm really going to upset my cinephile friends when I say The Godfather 2 is
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better than The Godfather.
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But, yeah, that's just how I go. Terminator 2 is better than Terminator.
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Robocop 2, not. No, definitely, definitely didn't.
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Of course, Road Warrior is always said to be better than Mad Max.
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But, yes, Edward Neumeier, the third installment of the September screen series.
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Here he is. Edward, welcome.
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Very good, good, nice intro, man. I really appreciate it. That's my career, it's better than it is.
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So anyway, before we get into the meat of it,
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And I promise not too many Robocop questions, because you're probably Robocopped out, aren't you?
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Well, it's okay. It's like having a good friend that you can see every now and again. Okay.
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But before we get to the part where, like, and I'm paraphrasing yourself in
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the documentary Flesh and Steel,
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where you come on and you say, you know, I was an executive at Universal Pictures
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and I hated my job, so I quit and wrote a screenplay.
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Before we get to that part, can you tell us a little bit about how you came
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to your enjoyment of films and your origins before that?
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Sure. I was very lucky to grow up in Marin County, California,
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which is north of the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge, as we say.
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And lovely town, almost like for the Americans out there, it's almost like Mayberry,
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a little picturesque little town.
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And I think I was lucky that I had, you know, good teachers and parents who
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were interested in things like art and, you know, interested in the world and interested in travel.
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And so I got a kind of an unusual upbringing in some ways that way because I
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was encouraged to sort of be myself and think what I thought and to come up
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with something interesting.
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But really, what I didn't realize for a long time, because I just kind of left
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it out, was what was, you know, kind of like really unusual about where I grew
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up, San Fella, was when I was in high school, there was a guy living there who
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made a movie called America in Graffiti.
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And George Lucas. And it's shot in San Rafael. And I had, like, friends who were in it.
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And now I'm coming along, and I really want to make movies.
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But it's really far away from me. Hollywood is in another part of the state,
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and it might as well be thousands of miles away.
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But this movie thing made right around me.
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When Coppola was in the city...
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And then I went off to first year of college or so, and I was working on a newspaper there.
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And into the newspaper comes the announcement of this movie, Star Wars.
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And I didn't put it together with Lucas. But the pictures were amazing to me
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because it just immediately looked like the world I would accept and that I
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wanted to go see. And then the movie came out.
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And I was 19 years old. I had always wanted to be in the movie business.
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And it was made in San Anselmo.
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I mean, the post-production was done in San Anselmo. Two, like,
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two blocks from my house, he lived.
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And, you know, I've never met him, but he was kind of suddenly all around me.
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And I think that that was important because I think it said to me,
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hey, someone has, you know, you know someone who went out and made some movies.
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It's doable. And that propelled me to go down to Los Angeles,
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go to the UCLA film school.
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And when I got out, I sort of became a reader for several different studios
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who could decent enough jobs and could live.
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And eventually I was an executive for a little while. And I don't know if I hated it.
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I never thought I was very good at it. I thought the other people around me
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were better at it, the skill set.
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I particularly wanted to kind of concentrate on one thing.
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When you're an executive, you're always juggling a bunch of things.
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So I started writing this idea I had that I've been working on for a long time
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really about four years I've been thinking about so that's RoboCop and I.
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Right around the time I was executive I ran into a guy who wanted to write and
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direct Michael Miner and we
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got to talking and we decided to join force with the big story I had going,
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and you know we wrote the script and somebody brought it and it rather quickly
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came together although there were many ups and downs and suddenly we had a movie
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and it was a movie people liked and I was a screenwriter.
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It was like an owl boy do, you know?
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But that's how that happened. You know, making Robocop was.
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As all movies are, incredibly difficult. And you can probably sit around with
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a bunch of people and make movies and they'll just talk about,
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well, my movie was even harder.
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But I think all movies, big and small, are difficult things to undertake.
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And maybe good movies are a little harder than others, but I'm not sure. Sure.
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Well, Robocop certainly became more than just a great film.
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It became a franchise with a couple of sequels, a TV series,
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an animated series, which I remember for a little while.
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A remake, or a reboot, or a reimagination recently, and a rather compelling
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documentary, which I'm looking forward to seeing, RoboDoc.
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So it's really become its own little industry. Yeah, those guys are great.
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Yeah, I've been following it, so I see that you are participating in it, yes?
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I think it happened because they came to town and they interviewed me for some
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reason for a little movie that they were doing about a movie called Fright Night.
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Okay. Directed by Tom Holland. And when I was working on RoboCop,
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my girlfriend worked for Tom Holland.
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Okay. So I was on the set, fight night a couple times.
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And I think that brought them to me for some reason. And then I took them out
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to dinner and said, why don't you guys do a RoboCop documentary?
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And my God, they listened to me and they did. So I hope it's good.
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Yeah, it looks, I mean, they've got pretty much, it looks like.
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They got everybody, which was fascinating to me. and they really,
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they've taken it quite seriously.
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I got to, on the day they interviewed me, I got to meet S.C. Nimitz.
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Again, I hadn't seen him for a long time. Dixon Snyder. And boy,
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that was worth the price of admission right there.
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Right. Did they end up getting Peter Weller?
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You know, I don't know if they did. Peter's a little funny about that.
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He doesn't want to talk about Robocop anymore.
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Right. He does. And I, you know, Peter, you can do whatever you want. Yeah, I like Peter.
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He's a good guy and Done all he got he doesn't have to give anything more to Robocop. I know nice.
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He's done his bit but how did you feel about the What should we call is it a
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reboot or a reimagination or a?
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Remake You know on the one hand I was lucky enough to be a,
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Thanks to the Writers Guild, they gave my partner and I credit on it,
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which was just very nice because it was, you know, it was some money you didn't
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think you were going to get.
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And I went around and I used the occasion to meet everybody on it and kind of
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like you are meeting with me here.
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I sort of interviewed them about how they experienced working on the movie.
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And a little secret for you guys is that after a movie is made,
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the filmmakers desperately want to talk about it. They just desperately needed
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to talk about this horrible thing that they had gone through,
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because it was really difficult.
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And so I would go sympathetic to them, and I had a very good experience with
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them. I was not like, I didn't hate the movie.
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It wasn't the movie I, it's not the kind of thing I do, because it wasn't funny,
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really, in the way I wanted it to be. and I have very specific feelings about
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the character and what you should and shouldn't do with him.
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And they didn't have the same feeling.
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I wasn't, I was, for instance, in the original, I knew that the wife and kid
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were, were not going to be much fun to have around.
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So I just had them go away. And they invested half the story in them.
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And I think that they paid the price because it's just so unpleasant.
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But other than that, I'm sorry it didn't do better for them because I don't
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think we'll need the last Robocop movies.
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But, you know, apparently made a little money. And so sometimes I hear them
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talking about, well, maybe we should make another one. But we'll see how that goes.
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I don't know if they'll make that. I think they're not quite sure what to do
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with the remake because I don't think they think it was successful.
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They don't want to. Last I heard from them, they don't really think that's a
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successful take on the character.
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And I don't disagree. agree.
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Yeah. Do you think, do you think the danger with a lot of these remakes today is that they, they are,
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either too precious or not precious enough with what made the first one any good?
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Well, I don't know. I think it's very difficult. Equals have always been traditionally
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difficult to get something as good as what excited everybody the first time.
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And, you know, it's only been recently that some of these franchises have kind
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of worked into a different rhythm, wherein they kind of are the same characters
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coming back again and again and every two years, and we like it.
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And that's worked a little bit here for a while, which is why we keep getting so many of them.
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I would say The Fast and the Furious is a really good example of that.
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It's almost like movies, franchise movies that work well now are almost like TV shows.
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It's like a family that comes together every two years and they solve a problem
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and you get to see with them again.
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And that's why I think The Avengers kind of, those movies work that way. Right.
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In a way. So the whole recurring characters, recurring villains, recurring plot.
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Yeah, I mean, I think that's why TV is like that. TV was traditionally like,
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hey, every week I want to spend 30 minutes or an hour with these people I kind of know.
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And so the movie franchises that work seem to have that kind of reset to them
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or whatever, or that's worked for a while.
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You know, The Last Guardians of the Galaxy comes out two years later,
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and it doesn't really seem as fresh as the first one for some reason.
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I think it's because it's very difficult to come up with really good stuff fast.
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Yeah. And there's not like a formula for it.
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So, you know, probably if they'd worked on that another two years,
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they would have been better.
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But on the other hand, they probably wanted the money that they could get out of it now.
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Sure. And I mean, I think that.
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Yeah. And I mean, the trend is, isn't it? Like if a film is ridiculously or
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successful or surprisingly successful, that they're more inclined to rush a
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sequel into production as fast as they can.
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They are. And, you know, you can understand why. They've got to make their next quarter.
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And they have their slots and they have their plans and they want to go with things that work.
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And, you know, it's probably better to strike while the iron's hot, et cetera.
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It's just, you know, sometimes it's not as easy. Marvel has done a pretty good
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job of turning out pretty high quality stuff on a regular basis I guess.
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Some of them I really like Star Wars is done okay that way Pixar seems to take
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longer and they seem to do better doing that Yeah,
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Like you said if they sort of took the time sometimes to come back,
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and to not sort of set the the release date and put the posters out and then
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they've had rush like hell to make the movie we might we might have probably
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seen some better sequels.
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I think so, probably, if there was more. I think the real trick of the movie
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business, and I'm just talking about movies now, is the development of the script.
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Right. And it's a very difficult thing, as you know. You've written yourself.
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It's hard to write a script. Yeah. And it's hard to get one right.
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And so I think that that kind of not knowing when you can have it ready to go
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is a big problem for people who want to run a regular business.
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Right. So I think that things get pushed that way.
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But yeah, people would emphasize the script a little more if they could.
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And sometimes they do. I mean, I know that they struggle to get these scripts right.
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In general, they're writing to some kind of deadline, though.
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I know when they were working on one of the Spider-Mans, the Sam Rainey Spider-Man,
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it was just like, we'll hire another writer, we'll hire another writer.
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And they were just trying to move it along as fast as they could.
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I still took them to you. Yeah. How do you feel as a writer about these movies
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now sort of being written by a team of writers?
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They obviously get in a bunch of writers and have them come out with them.
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Well, again, it's like the television model being brought into the movie.
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Right. They have a room of writers.
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Yeah. They break them down and, you know, hey, I was in a room for not a movie
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but for a video game briefly and just kind of as an observer.
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And it was kind of fun to hang around and talk about things with people.
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But, you know, I've done a little of this stuff in consulting.
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You know, I mean, not really, but, you know, I've been around a group involved
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in the Air Force and some other government stuff.
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And they do that, too. They have this way of having a bunch of people come together,
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a bunch of experts come together in a room.
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And then you talk about it and you say, here are the problems.
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And we're going to divide you into a group of four.
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And then we're each going to give you a problem. We're going to come back at
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3 o'clock. And you're all going to come together. And you're going to come at
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5 o'clock. And you give us the answer.
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And you know what? I just think it's a bunch of bullshit. You know?
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It doesn't really work that way. But they want it to work that way. and
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so so i i feel like that's kind
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of where this goes and you probably get a little out of
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it but then you know then then you still take a while to come to peace you need
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somebody to be able to come in the next day and go hey you know that thing you're
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talking about here's why it's completely wrong why don't we do this that kind
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of process doesn't go for that because it's based on keys or something anyway
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that's that's i their work would be okay with me yeah anything that works Yeah,
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because I mean that it seems like today like every time I read about new,
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because they're now in the business of It seems like they're in the business
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of building universes today We've got the Marvel Universe and the unit Universal
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wants to rebuild the the Universal monster Yeah,
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so it seems like and then you hear like oh they've got a bunch of screenwriters
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together It's gonna plot out the whole thing.
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And I mean that I haven't seen it but by all
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accounts that new mummy picture wasn't that wasn't that
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hot or didn't do too well you know I didn't
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know it did not it did not it doesn't seem to work you know again I think the
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new transformer was done with one of those writer rooms and it's probably going
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to make money but it didn't make money in the US the way it was you know thought
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that yeah the way people wanted it so but don't you think don't yeah don't you
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think the hazard of that is is the old adage too
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many cooks spoil the broth yeah i actually
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think it's yeah i'm not listen i'm not hopeful of it it
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doesn't mean it seems to me that you know it really takes the you know hard
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work of one or two people and maybe some other people along the way to sit down
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and and you know figure out what's working and what's not and i i don't know
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if you if you can make it go faster by throwing more monkeys into the room,
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you know, but they're going to try.
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Cause obviously it's a reason they have a schedule and they have to hit these release dates.
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So it's a problem. I'm not sure. It's almost like they need more good screenwriters. Yeah.
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But I mean, back probably back when you started, I mean, it seems like they
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used to go for like screenwriters where that was their strength.
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I mean, like, you know, if you, You and just coming off of Robocop,
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they go, well, he writes...
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Good he writes good stuff like that or like shane black
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you know when he was when he was when he was
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hot you know he writes a good action picture we want
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a good action picture writer let's get him
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you know instead of this whole you know let's get as many writers in the room
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as possible and watch them you know fight it out until one of them emerges with
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a bloody pencil and a script um you know or or i don't even know if they fight
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it out i think that really what happens is you have somebody in there who's got to write it,
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and they probably care more than anybody else.
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And then you've got a bunch of other people who don't have to write it,
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so they can just have their ideas.
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And then that's that. So you don't really have – the people who are having to
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come up with the ideas are not much better than development executives.
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They don't have to write it. They don't have that much skin in the game.
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And I think that that can make a lot of – if you have to write it,
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you can say a lot of things in a room.
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And I've been in a room where people have said a lot of things.
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And I've said a lot of things. Then you go back and you have to sit down in
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a lonely little room. Yeah.
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And it doesn't work out the same way it did in that room that was filled with people.
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Yeah. You know, it's lonelier, too. You're all by yourself.
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But I think that's why this idea, it probably helps to have more ideas.
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Eventually, you still end up with somebody having to work out a story bone by
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bone. Yeah. Probably by themselves.
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So anyway, after the whole Robocop experience,
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you re-team with Paul Verhoeven for a movie that I found, when it came out,
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it seems like it didn't get as much love as it should have,
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but now it's being looked back upon more fondly, and that's Starship Troopers.
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Oh, you're talking about Starship Troopers? Yeah.
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Yeah, it is, I think. I think that's true, and thank God for it.
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It was, again, another incredibly long and difficult sort of journey to make that movie.
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And when it came out, it was kind of a little bit less than you wanted it to
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be, particularly if you had been working on it all that time.
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Yeah. It was a studio. Yeah.
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But, you know, it was immediately a big hit in home video, which was,
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I hate to say it, just kind of coming out, coming into its own then.
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And it was, I guess, enormous. It just sold a lot of damn videos.
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And so that was, so more and more people saw it that way.
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It played on television quite a lot, and a lot of people see it that way.
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So yeah, it has, over a long period of time, it has kind of grown into its own
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little cult, whatever you want to say.
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I think also, I was talking to Paul recently, and he was saying,
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you know, with some amusement.
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His science fiction movies were staying
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relevant longer than his other movies so I
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think it's the genre that gives you a little you know you're
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talking about the future and if it's something
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that people relate to then they kind of keep going back
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to it and they find more in it or they enjoy it or they
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use it in a conversation or you know there's a lot more news stories now about
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Star Trek troopers as say the Air Force is now kind of starting in America The
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Air Force is starting a kind of a branch of the Air Force that's going to be
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about space work and space stuff.
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But the press likes to call it Starship Troopers. Every time there's an advance,
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a technology advance up with cops or a thing about armor, cops and armor,
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they call them Robocops.
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There's a police car that's in Dubai that's autonomous.
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They can drive around and scam things, and they're called Robocop cars.
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All right. Cool. Somehow, you know, that stuff, the movies about the future
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seem to find a useful place in the press. Yeah.
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I think I remember you saying in an interview on one of those documentaries
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that really you were writing,
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I think it was for Robocop, that you were writing a funny movie or a satire
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disguised as a genre picture.
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Do you think that when you, like you were just saying about how the genre helps
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you, you know, you're not really,
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you're intent on saying something, but disguised as genre, it helps get it across easier?
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I think so. I mean, look at the beginning of the touch of triplets was occurred on a walk in.
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Carl Verhoeven and I were taking sometime in the end of 1986 in the hills,
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you know, near Pittsburgh, where we were shooting.
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And we were talking on a Sunday about things we would want to do.
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And, you know, what would we do if we did another movie? Because we got along pretty well then.
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And he at one point said, I've always wanted to do a movie about a bunch of
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kids in Nazi Germany, you know, in 1935 or so.
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Before you knew it was that.
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That's when it was happening and it was exciting and and
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and i think that he said i really and i i like that
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i did too i thought yeah because that's really interesting they didn't know
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they were doing something that was wrong they just were doing something they were caught
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up in something exciting and you know
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at some level and i said yeah at the time i said yeah but they'll
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never want to make a movie about 1936 poland or 1936
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germany you know about from that point
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of view well that's not the way a dramatic movie would you know it would be
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hard to make that movie Evoke Self and then it was not long you know a couple
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years later and I suddenly around the time Jurassic Park was coming out that
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was being done by Phil Tippett who had done the Ed 209 stuff,
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stop motion stuff in Robocop that I realized oh we could do all these kind of
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bugs and things we could make such a trip as a movie and it would be that movie
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it would be about you know I'm going to join up and all that kind of stuff.
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So if you look at Starship, you see it's about a bunch of kids in high school
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and there's an excitement about joining up and going off into the world and
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that plays into this thing where suddenly you're at war.
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And it was, I mean, it was very inspiring to me to look at it that way.
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And Paul, I kind of knew Paul would like that too. Right.
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Just in general that it would appeal to him and it did.
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And eventually he came on board and off we went on that one.
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But, But I've noticed today, like I noticed recently on social media, they recut...
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A trailer for Starship Troopers, and gave it... Yeah, I saw that.
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You did, yeah. Gave it some, as one commentator said, gave it some gravitas
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that he thought it needed upon its initial release. How do you feel about that?
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Do you think the marketing... Well, I mean, at some level, there's a winking
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going on with it being a giant B-movie from another time.
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Sure. Almost like what it is. Yeah. And that's what we were doing,
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and what Paul and I were kind of, like, we were pushing B-movie stuff,
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we were pushing the vulgarity a little bit, we were kind of trying to hit this
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tone of manufactured entertainment from, I think it collectively came from our,
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you know, we're 20 years older than I am, but our different views of B-movie culture.
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And we were what you started out saying is you
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know you're are you hiding in genre so you
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can take it more seriously and i think you know
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you are trying to get away with something by doing this so we'd
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never tell a studio we're making the movie that people
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pretty much accept dark ship as they read the script
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and kind of felt like it was a military movie maybe
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kind of like star wars or something right and they didn't see it as and they
25:02
were amused by it too because it's amusing the kind of you know where you're
25:07
sort of saying it's a bit of a fascist state but it's fun you know it's it's
25:11
edgy in that way for them but i don't think that they understood it as a.
25:17
Completely absolutely made where you know about in the third act you realize
25:21
the audience is asked to to undertake the idea that that their heroes might
25:26
be the matter and that's pretty subtle but But that's the third act conclusion
25:33
at some thematic level is, oh, have they all become fascists?
25:37
Which, of course, we decided by the end of that movie that the theme of the
25:41
movie was war makes fascists of us all. And it really, really does.
25:45
I mean, that's fascinating that we arrived at that. And now that I look at war
25:50
and warlike behavior and warrior culture, it's just impossible that it doesn't
25:54
make us into that. the only way you win, right?
25:56
You're becoming tougher and less human and more certain, I don't know, it's music.
26:04
What would we do without human folly, I ask myself. It's just so much fun. Yeah.
26:10
I personally love Starship Troopers. I saw it in the cinema when it came out.
26:16
I personally wasn't one of those people that have grown into it.
26:20
I thought it was great from the beginning.
26:23
And I look at, like, Paul's movies, like Robocop and Starship and even Total
26:30
Recall, and how they've, I mean, they remade Total Recall as well.
26:36
Now, I mean, they've applied a certain slickness to it, because now with the
26:43
certain toy, the movie-making toys they have now, they can do pretty much what they want.
26:51
But that wasn't that wasn't really the that wasn't really the factor that people,
26:58
enjoyed I think when they initially, when these movies initially came out,
27:02
like if they remade Star Trek,
27:04
that's a very interesting point because we couldn't do power armor which to
27:09
some people who like Star Trek the book just think that's,
27:12
how can you make a movie called Star Trek without power armor but we just couldn't
27:16
do it because we didn't have the money and the way to do it,
27:18
the CGI that we had was about all we had.
27:21
And yet now we can do everything if we have enough money. And the question is, what do you want to do?
27:28
And it's interesting because here's what they're going to start with.
27:31
I know they're going to try to remake it sometime.
27:33
They keep trying to remake it as far as I can hear because I'm not really involved in it.
27:38
They keep wanting to make it more real or more benign or something.
27:44
And so they're basically, they say they're doing the book. But the book is just
27:49
a, it's just an argument. It's not a story.
27:52
And so I have a feeling that they're going to pimp off the original story,
27:57
but that they're going to try to make it a little more.
28:00
I'm not sure what, I mean, I don't know. I guess what I'm saying is I,
28:04
I hope somebody can find a way to make that movie interesting for them, but I don't know.
28:10
I'm not sure if they're going to be able to, it's like, there's not that much of a story there.
28:14
If you don't do what Paul and I kind of did with it, which was to take this
28:18
idea and flip it around and tell this kind of military propaganda.
28:23
It is, in its own way, a piece of propaganda, so we treat it as propaganda.
28:28
But to treat it as something real might be, I don't know, you're going to have
28:31
to make up a new story for it.
28:32
Yeah, because, I mean, your whole angle and the idea that it was,
28:38
you know, the whole idea that people that are under an oppressive regime don't
28:44
really know it, you know, They're all, and plus you've got the B-movie angle,
28:50
I mean, I saw it, when I first saw it I thought this is great,
28:53
this is like an old fashioned, sort of cheesy B-movie made for a big budget, but...
29:00
Which was fantastic, but also the idea, as you were saying when you were talking
29:05
with Paul about how people living in Germany,
29:09
while the whole thing's going on to the outside world, what they're doing is
29:12
terrible, but to the naive youth that are there,
29:16
like you said, it's all wonderful.
29:18
And they buy the propaganda because, like, oh, wow, this is a great idea.
29:24
Yeah, become a citizen, serve, you know, all this sort of stuff.
29:27
I mean, that's a great angle, and I don't know if making it,
29:32
like you say, I don't know if making it sort of, you know, with this whole,
29:35
like, gritty realism that they want today is dark and, you know, let's make it real,
29:40
let's make it, I mean, people go to the movies for escapism,
29:44
not realism, don't they?
29:45
Well, I mean, I think in this case, the world, which is a meta world a little
29:51
bit, it is purposely trying to kind of look like an old-fashioned or a cheaper,
29:58
I would say, you know, high-end 50s sci-fi like them or something like that.
30:04
It has those values in it. I mean, we're pretty aware.
30:10
It's written in the late 50s. The military look was kind of set as a World War
30:17
II look, in a way, because we figured that's what it would be.
30:21
So if you look at the ships they're not they're not you know like really cool
30:25
looking and they're not really like look at stuff they're made of big funny
30:29
shapes and stuff like that yeah very industrial kind of anti-physical.
30:33
Industrial look shapes and stuff like that right and so I mean I think we were
30:38
trying I think what's really interesting about the movie is we created a world
30:41
that you would accept it's nonetheless not a real world so if you make this
30:44
more gritty and more real,
30:47
you know it's probably just a different kind of a movie yeah I mean,
30:50
if you want to do Private Ryan, I'm not sure if you can do Private Ryan with us, you know.
30:55
I'm not sure you can make that, you know. I mean, maybe you can.
30:59
You can do a little of that if you want it.
31:01
I don't know. It's an interesting problem. Yeah.
31:05
It would just be a very different film. It wouldn't have the tongue-in-cheek at all.
31:12
Well, in a weird way, it would be closer to something like the Clone Wars.
31:16
No. The battle sequences in the Clone Wars I thought were actually the only
31:21
part of the movie I liked.
31:22
Right. And, you know, they remind me a little of Peckinpah, in a way.
31:26
Right. The question is, how long can you sustain that? That's true, yeah. So, anyway.
31:31
Or a bit like that. Well, I don't know. We'll see what they do with that.
31:36
If they remake it. I kind of wish they didn't. I think at one point I decided that it was very good.
31:43
Even when we were making it at an R and people wondered if that was smart.
31:47
And probably would have made more money if you could have downed it down a little to a PG-13 maybe.
31:53
But I kind of felt like no one's ever going to make a movie like this.
31:57
Or not for a long, long time. And so it made it worth it to me in a way to make
32:02
it tougher and stranger and maybe not as commercial as you know We would have
32:07
liked you know Do you think that if they did it today they might try for something
32:11
more like that edge of tomorrow? You know that Tom Cruise movie?
32:15
Well, I mean I did you like it as well. I did I thought it was good,
32:19
And I'm bored with Power Seals now. Right. That's just me.
32:23
You know, I thought that they did them about as well as you could do them.
32:29
Cameron's done a version of them, a different version for Avatar that's also pretty good.
32:33
Yeah. You know, maybe someone will come up with some amazing, you know, Mecha Ballet.
32:40
Yeah. In the future that we will like. But, you know, we'll see.
32:44
I'm not as, and probably because I've been, you know, bouncing around,
32:48
no pun intended, with this idea of how it could grow long time.
32:53
I'm just not interested if I want one.
32:58
So Troopers went on to 2 and 3, which you directed, but in between there,
33:04
I noticed Anacondas, Hunt for the Blood Orchid. How did that come your way?
33:10
You know, that was an interesting studio
33:14
job but Michael and I
33:16
decided to see if we could work together
33:19
again and we went up for this job at
33:22
Sony where they sort of knew me and him and we you know they had a they had
33:28
a competition for like a good idea for this and they thought of franchise at
33:34
that point that they wanted to save so we wrote it it was a little bit uninspiring in some ways.
33:42
Particularly because I generally try to make things a little bit funny,
33:47
you know, in some way. And they didn't want that.
33:50
And I think that's until Get Out came along, everybody said,
33:54
you can't be funny and do horror at the same time.
33:58
And I think they were wrong, but that made the script particularly uninspiring.
34:02
And I do think I learned that you know it's just not enough it's not much fun
34:08
it's fun to write something that you like and have it turn out and get it good
34:12
and have it turn out good if you can but writing something that you don't like
34:18
or writing something that someone else likes,
34:20
isn't that satisfying? It doesn't, it doesn't feel very well.
34:23
So, you know, I must say, I, at a certain point, I, I didn't care whether they made that movie or not.
34:30
And then they did, they went and made it. And that was great.
34:33
I'm glad they made the movie. And a guy named Dwight Little directed it.
34:37
And he did about as good a job as you could.
34:39
They made it for a certain price.
34:42
Probably, you know, if you had a little more money and a little better actors,
34:46
you would have had a better movie. I don't know. I'm not sure.
34:52
I ended up saying to my kids that
34:55
I thought maybe I wasn't the guy to write a giant rubber
34:58
snake in the jungle movie someone else could have probably done it better there's
35:03
a good title for a movie there a giant rubber snake in the jungle it shows you
35:07
where I come from it's probably too much from a movie perspective but you know Anyway,
35:18
I think for me, the struggle as a screenwriter is always to try to find out
35:22
what a story is really about.
35:25
And you're limited when it's really about a giant rubber snake in the jungle.
35:31
Well, that came in between the Starship 2 and Starship 3, which you directed. What was the directing?
35:40
Yeah, so I got, I mean, the Star Trek Troopers direct-to-video movies have been
35:44
a little cottage industry that a few people have gotten to direct on,
35:49
and now I've got my health insurance going, so I'm very grateful to Sony for that.
35:55
That but did they yeah they finally someone finally convinced
35:58
that they had two things happening they'd made a lot
36:00
of money with the otherwise not wonderful in
36:04
my opinion from a good standpoint starting with two
36:07
and then there was the production problem but we didn't quite get to shoot the
36:10
whole movie and you know i think the movie had pretty good bargain in it for
36:15
sure and phil tibbett the director you know did well for having a very short
36:20
schedule and you know i I guess he had under $6 million to make that movie.
36:27
You know, we had. I mean, I was on it. I wrote on it.
36:30
But it was actually quite an education for me. I'll tell you,
36:33
I learned a lot about movies from experience.
36:36
And helped me for... But nonetheless, Starship 2 made a lot of money for Sony.
36:42
And it was sort of at the height of the... No one knew it then,
36:46
but kind of at the height of the video business.
36:47
The home video business. and so they decided that they should make another Starship
36:52
Troopers 2 a movie and maybe if it was better they'd make even more money.
36:57
And then to make it better they were willing to spend some more money and then
37:01
they came to me and I said well I would like to do this and that and they for
37:05
some reason they said yes and I wanted to bring Chapter Van Dien back into it
37:11
and said I wanted to write a movie about Johnny Rico and they,
37:15
They said, okay. And, you know, they basically let me do whatever I wanted. I wasn't crazy.
37:21
And the movie was quite, again, very difficult, quite an ordeal.
37:26
But it went well. Nobody killed anybody.
37:28
And it all got shot, sort of, kind of moving together out of it.
37:33
And I didn't get fired, which was probably my big ambition.
37:38
And, you know, I shot in South Africa. It was really a great experience to shoot
37:43
in South Africa. I had a giant crew and a lot of people who tried very hard
37:48
to do things. We probably didn't have enough money.
37:50
The script probably wasn't as good as it should be, but we had a good cast,
37:54
and we had a very good crew and a good DT.
37:56
So for me, it was a really great experience of directing a movie,
38:00
and I now know what it is to direct a movie.
38:03
It changed how I feel about movies a little bit, or how I feel about directors of movies a little bit.
38:09
Because it's a really, really complicated job. And I think that most people
38:14
can't do it. Probably me included.
38:18
It's almost like, sometimes I was sitting around talking to one of my old friends,
38:22
and he said, I can't decide if directors are born.
38:25
And I said, I think they are born. I think the really good directors are born.
38:30
They can do something other people can't.
38:33
And that maybe you can't really learn to do, or not everybody can learn to do.
38:36
As I say it's a complicated job so they're probably operating visually and maybe
38:43
in other ways just ahead of most people they see things in a different way do
38:47
you think it's more do you think with a director it's you know I mean there
38:53
are a lot of writer directors as well but,
38:55
do you think the sole directors you think their strength lies in.
39:02
Not so much just getting the pages on the screen and getting stuff shot but
39:08
actually crafting those images.
39:13
Like like no i think you know i think
39:16
there's no one way to do it but all the
39:19
hoping i i would say shot about pages that we prepared moving into production
39:26
we shot the script and it was interesting to me because i've been around before
39:30
that and you know i didn't realize how lucky i was for a little while because
39:34
you know what i wrote and what we all agreed on they're kind of the.
39:40
Producer and the director and I, was more or less what happened.
39:44
And there was nothing where I thought, well, somebody ruined that or ruined
39:47
that. I mostly looked at it and said, I wish that line, mine, were better.
39:50
Sometimes I got very lucky and have gotten lucky with an actor,
39:54
a good actor will come up with a good line and I'm smart enough to go,
39:57
that's a good idea, let's do that.
39:59
And so that was, you know, my sense of it is that you use the script,
40:05
the director should use the script to put everything down as it's going to happen.
40:08
If you get the good idea when you're shooting it, that's fine.
40:11
And Paul was there. That's because Paul, that's the way Paul did it.
40:15
Now, other people are more intuitive, and they see things in different ways.
40:18
And so it's not all rules apply. But I do think that the more you prepare yourself
40:24
and set what you're doing in a process, the more the director does that, the better for me.
40:30
It just seems like it becomes richer and stronger.
40:33
And I guess, again, I'm very influenced by having Wolfgang Serhoff.
40:37
But what he was able to do with my material is now more and more I realize how lucky I was.
40:45
I always thought I was lucky. But not everybody can do that or see it that way
40:48
and pull it all together.
40:49
So the performances and the blocking of the camera and the movements of the
40:54
people are all working in support of that in such a great way.
40:59
Well, it's like I once heard.
41:04
I think it was Peter Gruber say that once you hire a director,
41:09
you've bought that eye, you've bought a particular vision.
41:13
Yeah, what I would say now, as a writer, I understand is I don't want the directors
41:18
to do anything that they don't believe in or they don't want to do.
41:22
Right. It's just not in my interest.
41:23
And they won't do a good job of it if they do.
41:26
They have to understand it, and they have to do something they want to do.
41:31
It's kind of like raising a child. I mean, seriously, you have to let them do
41:35
what they're going to do.
41:35
If you try to say, you know, you can say to a director, hey,
41:39
how about this? You can pitch them an idea, and if they like it, great.
41:43
If they don't like it, you can't get them to do it. Yeah, ultimately,
41:47
ultimately, they're going to be what they want to be, right?
41:52
Well, you have to find the right person to work with, you know.
41:55
They have to like of script and they have to wanna you have
41:57
to think we have a shared vision and they you
42:01
would then have to get along and then you would have to have
42:04
a shared vision about about how to work and i think i was lucky in kind of meeting
42:09
up with a director who saw that i could be helpful to him about this and we
42:15
were able to work together pretty much hand in glove on two pictures in a way
42:19
that i I think, served the picture quite well.
42:23
But, you know, not everybody does it differently. In America,
42:27
the writer is not usually on the set.
42:29
Might be changing a little bit. In America, it's always the TV,
42:34
in TV, the writer runs everything and the actors can't say any words but the
42:38
ones that are on the stage.
42:40
And in features, director runs everything and the actors can make up their own lines.
42:45
So were you, on the films you worked with, Paul, Or were you present throughout
42:49
the production or just beginning it out?
42:52
Yeah, I was usually there writing or working.
42:55
On the first one, I was rewriting the movie as we went just to keep going and make it better.
43:01
As we came to things, whether they were locations that were suddenly locked
43:07
down and, oh, how can we make it look better here?
43:10
And I would get that in the script. But I would also, oh, this actor we cast
43:14
is great and this line will be better this way.
43:17
And so I kept nudging it along and making it better in the process of that for the good on Starship.
43:25
The script took it and what's on for so long that it was pretty lost.
43:28
And so I've more functioned as the not the official A.D.
43:32
We had great A.D.s on that show, but I was known as the European A.D.
43:37
And I would run around and make sure the director got everything he wanted.
43:41
And everybody knew what the director wanted and tried to troubleshoot when things
43:45
went wrong, which somehow they often did.
43:48
But that was part of the creative experiment there.
43:53
Tell us about the new Starship Troopers, Traitor of Mars.
43:58
Well, Traitor of Mars is a piece of anime,
44:03
an anime story which is animated by the Japanese master of mecha, Shinji Aramaki.
44:14
And Shinji is well known for Apple Seed and other anime he has participated in.
44:20
And he has now done two Starship Troopers animes.
44:24
The last one I had nothing to do with, and I think they were unhappy about that,
44:29
so they asked me, they came back to me and said, we want to do another one even
44:33
cheaper, but Shinji really wants to do another one.
44:36
They want it to be a good one, and do you have a story?
44:40
And I said, well, I kind of do have a story, but it involves,
44:44
you know, I really want to, I said,
44:47
and I really want to use Casper for the voice, and I also want to get Ina Meyer
44:51
back so that she can reprise her Disney character. And they said, really?
44:56
Lizzie's dead. And I said, well, I have a way to go.
45:00
And so one thing led to another. And I agreed to write this for them as an anime script.
45:08
And it was good that I sort of had a notion of the story because they wanted it immediately.
45:13
And they just kind of shot it about as fast as I wrote it. but there was at
45:21
times it was interesting because we didn't have the best you know,
45:25
It wasn't even just that we couldn't sit around and communicate.
45:28
We just didn't communicate that much.
45:29
Somehow being in Japan and being here and having that everything translated
45:33
meant that the communication between us was a little odd at times.
45:36
And so the movie came out in a very interesting way.
45:39
But what's funny to me is that, you know, the story tracks and everything.
45:44
But I used to watch anime movies and think, gee, if only this,
45:48
I could fix this. I could fix that.
45:50
Oh, the story would make better sense if you did this and that.
45:53
But I had this sort of notion that I could fix an anime story,
45:57
make a good anime story that I could track and follow.
46:00
And I realized that the people who were making this didn't follow those rules.
46:05
And so they don't care about the way the story tracks exactly the same way I
46:10
do in that world, in that group of people.
46:14
And it sort of came off more like it came off as like oh this is like an anime
46:19
film in that way too I don't know if that makes any sense to you but there's
46:23
almost a different storytelling,
46:24
storytelling value between the Japanese culture of anime and the American culture
46:29
of movies or whatever so the story sometimes doesn't work the way I want it
46:35
to but I think it works in a way that is proper for anime.
46:41
I don't know are you an anime fan? Oh, yeah, yeah.
46:45
I mean, I, you know, I like all the classics, of course, you know,
46:51
Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Ninja Scroll.
46:53
I really love that series, Berserk. I don't know if you ever saw that.
46:58
I've heard of it. I haven't seen it. Did you see the, what did you think was
47:01
wrong or right about the Ghost in the Shell movie?
47:05
I think that most people expected a live-action version of the original film, and they didn't get it.
47:13
Yeah, I think that's the big thing.
47:17
It'll be the same if they ever finally do this Akira film that's been slugging
47:25
its way around Hollywood for a long time.
47:27
I think if they go too far away from the source material,
47:32
particularly with the devoted fans anyway i mean for people who don't know for
47:38
people who aren't familiar then obviously it's it's just another sort of science
47:42
fictiony actiony picture but for
47:46
the for the devotees i think that they go oh wow that's going to be really cool
47:51
to see a live action version of the anime but the problem is when they were doing the,
47:59
the promotional stuff that was coming out that was showing shots
48:01
that were pretty much you know shot
48:05
for shot with the anime so people were hopeful but
48:08
of course when the final product came out and found like oh geez they they used
48:11
a bit of that story and then a bit of something else and a little bit of the
48:15
the sequel uh that they made called ghost in the shell innocence which which
48:20
came out so yeah i just think that i just think the downfall was was too far away from,
48:27
you know, I mean, it's weird, fans are funny fans and stuff are funny they want.
48:34
They want what they like or what they liked,
48:39
And they want to see that, but they want to see it somehow, like,
48:42
live action's going to make it different.
48:45
I don't know. It's a weird thing.
48:48
So, in other words, the idea of making it more real, live action,
48:52
is what they think that there's going to be.
48:56
They're going to get more out of that than they do. Yeah, I think so.
48:59
It was like when I was a kid and I heard there was going to be a Masters of the Universe movie.
49:04
Now, I love Masters of the Universe as a kid. when i
49:07
heard oh wow live action movie that's going to be fantastic and a
49:12
lot of people don't like it i personally do even though you
49:15
know i know now knowing the mechanics of filmmaking that okay they had a budget
49:20
and that's why they kept them on earth rather than do the whole thing on on
49:25
the alien planet but i mean it was still sort of marvelous like wow that's you know you know the
49:33
live action version it had it had sort of an aura around it and i think it still does,
49:39
only problem is when like i say when they stray sort of when it's not the film that they loved.
49:47
And it's some sort of hybrid of like oh that it
49:50
looks and sounds and you know it
49:52
feels like ghost in the shell but it's not it's not
49:56
the same it's not the anime now so it's weird it's like a fine line that that
50:01
i think screenwriters and filmmakers walk like how much of it how much do you
50:06
make it a carbon copy and how much do you do a live action version which is
50:12
inspired in a lot of ways and.
50:17
And is sort of visually similar but it's it's not exactly the same like how
50:26
much Like, it's a real, I don't know, I'd, I'd put.
50:30
You'd have to really know, you'd have to really get the essence of something.
50:34
Yeah, yeah, and I think that's. You would have to save it.
50:38
Yeah. Not, yeah. It's like, it's like we were talking about earlier,
50:43
like, the thing that makes something great, like, the original Robocop and the remake,
50:48
you know, and, like, I feel that they just completely lost what made the first one a good movie.
50:56
But then again, the new movie isn't the old movie It can never be the old movie
51:01
As much as people would want the old movie back again.
51:05
Just watch the, as I say, just, just watch the original if you're not happy, but,
51:12
you know, you can't, that's why I think sometimes it's a mistake to try and
51:17
just stick with the same plot from the original film and not try some,
51:20
some new plot that, that involves,
51:24
you know, a guy becoming, you know, a Robocop and eventually like a Pinocchio
51:30
type story, rediscovering his humanity, you know, and try that in a different form.
51:37
But don't stick with the same plot because you're never going to do it as well as it's been done.
51:43
Like, lightning's already struck. Now we're just playing with the thunder.
51:47
Well, I agree with everything you're saying. I really do. And I think we can't redo it the same way.
51:54
And I've always tried to change it up a little bit.
51:58
Like, on the Star Trek River movies, In a way, I was never trying to hit the
52:02
same ideas as we did in the first one.
52:05
I was trying to have it be part of something that could work in that world.
52:09
And I was trying to, you know, hit some notes about militarism and,
52:13
you know, the human condition.
52:16
Fewer, I would say, in two than I did in three. But that's about it.
52:20
You know, I tried to make it seem like it was in that world.
52:23
But I also didn't, I knew I didn't have the money to do big,
52:26
giant sequences or anything like that. So, you know, I knew I couldn't compete at that level.
52:32
It's sort of boring to try to compete with yourself. Yeah. It's a different thing.
52:36
Yeah. I mean, it's a tough gig, like always.
52:41
Once you've come out with a hit and people... I think I once heard Kevin Smith
52:46
was talking to Richard...
52:48
What's his name? Richard Kelly, who directed Donnie Darko. He said, aren't you...
52:52
Right, sure. Yeah, aren't you afraid now that people are just going to want
52:56
Donnie Darko all the time you know,
52:59
no matter how much he wants to do other stuff probably, yeah probably that's
53:04
such an amazing piece of work and probably they do want it all the time probably hitting that,
53:10
balance if you hit a mat is hard to do too bad I really like that stuff but
53:16
that movie is kind of miraculous I mean it goes it goes back to the old the
53:22
old adage like when it all comes together right And it's successful,
53:28
How it happened is a mystery You know, as much as you can Cast.
53:34
The actors that you want and you get the right director and good cinematographer
53:38
and you've got the script well
53:40
written and you've got a good producer and you've got all these elements.
53:44
When that all works.
53:47
Yeah. Yeah, I think that I've actually seen that. I think that kind of happened on Robocop.
53:51
And I think that what happened there was, you know, everybody wanted something
53:56
is the best I've heard now from a few.
53:59
Bill Tippett once said, oh, everybody needed something on that movie.
54:02
And it was like, it's true. I needed my first movie.
54:05
John Davison needed a new movie. He was a producer and he hadn't had a hit for
54:11
a while since his first movie.
54:12
Paul Verhoeven had this amazing career in Europe.
54:16
And then his first American English language picture, as it were, was in Blood Crank.
54:21
So he needed to do something. And I think everybody was working very hard together
54:27
in a way that they could only do that one time.
54:31
And when we worked together again 10 years later, it was a little different
54:34
because we didn't all need it the same way or we didn't need the same things.
54:38
So, you know, whatever. But I mean, I think the other thing that happens is
54:42
if you have a group of people who kind of have good communication with each
54:46
other, that can really help.
54:48
And I think we have that on both those movies. Do
54:51
you think too What makes something
54:54
great sometimes Is the hunger Like you just said When
54:58
you're a young screenwriter Or a young director And you've finally gotten that
55:03
first Oh this is my first Like you said my first movie So you're hungry You're
55:09
eager to please Like yeah yeah I can't screw this up I've got to give a hundred
55:13
and fifty Two hundred percent.
55:16
There's a certain power in ignorance That way you're trying really hard.
55:22
I don't know I really think it comes down to needs in other words some people
55:28
have bigger appetites than others but if you need to do that you'll keep doing
55:31
that if you need to succeed and if you need to make another movie you're going to keep,
55:38
You've got to keep the fire burning. At that level. Or something, yeah.
55:44
It takes a lot of energy, I think. At least it has for me in these things.
55:49
Get something going and somehow make something happen.
55:54
And then it really helps if you have smart people you're working with. Sure.
56:00
I'm really lucky with Verhoeven and the producer, John Davison, on Robocop.
56:05
Those guys were really good. So I was a lucky writer that way.
56:10
I had some smart people to work with. Awesome.
56:14
So anything really cool for Ed Umar on the horizon you can talk about?
56:20
Well, I'm writing a script right now I'm not supposed to talk about,
56:23
but it is kind of cool to be revealed later.
56:27
Yeah, I'm actually happily working along here in the movie business,
56:32
believe it or not, which is a little more limited than it used to be maybe.
56:35
And so I have nothing to complain about except that
56:39
I'm a screenwriter so what John can you say what John you're working in is it
56:43
science fiction again action what you would expect I think it's what you would
56:48
expect wow okay very cool the Robin always sings the same song well that's cool that's what,
56:59
Ferdelucci said I think that's very cool well we certainly Finally,
57:04
we at Podcasting Softly and fans all over the world of Ed Neumeyer,
57:08
we look forward to the future exploits of you, sir. Okay, well, we'll see.
57:14
You never know how these things work. Anyway, it's really a pleasure talking
57:17
to you, man. It is. A goatee trader of Mars.
57:20
Yeah. I hope to do a store near you, I hope. Yeah, I look forward to that, yeah.
57:26
The September Screen Runners series continues, ladies and gentlemen.
57:30
We hope you enjoyed this episode. there is another one hot on its heels so stay
57:35
tuned through the month of September for the September Screenwriters Series,
57:42
and as always thank you for listening to us little Yugonites on Spotify or wherever
57:48
you choose to listen to your favourite podcasts so until next time this is Kent
57:53
saying thank you for listening and stay tuned to the one and only Cinema No more?
58:01
You get it.
58:04
Music.