Produced by Michal Phillips, written by John Hill and directed by Alan Arkush, HEARTBEEPS features “Phil,” a fully-articulated robot, in this light-hearted and often satirical comedy, expected by its makers to match THE WIZARD OF OZ in general audience appeal.
Unlike R2D2 of STAR WARS, or OZ’s more primitive Tin Man, Phil is the first major film robot in 25 years that is not piloted by a human operator wearing a suit of futuristic shining armor. He is a true child of the electronic machine age, embodying state of the art robotic techniques.
“Phil is a machine created by two other machines to assist them. As the movie progresses, they see Phil as their child,” according to Oscar-winning Robbie Blalock (Best Visual Effects for STAR WARS, whose Motion Pictures, Inc., facility was awarded the contract to design and build Phil. With Jamie Shourt, his then-partner at MPI, and Max Anderson, chief designer and head of construction, Blalock and his team delivered Phil in less than nine months.
Standing a squat three-feet-high on his baby-blue tank treads, the $350,000 robot is capable of making 24 separate maneuvers, controlled by a team of four remote transmitter operators off-camera.
The multi-terrain device was designed to fill the part of a robot child, the offspring of two robot servants who fall in love while awaiting service in a robot repair factory. Played by Bernadette Peters (THE JERK) and Andy Kaufman (TAXI), the two human actors are transformed under metallic-hued gelatin flesh-covering to become “robots.” (Making actual robots to play the parts of humans would have cost at least $1 million and taken a full year to prepare.) Escaping from their human owners, the two adult robots bring with them spare parts to ensure their survival in the Northern California of 1995, and it is from these assorted components that Phil emerges.
HEARTBEEPS’ storyline dictates that Phil “grows” into a sentient, living robot with a robot-child’s personality and a wide spectrum of childlike gestures, reactions and movements. Although his mannerisms are somewhere between klutzy and lovable, he is capable of performing several practical functions, and is imbued with actual robotic potential.
“We had to ask ourselves what the “child” of robots would look like,” Blalock said. “All machines are created in the image of their makers. So in this case, we had to assume the machine’s point of view. Phil had to mirror his parents’ consciousness and look the way they’d have him look, because the design of any machine is an extension of its maker’s vision of reality. Phil was also shaped by the needs of the script. He had to scoot over several kinds of ground surface; he was called upon to cut through a wire fence and pick up living objects. All this, plus enough personality to charm human audiences.”
In Greek legends, robots were said to have been made by the gods themselves. But it was human intelligence and craftsmanship that produced Phil, and by the time he took his first jiggling baby steps, more than 30 men and women had worked on him. It got to be like the HEARTBEEPS’ story of parent machines contributing their own parts to make the young machine efficient and complete. David Merritt, who spent the entire two-and-a-half “gestation period” designing and assembling Phil’s visually-expressive but purely cosmetic brain unit, said he felt “like part of my own brain went right into Phil.”
The star robot’s aesthetic design had to stay within the practical mechanics of his movements, according to Chief designer Max Anderson. Brian Davis was responsible for translating the design into mechanical drawings, and John Fifer and Larry Stevens carried out the mechanical assembly. Phil’s drive-train mechanism had to be flexible enough to negotiate several kinds of exterior terrain, as well as interior carpeted floors. The low-mass, high-traction system was finally based on a mini-bulldozer.
In the script, Phil is “born” from spare parts, and his parents add more parts to him as the film progresses. This haphazard development of Phil had to be considered in Anderson’s design concept. “It is definitely makeshift-looking,” reads the script, “like the result of an illicit union between an old Philco radio and soapbox derby racer.” The old radio which was Phil’s namesake became a truck dashboard unit, supposedly blow-torched from a junked vehicle by Phil’s part-seeking parents, but actually lifted from Anderson’s own ’52 Chevy pick-up. The chest unit rests atop a six-wheeled treaded chassis. The torso tilts backward and forward at the waist, the neck moves up and down and the head rotates.
“The electronics were actually the hardest part of making Phil,” Anderson recalls. “For example, the different movements in the elbow joint, the wrist and the opening and closing of hands each required a multitude of radio channels.” The complex radio control system was designed by Neil Dreiscszun, Daryl Dzioba and Ralph Leitzgen, and involved split frequencies, so that various signals would not interfere with each other. Nonetheless, since all the frequencies were in the amateur band, there was the constant possibility of outside interference problems from CB-type radios. The controls were standard six-channel units with uni-direction “joystick” levers, made by Futuba. “The four Universal operators who worked the controls literally became the means to express Phil’s personality,” said Anderson. Describing the split-second orchestration required to bring the robot to life during filming. “It was amazing to watch them work.”
Designing the arms was another challenge, since Phil’s hand and arm movements had to perform functions in the film that would surpass the capabilities of the most sophisticated robots in industry. Even in Jaan, where most of the world’s industrial robots are at work (75,000 of them), the development of automatic “hands” has not kept pace with science fiction projections. Phil would have to appear more dexterous, even than his cousins in the nuclear facilities, whose remote-controlled arms have been called little better than pliers. Phil’s arm units had to be capable of performing very subtle movements and carrying out practical tasks, as well as being able to make emotional gestures in the ongoing body language that makes the character spring to life on the screen. One arm was called to cut through a wire fence, the other to pick up a live rabbit and other objects. MPI researchers found that nothing so advance existed “off the shelf.”
To find a working model for the arm units, Blalock and his team even considered using the actual prosthetic arms created for human beings who have lost their natural limbs. Instead the design team created an asymmetrical set of working appendages that fulfill the practical and aesthetic requirements.
The left arm has human-like joint movements, rotating and twisting via radio control. Phil’s one truly soft touch is the soft fuzzy mitten which serves as his left hand (sewn by MPI accountant Julianne Berdrow), and has enough dexterity to grasp objects of varying sizes, and can even pluck a living flower from its stem.
The right arm is the harder working of the two. Comparable to a Swiss Army knife (another symbol of boyhood incorporated into the design), its various components include a drill bit, screwdriver unit, adjustable wrench, and tin snips for wire-cutting, all flipped into place by radio control. Only the drill bit is entirely functional; the other tasks are performed in close-up by a technician working through dummy hands, with a hand-grip at the end of a cable.
In the world of actual robotics, Phil would be classified as a Level Two model, capable as he is of moving around and performing pick-and-place operations with a movable hand-assembly (and supposedly in possession of a television eye ). But Phil is basically cosmetic in design, despite all his moving parts and convincing performances.
“The challenge with Phil was breaking down what goes into making emotions apparent on the human face, and then translating it into mechanical functions,” said Arkush, who would have to direct these character reactions once the robot was a working cast member. Team brainstorming and individual craftsmanship produced the necessary results. Pete Von Sholly (who also painted the body) fashioned Phil’s radar-dish ears, which are individually-controlled, moving independently of each other. His ears perk and bend to shoe emotion, but they are incapable of picking up a single sound.
Phil’s head is square, animated by two large green glass eyes, which are illuminated from within by lights which rotate on their axis parallel to each other. As sensing apparatus, they cannot receive a single image.
Nor does the actual brain-box with its complex assortment of components serve any function paralleling Artificial intelligence, although true-life robots are also lacking in that capacity. The design goal, however, was well-served by the intricate assemblage of circuit boards, resistors, vacuum tubes and working lights that constitute the elements within Phil’s transparent skull.
Merrit, who also got his model-making start constructing dinosaurs for museums with his family’ s business, researched charts of the human brain. He decided to recreate a symbolic phrenology, with various sections representing the brain’s different lobes and functions. Red lights flash when Phil is staging a temper tantrum, blue lights glow softly when he is tranquil. When Phil gets an idea, the computer circuit boards light up. For his highly dramatic moments of extreme rage or frustration, smoke is pumped through a plastic tube, filling the aluminum-plexiglass chamber and flowing out screen vents around his head and neck. Several of the brain modules can be removed ad Phil “grows” in the course of his film life, and risers elongate his body. The neck stretches and other components can be added to the brain-box as the young robot acquires more smarts.
Even in the film story, Phil lacks sufficient intelligence to protect himself. He handle pattern recognition and evaluation, prompting his robot mother to seek new components for him with obsessive zeal. “This is the first robot I have ever created and programmed,” she says. “He will be the most efficient I can make him.”
Aqua also vows that Phil will never be programmed for subservience, the underlying theme for the film. She bemoans her own program as a companion-series robot designed to be a party hostess for humans. Her particular talent was “to give the human male social companionship… as well as assisting him in viewing himself as intelligent, interesting and virile.” She and Val ( another companion-series robot programmed to talk the lumber commodity business, as well as to serve as a valet)parody human male-female relationships and parent-child roles.
Robots aren’t supposed to be able to feel anything, and even Val and Aqua are new to the love game. The first twang of metallic love is interpreted as a malfunction of the Pleasure Zone indicators, but free will slips into their program, and growing concern for Phil gives them depth and compassion.
The idea of humans owning mechanical servants goes back to Greek legend, where Haphaestos, the blacksmith of the Olympian gods, possessed two golden slave girls. They were made of metal, says the legend, “but they will do my bidding, and they have thoughts in their heads.”
And the postulation of robots falling in love is at least as old as the word robot itself, which was first used by playwright Karl Capek. His 1921 Utopian drama R.U.R. first put robots on stage, and he drew from his native Czech tongue’s robota, meaning toll or servitude. Actor played the mechanical men who seize power and wipe out humankind, but they are unable to reproduce until two of the younger robots fall in love.
Throughout the course of science fiction, robots have been depicted as a possible menace to their human bosses, either as a dehumanizing machine that would replace non-machines, or as an actual threat. Hal, the sentient computer of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, turned against the very humans he was designed to serve. The word “robot” is also derived from the Old German arbeit, meaning trouble! It’s older Latin origin, however, is in the word orbus, or orphan.
Phil, however, is no orphan. Not only does he have parents willing to sacrifice their own spare components (“Look at Phil Aqua, it has your eyes.” “Yes, Val, but it has your nose.”) he also has an “uncle.” Accompanying the family on its freedom mission is CatSkil, a one-liner Borscht-belt comedian robot whose voice is supplied by comic Jack Carter. Not an actual robot like Phil, CatSkil is partly MPI-built robot base, partly hidden actor. A special effects operator controls the cigar-smoking CatSkil’s facial movements. Another partial robot, CrimeBuster, a menacing law-enforcement model, is operated by two hidden humans, with another operator outside to control its machine gun, flame-thrower and other lethal weapons.
Other humans round out the cast: Randy Quaid and Kenneth McMillan play human factory workers who pursue the missing robots. Melanie Mayron and Christopher Guest are featured as the eccentric junkyard owners who take the fugitive robot family under their wings.
During filming Arkush directed Phil the same as he did the rest of the cast. “Hit your mark,” he’d call out to Phil, and the four-person control team would respond, hitting the appropriate joysticks.
Phil didn’t have any actual lines to deliver, but he is called upon to produce electronic giggles, cries and other responses. His actual musical voice is played on guitar by The Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia. There is complex dubbing for the extensive sound effects. “Whenever a robot moves, it makes lots of sounds,” Arkush says, “and there are lots of robots in this film.”
Interacting with other cast members, Phil was both a challenge and a diversion. “He would bow his head and perform all sorts of antics with the cast,” Anderson recalled. “It was intimidating at first for some of them. Who’d ever had to respond to a baby robot before?”
Considering the complex electro-mechanical nature of Phil’s structure and design, his stint as a star went almost without a hitch. Dreiscszun, who was on hand to supervise any needed repairs, reported that the robot only occasionally blew a fuse or slipped a belt. Of course, there was the time a raccoon pulled Phil’s head unit off, but for the most part, “Phil was the least trouble of any of the robots.”
If there had been any major breakdowns, MPT had Phil’s twin on hand. The exact duplicate model, however as rarely called upon from its dressing room reserve.
Computers will take over the radio control function of Phil, now that shooting is completed. Installed as a feature exhibit at Universal Studio Tours, his antics will be dictated by a taped program, and he’ll perform the same routine over and over and over again. (Unless he should escape one day to the lush Universal City hills.) So much for robots and free will. In the meantime, Milton Bradley has purchased rights to reproduce Phil in miniature as a toy, a new Teddy bear for the electronic generation.
“Children will identify with Phil on several levels,” according to Blalock, who sees the robot as an evocative object in today’s computerized world. “He’s curious, he’s vulnerable, and he makes many of the same blunders as they do.”
But perhaps, even more importantly, “Children will be able to recognize the extent to which programming and ownership have already taken over in their world.” As a metaphor for the late 20th century, Phil offers a lively focus for dialogue on the nature of work, technology and human relationship.
Blalock, who also created effects television’s COSMOS series, as well as for ALTERED STATES, AIRPLANE, NINE TO FIVE, and most recently, the “alien vision” effects for WOLFEN and special optical sequence for Paul Schrader’s CAT PEOPLE, founded his own company, Praxis, in 1980. Praxis itself has already made several technological advances, including the development of the first computer-based production management system, and the first refinement of blue-screen composites, as utilized in STAR WARS. He is involved with machines and computers on a daily basis, and sees them as a mirror of the human construct, created as an extension, not a replacement for humans.
The computerized (robotic) cameras at work in his Praxis facility, doing shooting procedures requiring high-precision movement and placement, are an example off automated production. “Humans aren’t programmed to be good at that particular kind of job,” Blalock says, reassuringly. “A machine can free us to be more creative.”
While robotic research and development rests mainly in the realm of industry (which demands only that the devices have enough intelligence to handle their jobs), it may be up to filmmakers and effects designers to bring the concept of robot to the forefront of consciousness.
“A machine is a device, a thing,” Blalock says. “Its role is to make life easier for its ‘owners.’ What obligations do the owners have to their machines? Does as examination of the relationship between human and machine reveal attitudes about the nature of human-to-human relationships in the area of work?”
These are some of the questions that make HEARTBEEPS and its robot star, Phil, so provocative—for all the children of the computer age.
AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER, established 1920, (then) in 63rd year of publication, is published monthly in Hollywood by ASC Holding Corp., PO Box 2230 Hollywood California 90028. Copyright 1982 ASC Holding Corp.
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