Touchstone Pictures'/Columbia Pictures' "BICENTENNIAL MAN" Production Information In the first decade of the new millennium, with advances in global technology overtaking the sovereignty of human compassion, Richard Martin (SAM NEILL) buys a gift, a new NDR-114 robot. The product is named Andrew (ROBIN WILLIAMS) by the youngest of the family's children. Touchstone Pictures'/Columbia Pictures' "Bicentennial Man" follows the life and times of Andrew, a robot purchased as a household appliance programmed to perform menial tasks. As Andrew begins to experience emotions and creative thought, the Martin family soon discovers they don't have an ordinary robot. Touchstone Pictures and Columbia Pictures present A 1492 Pictures Production in association with Laurence Mark Productions and Radiant Productions, "Bicentennial Man." Directed by Chris Columbus, from a screenplay by Nicholas Kazan, the film is based upon the short story by Isaac Asimov and the novel The Positronic Man by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg. The film is produced by Wolfgang Petersen, Gail Katz, Laurence Mark, Neal Miller, Chris Columbus, Mark Radcliffe and Michael Barnathan. Executive producer is Dan Kolsrud. "Bicentennial Man" is distributed by Buena vista Pictures Distribution. The Story "Bicentennial Man" spans two centuries, during which it is the goal of a single individual whose quest is to learn all he might about the intricacies of humanity, life and love. Through his efforts Andrew, a popular robot model, teaches as much as he learns. He shows the world how to open its eyes and its heart to receive any being with enough compassion to ask for acceptance. Andrew appears as a typical robot. Upon his delivery, there are four members of the Martin home: Richard Martin, whom Andrew respectfully refers to as Sir; his wife, simply as Ma'am; and their two children Grace and Amanda, who will always be Miss and Little Miss, respectively. Little Miss is the first to call him Andrew, because she misunderstands him to be an android, which of course, he is not. He is a robot: A NorthAm Robotics NDR-114 that has been purchased, as he himself describes, "To perform menial tasks. Cooking. Cleaning. Making household repairs. Playing with or supervising children." The children, however, are at first suspicious of this new member of the household. Miss sees him as an uninteresting simple appliance, common in the homes of her friends. Little Miss thinks he's a bit scary. She, of course, has nothing to fear as the first law of robotics states, "A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction cause a human being to come to harm." It is perhaps the second law of robots, "A robot must obey all human orders except where such orders conflict with the First Law," which leads the Martin family to change their perception of Andrew. For it is following an incident in which Miss orders Andrew to leap from an upstairs window (an order which he is compelled to follow), that leads Sir to proclaim, "Though Andrew is technically a piece of property, he shall be treated as if he is a person." In treating Andrew as human, are they starting to see human traits? Is he indeed showing some very anthropomorphic signs of creativity, curiosity and friendship? Or is it merely as the NorthAm Robotics executives explain, "An appliance with human form showing signs of mechanical failure, interpreted as eccentricity." Sir decides to not only allow Andrew his creativity but to encourage and cultivate the behavior as he believes Andrew to be a unique individual. Andrew's artistry is first exhibited in his carving delicate wooden animals. Before long he has converted the basement of the Martin home into his workshop where he crafts beautifully intricate clocks. As his talent develops, so too, does Andrew's friendship with Sir and his ever-deepening affection for Little Miss. It is ironic that one who spends so many hours creating timepieces is himself unaffected by the passage of time. But time does pass. Through the years, then decades, Andrew achieves a degree of notoriety for creating and selling his exceptional works, all the time watching as the family he has become so much a part of grows up ... and grows old. It makes Andrew all the more aware how different he is, and in his uniqueness, how alone he is. Andrew decides that by looking more human he might narrow the gap between himself and the human world he so wants to understand. Even after the robotic upgrades that change his looks, there is still something missing. The ability to decide for one's self where to live, the ability to come and go as one pleases and the ability to choose are all things that Andrew, as a piece of property, cannot know. He lacks the power of free will. Though such a request has never been heard before, the court finds it cannot deny freedom to any being with a mind advanced enough to desire freedom so passionately. Andrew's freedom comes, initially, at a great personal cost. Sir, his life long companion and teacher is unable to understand Andrew's desire. But to Andrew, it is the start of a journey toward emotional growth and something he is compelled to pursue. Andrew sets out on a journey of discovery, to find out for himself what it is to be human. He needs to know if anywhere there is anyone or anything else like him. His search will not lead him to understand others, but with the help of his new friend Rupert (OLIVER PLATT), an independent and inventive robotics expert, Andrew is able to discover himself, developing and appreciating his own feelings and abilities. As Andrew returns to his own life he remains ever closer to the newer members of the Martin family. The awkward affection he once felt for Little Miss develops into precious companionship with Little Miss' granddaughter Portia. Through her, he learns that with mankind, comes mortality, and the very uniqueness that has always seemed to keep from his human existence is the very thing that gives him his humanity. ABOUT THE PRODUCTION According to records, the robot, also know as Andrew Martin, was powered up on the stages at Treasure Island in San Francisco, California. As the production evolved from a written page to a cinematic story, so too did a feeling among the hundreds of craft workers, artisans and technicians creating the elements of this story. It was the knowledge, an all but unspoken truth, that what was being created here was something very special. The story which begins in the near future, spans the next two centuries. Only one figure is constant throughout, the character of Andrew Martin, played by Robin Williams. The original story "The Bicentennial Man," written by Isaac Asimov, was intended to be part of a science fiction anthology to be released in 1976, the year of the American bicentennial. As Asimov himself describes in his book The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories, he was approached in January 1975 to be a participating writer for the anthology. It was to be a very limited edition, containing original works by ten of the top science fiction writers of the day. The stories could be about anything at all provided that they could seem to have risen out of the phrase "The Bicentennial Man." Asimov completed his work ahead of his April 1975 deadline but at nearly twice the length requested, the longest story he had ever written below the level of a novel in seventeen years. Due to a variety of complications, the anthology never came to fruition and the Asimov story was eventually transferred to Judy-Lynn del Rey's anthology of original stories entitled Stellar Science Fiction #2 which appeared in February, 1976. Asimov liked the story so much that it became the title piece in his own collection of short stories. The road to the big screen was a long one for Andrew Martin. Asimov first sold the screen rights for the story to Chicago-based producer Neal Miller in November 1986 a decade after its original publication. "I was looking for good stories that might be adapted to the screen," Miller remembers. "A friend suggested that I read 'Bicentennial Man' and I fell in love with it. It was a parable of what it means to be human." The challenge of bringing together the myriad elements required to adapt the Asimov story and bring it to fruition as a major motion picture rested with venerable producers Gail Katz and Wolfgang Petersen. "The project had been sitting dormant for a number of years," recalls producer Katz. "Wolfgang and I read the short story, and loved it. We immediately decided to develop it into a film." Katz and Petersen, along with producer Laurence Mark, hired screenwriter Nick Kazan to write the screenplay. "I think Nick [Kazan] absolutely captured the story," says Katz. "In my mind, he actually went beyond it in terms of also creating a love story. We developed a screenplay that ultimately attracted Academy Award(r) winning actor Robin Williams and director Chris Columbus." The teaming of Robin Williams with Chris Columbus was a natural. Having worked together on two previous films they had an established relationship that performed brilliantly in comedy. But the challenges beyond the humor are what brought them together for this story. "The appeal to me," says Williams, "is the way the story deals with artificial intelligence and human behavior. It's the idea of a robot, an assembly line creature, an NDR-114. There are thousands of them in the beginning, but there's something unique about this one. He has curiosity, a sense of fascination." As Columbus describes, "It's really like nothing I've ever done before. It's a story spanning two hundred years, that follows the life of a single family for several generations. The film's cast of supporting characters was continually changing." The central figure, and the most unique task for virtually every department on the production, would be the creation of the robot. Williams has a great deal of respect for the original source. "Asimov is amazing," he says of the late and prolific author. "By giving the robots the three laws, he gave them a kind of moral directive. Asimov did indeed contribute significantly to the modern perception of what a robot is and how it should behave." Though robotic-like inventions can be traced back to around 200 BC when Hero of Alexandra built complicated amusing automaton, the word "robot" is itself a creation of the 20th century, coming from the Czech word Robota, meaning forced labor. The term robot was first used in a 1920s play by Karel Capek called "R.U.R." (Rossums Universal Robots). The play dealt with robots created to free humans from the burden of labor but who eventually turn on and try to destroy their human creators because of their desire for freedom. In 1926, the robot character Maria launched a similar attack on humanity in Fritz Lang's "Metropolis." In 1950 Asimov set down the three laws of robotics in his book I, Robot which established a standard for the fictional robot that has since been accepted by almost anyone writing about or referring to robots. The three rules are: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with The First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. It is with these laws, or moral directives as Williams calls them, that the fictional robots lose their disposition toward calamity. "Asimov was the first writer to think of robots in a positive sense," Williams says. "That he could think they could be as moral as human beings, and maybe more so is what's fascinating about them. By programming what may be considered a consciousness and giving his robots both curiosity and desire, Asimov removed any real danger the robots might pose. What remains is the threat that people feel by the robots' presence, placing Andrew in a world where he must face the all-too- familiar forces of bigotry and hatred in a daring bid to obtain the only thing that really matters to him- his humanity." How is consciousness defined? "I think it was Arthur C. Clarke," Williams recalls, "who said, 'You'll know when an artificial intelligence has a consciousness when it can make a joke and know that it made a joke and laugh at it." For the filmmakers the task was no small one. To create the robot suit for Williams, the challenge was to avoid having the suit completely mask the humor and emotion of the character. To help solve this problem the production turned to Steve Johnson and his special effects company XFX, Inc. The suit Johnson created was made up of over 250 pieces which were assembled into 30 wearable components weighing roughly 35 pounds. Chris Nelson and Eric Fiedler of XFX were the puppeteers who maintained the suit and controlled the facial expressions. The first-stage suit could have been very limiting, because as Chris Nelson explains, "There wasn't much movement for someone with a face as expressive as Robin Williams'. It had only jaw movement which Robin could control. It didn't have the smile mechanism that we would upgrade to later. The eyes blink and the eye brows go up and down by remote control." Was the lack of facial mobility limiting? Nelson explains, "Something that was constantly coming up from the beginning was, 'Couldn't you have put just about anybody inside this mask?' You don't initially see any of Robin, but the biggest thing on this show for me is that Robin is actually inside, and Robin's essence comes though this suit. Covered in plastic, covered in silicone, in all the mechanisms and things, he reads through. You know it's Robin and if anybody else was in that suit you wouldn't have that, especially when it carries over to Andrew's many different looks and where it ends up." The final result surprised even Williams, but in a very positive way. "I've not seen one frame of dailies, but I know the robot is interesting." he explains. "The greatest compliment the robotics guys and I have received was when the studio first saw the robot, they thought it was CGI. The second was that when I'm inside working the suit, it looks totally different than with just animatronics. They said it has life." Eric Fiedler explains the process of operating the face. "It's a type of performance. It's an accentuation to punctuate what Robin does. If it were just a static face you would still read something. You would read a lot of the body language, but the expression helps it along. Robin and I had conversations about it. He always came up with great ideas like, 'why not put a surprised look here.' Or, later, when the face moves a little he'd say, 'Make him have just a slight smile. We worked together, which made it fun.'" During the early tests of the suit for its expression and mobility, Williams entertained the crew, improvising everything including a robo-rapper, and the results were hilarious. For Williams though, it was not just a matter of acting through the suit but rather having the suit become a part of him. "It isn't just a mind-set, it's a body-set," he explains. "Everything from where your feet make contact with the ground to the way you move your hands, how you grab things, how much range of motion you have in your head. It's all dictated by the suit. Then you try and push the limits of the suit. "Ultimately," Williams says thoughtfully, "it's very strange. Once they encase you in the suit, it's a bit like being in the make-up for Mrs. Doubtfire, you're kind of freed by it. It defines who you are. The hardest part was keeping that in mind once we started to lose all the accessories, getting what Andrew calls upgrades because he's still a robot, not fully human." Williams' long-time make-up artist, Cheri Minns, was the one person who worked with him through all the various looks and applications; from Steve Johnson's robotics, to the more humanoid features through the later old-age look designed by Greg Cannom and the company Captive Audience Productions. Of the transformation Minns says, "Robin sort of sustains the character. I think people will care about him because he maintains a thread of dignity from his earliest appearance as a robot to eventually becoming something like an elder statesman." Embeth Davidtz, in the dual roles of adult Little Miss and Portia enjoyed her own engaging interplay opposite the robot. "When I first read the screenplay," Davidtz remembers, "I thought, how do you make that believable? How do you make love believable? But Robin transforms himself into more than just a robot. That's why the story is so profound. It's about something that was man-made to begin with, but then becomes self-made, and that's what the allure is." Playing the role of Sir, Sam Neill also found the prospect of playing against a robot that is starting to show unusually human attributes, an interesting one. But as the man who first recognizes Andrew's uncommon abilities Neill says of his character, "He's Andrew's first owner and he's fascinated by the whole business of robotics. But he notices that there's something humane about the robot, and he has a sense of humor and an inquiring mind. There's this little spark in his robot that is different from all the other hundreds of thousands of other ones." As the character playing Andrew's owner, Neill had to try to explain the concept of humor. In reality, Neill found Williams well versed on the topic. "I've never really worked with anyone like Robin before," Neill recalls. "I have to say I've laughed more on this film than I have on the last ten films combined. When we'd do a scene, like the one where Andrew has to tell a joke, with Robin you never really know where it's going to go. It can go ways that are absolutely hilarious but completely unprintable. So this was a very interesting and extremely funny process for me." As someone who has the opportunity to interact with Andrew from the perspective of two different characters, Embeth Davidtz could easily understand Portia's attraction to a robot. "First of all," Davidtz explains, "the character of Andrew is fantastic. He's really funny, quaint, quirky, very old fashioned but really way ahead of his time. So, he's got this intellect, which is a challenge to her and a wonderful kindness. It's a great contrast that's given. Some of the human beings are not really great human beings and then here's a robot that has more of a soul than most people do." For Robin Williams, the opportunity to play off such a wide variety of characters throughout the diverse story is what created the challenge and gave it innovation. From the parental Sir or the inquisitive Little Miss to the partnership he forms with Oliver Platt's character, inventor Rupert Burns, or the playful combativeness he experiences with Kiersten Warren's Galatea, Robin knows that he's lucky. He says, throughout his existence he has had several teachers, people who hook up and become mentors for him. Director Chris Columbus put a new face on Robin Williams when the two made the tremendously successful comedy "Mrs. Doubtfire." Columbus, whose first screenwriting jobs were science fiction-horror- fantasy, felt it was time to get back to his roots. "Science fiction has always been one of my biggest passions. But I had never been able to find a story in that genre that worked on an emotional level. When I read Nicholas Kazan's screenplay, I found a story tht was not only magical and fantastic from a science fiction standpoint, but also tremendously complex and moving from a human standpoint. Also, it was completely original and unpredictable. "The challenge of the picture was creating a realistic and believable robot, and a futuristic view of San Francisco that would span over 200 years. We needed to create a robotic suit that would be realistic and completely believable. The audience must always believe that this is a machine and not an actor inside of a suit. And although the robotic design of the suit helps create this illusion, it is Robin's controlled and extremely focused performance that makes Andrew martin so real." The evolution of San Francisco was also an area to test the imagination of director Columbus. "I felt it was essential to create a future that had complete architectural integrity. A city like San Francisco will never let its past die," explains Columbus, "so it is important to be true to that vision, but subtly adding to the city's already existing architecture." The social attitude was an area to which he would pay close attention. Of the director's approach to these societal issues and his creative vision to tell the story, Williams says, "People know Chris for a certain style of movies because he has great instinct for comedy. What people may not realize is there's an incredible literacy to him and a film literacy, a vision for something like this, a science fiction or really fantastic movie. This one offers that because it has the other side, the human edge, the behavior of the characters. That's what's interesting about doing this. He's been very open to trying different things in his casting of different people. It's been great. He's very adamant about how the robots should look and the inter-relationships of all the different characters." Sam Neill agrees with his fellow actor's assessment, saying of Columbus, "He's the most unflappable director I've ever met. He's just extraordinarily calm and never lets anything ruffle his feathers, which is kind of amazing on something this big." To project Columbus' unique vision and propel a cityscape as well known as San Francisco from its current look to 200 years in the future, the director turned to the talents of Academy Award(r) winning production designer Norman Reynolds, who is especially well known for his art direction on "Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope" and his production design on "The Empire Strike Back" and "The Return of the Jedi" in the original "Star Wars" series. "I haven't gone too far into the future," Reynolds says of his designs. "Having said that implies that I know what the future looks like, and I don't. But we've taken advantage of the San Francisco landmarks, like the Golden Gate Bridge, to which we've added another road at high level. We've increased the size of Sausalito so that you can see it from Fort Point, underneath the Golden Gate Bridge. All of these landmarks are familiar to people both here and overseas." To allow the city of San Francisco's presence to be felt throughout the film, director Columbus utilized many practical locations unique to the city by the bay. Also featured, in Little Miss' wedding and later as the church Portia is restoring, is Grace Cathedral. With its French and Spanish inspired design and towers rising 174 feet above the street, the church has been a recognizable landmark since its construction began in 1928. To convey the passage of the 200 years over which the story takes place Columbus had Reynolds continually modernize the character's living spaces. The interior sets of the Martin house, for example, were built on the stages on Treasure Island in San Francisco that would retain their classic architectural design allowing for upgrades to convey the passage of time. We've had a number of kitchens in this movie," Reynolds says with a laugh, "like, four or five. It's difficult to change each of them but hopefully we've succeeded and I think making things simple has helped, you know, to not be too cluttered." Not all of Reynolds designs utilized existing structures. The World Legislature set was an undertaking that took three months to construct on the stages of Manex Studios in Alameda, California, and is one of the most advanced of Chris Columbus' vision of the future. As Reynolds describes in overview, "There are a number of interiors, but the exteriors are what we use to really convey the future. What we've done is to add more buildings, more futuristic buildings and take advantage of the city rather than build sets that are too way out." To establish that sense of the future and the progress of time in the environment and in technology, Dream Quest Images, the feature film visual effects division of The Walt Disney Company, employed such multi-faceted techniques as digital matte paintings, CG imagery and models to realize the futuristic world envisioned by Columbus and Reynolds. "Chris and Norman's concept of an 'evolutionary' future-instead of a far out one-was what really enabled us to create realistic shots", observed Dream Quest's visual effects supervisor James Price. "By utilizing existing structures and building around them, we were able to design environments that are futuristic yet familiar. This was crucial not only to show the progress of time throughout the film, but also to maintain a level of intimacy between the audience and the world in which the characters are living." Holograms figure importantly throughout the film. Dream Quest's team of digital artists created the Three Rules of Robotics, a vortex of light and words which the newly arrived Andrews projects for his apprehensive family. While this early display has a somewhat menacing overtone, Andrew later demonstrates his abilities in an emotional and nostalgic way when he projects the wedding dance for Sir. Holograms of human organs are used to underscore the technology used in Andrew's human transformation. The replacement of Andrew's head and the morphing of a robotic underskeleton to a humanoid hand also involved the use of bluescreen and motion control photography, survey techniques to recreate the camera move in 3D, and digital compositing, along with animation and CG. Landmark views of San Francisco, New York and Washington, D.C. have been combined with digital matte paintings of new millennium skyscrapers. A CG tanker churns beneath the double-deck span of the Golden Gate bridge, a CG Circle Line hover ferry can be seen on New York's East River, CG hover cars fly above the Brooklyn Bridge and CG traffic and hover cars appear throughout the shots of the Capitol. The World Legislature itself was built as a 1/48 scale miniature by Dream Quest's model shop over a 12-week period, as was Portia's loft. The Victorian building in an old San Francisco neighborhood is seen with both traditional cable cars and a futuristic monorail, all intricately detailed models seamlessly blended with a digital matte painting of the Bay Bridge. Other architectural modifications are seen in the CG extension of the hospital set, the Rupert Burns building, and the he family's Northern California mansion. Eventually the truth prevails. The feeling shared by all people involved with the production of "Bicentennial Man" is that this story is special. Beyond the elaborate sets, beyond the philosophy, and beyond the science of robotics, "Bicentennial Man" is a very human story. As Sam Neill says, "There are all kinds of questions raised, some of which are rather troubling. Where does science overstep its mark? Where does what we invent and what we use start to erode what we understand about a civilized way of living? I have no idea where we will be in a hundred years, even if we'll be alive as a race. It's terribly hard to know or to see. All I do know is it'll be wildly different from anything we can guess now." Robin Williams agrees, "No scientists will predict the future. They talk about when the first functioning robot will be. They talk about getting that nano-technology down to a certain point but then there will be something, as always, as right now, that no one can predict. No one could predict lap-top computers sixty years ago." In this story, however, Williams feels very positive about what technology might bring for that too comes back to the human element. "Some people could say it's like a divine accident when it happens," he says of his character's evolution and the questions it might bring about. "There's a certain time when his perception of the world changes and he becomes quite unique. There have been movies about robots. There have been movies about artificial intelligence. But who we are and how we will relate to these creatures is what Asimov was always writing about. How will we relate to these questions and could they be superior in a moral way. A robot would have more humanity that most human beings according to Asimov, and that makes us look at ourselves." (12/1/99) 14