Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 1, 1990 TAG: 9006010048
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
Don't worry, advise the makers of the $50 million "Total Recall," which is set for release in 2,000 U.S. theaters today, including the Salem Valley 8 and Terrace theaters in the Roanoke Valley.
Says Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose salary was reportedly $10 million: "As long as you can bring the money back, that's the key thing. In Hollywood, if someone would pay me $100 million in salary and they would get back $400 million, they would do it with pleasure. Wouldn't you? I would.
"The numbers don't matter. The only thing that matters is: Can you return this money twice or three times over? Sometimes studios make a movie for $5 million, then they put $10 million in for promotion and they lose it all, because it's a bad picture. This is how studios . . . eventually . . . go bankrupt."
Adds director Paul Verhoeven: "We made it pretty cheap by going to Mexico City. Shooting in Los Angeles, I'm sure that the movie would have cost $70 million or something like that. We started [the budget] at $43 million, and I think I went over 15 percent. So it's probably up to $50 million. I always go over 15 percent, even in Europe, where I made films for half a million.
"I always seem to go over a bit more than the producers want to give. But it's all on the screen. It's not something that fell in the water or disappeared into somebody's pocket. It's all there.
"I don't think you feel the [fiscal] responsibility as a director. You know that you can't make it for $5 million or even $40 million. The decision is economic. The producers must decide: Can we do this movie with all the special effects and by adding Arnold Schwarzenegger make our money back? If that possibility exists, they go for it.
"A company like Carolco makes a lot of pre-sales. With a name like Arnold's and my name, which is pretty well known in Europe, they can say, `Look what we have: the director of `Robocop' and Arnold Schwarzenegger, can we please sell this movie to you?' So they get a lot of money already from the pre-sales. Then they can say, `We can do it.' "
"Total Recall" has been in the works for 10 years, originating in a short story by Phillip K. Dick, "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale." Dino De Laurentiis developed the script, which intrigued Schwarzenegger in the mid-1980s.
"It was the best script I had read in years," he recalls. "When I picked up the script the first time, I couldn't put it down. I read it all the way through, then I read it again. . . . The whole business of memory being erased and another memory implanted was fascinating."
Set in the year 2084, "Total Recall" depicts Schwarzenegger as an Earth laborer who enrolls for a memory-implant vacation and soon finds himself enmeshed in a civil war on Mars. De Laurentiis was unable to find a director for the film and sold the project to the enterprising Carolco, maker of the "Rambo" films. Schwarzenegger agreed to the choice of Verhoeven as director: "He has the right mentality for it, the discipline, the know-how."
The Martian world was created on the stages of Churubusco studios in Mexico City with the designs of William Sandell. Included is the tawdry red-light district of Venusville with its glaring neon and an occasional touch of whimsy, such as a Jack-in-the-Box sign. Mexico City itself provided the locations for Earth 100 years from now.
"We used the Mexican style called `new brutalism' with all the concrete stuff, very threatening, with little windows, Aztec-style," said Dutch-born Verhoeven.
"There will be new things in the 2080s, but there will be things that you can compare with today. Especially when you come from Europe, where in every city you can see buildings that are four-, five-, 600-years old. So there is always a combination of the old and new.
"Generally I don't think the world changes that much. It will be a bit larger, the style will change a little bit. Buildings of Egypt 4,000 years ago are not much different from what you see today. People still need a roof if it's raining."
by CNB