Ari Taub (Robot Replacement #3) Robot in the Family, Part One

Re-Shoot February, 1991 NYC

(this is Ari Taub’s story in his own words, little editing had to be done to present what you are reading now.)

I had just graduated from NYU film school and was pretty desperate to get any kind of work possible. At that time, the only work I could get on the big films was as a parking PA, and this was really crappy work. We sat in a car all night and watched the parking spots and placed cones on the street so no one could park. We could not really sleep, I would leave the engine running all night long and catch short cat naps while intermittently freezing to death and being over heated by the car heater—it was a pretty miserable existence.

Anyhow, my friend John was working on this strange film called Long Island Expressway (for I don’t know how long)…and he approached me to get involved as a director. He told me the last Director had left the project and they needed to finish this film. He gave me a copy of the script which was the size of the Old Testament, and asked me if I wanted to meet the Executive Producer, an eclectic guy named Jack Shaoul. I said OK, but my stomach was already sinking to the floor. Had I heard of this project before? Weren’t they working on this thing already for several years? John seemed up to his neck in stress, and something did not seem right. It took me about two weeks to get through the script (not a good sign); which read part bad biography part zany comedy, part I-don’t-know-how-this-movie will ever get done, part this will be a friggin’ nightmare. I should have listened to my stomach.

In any event, I went in to meet Jack, who was working in a cluttered antique store. There were postcards with scribble on them all over the walls and various crew folks working in different corners of the place, all looking pretty badly nourished, rings under their eyes, and seemingly desperate to get the job done. John seemed to be the only guy around here with any sense of humor, and he introduced me to Jack, who did not seem to be paying any attention to me. “I’m a director” I said. He looked at me and then looked away. “You don’t look like a director. You look like the pizza delivery guy”. What he said was true at the time. I looked very young for my age. I was 23 but looked about 17. I was relieved, he did not seem to have any interest in me directing his picture, and I was terrified that somehow I would get this job by default. I left relieved and forgot all about the incident.

Some months later, I got a call from John again. “Ari we need you to come in and play the robot. It will just be two days of work. We are doing the last pickups for the film.” I immediately asked how much I would get paid. “We can pay you $75 a day.” He said. “Jeez, that’s pretty lousy.” I said “What happened to the last guy who was playing the robot?” “He can’t play the robot anymore. He hurt his back and is laid up in hospital.” I should have taken this as a bad omen for things to come. John said “C’mon—it will be fun, like the old school days…”

Fun it was not. I came in a day before to look at the Robot costume. Pieces were strewn around the makeshift production office, and some very skinny acid-tripping dude was working on repairing one of the arms. His eyes were bleary and he had a cigarette dangling from his mouth, electronic equipment was buzzing and singing all around him. There was the distinct smell of solder and smoke in the air. The robot looked like a train wreck between Robby the Robot from “Lost in Space” and C3PO from the original “Star Wars” movie; only it wasn’t…

When they started to outfit me with the costume, I remember that it did not seem that this costume was designed for a human being living in the twentieth century. All the pieces were very heavy and the weight of the costume had pressure in all the wrong places. The costume had hundreds if not thousands of lights embedded in it. And there was a huge cable coming out of the rear of the costume—much like an umbilical cord which dragged behind me like a very heavy hose. This cable had a thousand volts of electricity coursing through it. After having been entombed in the costume (which took about two hours to put on), it did not take long, maybe 20 minutes to realize that there was tremendous and unsustainable weight on my shoulders. The pain quickly became a throbbing reminder that this was “no joke” and I had to keep moving my shoulders to keep from crying out in agony. Furthermore, I could not sit down or shift the weight. Once it was on, I could barely move and barely see out. When the final piece, the head, was installed and locked on I felt like Houdini trapped in a box—only a box that I would never be able to escape. The genius (or madman) who designed this costume must have been as cruel as the Director of the film. No thought was given to the person who would have to lumber around in this walking death trap. From the outside it must have looked impressive, but from the inside it was a torture chamber. The right eye was fitted with a telephoto lens—so I could only see things 30 feet in front of me. The left eye was outfitted with a wide-angle lens—so everything was wide-eyed, distorted and panoramic. When I opened both eyes even for a moment, I began to feel nauseous and wanted to throw up. So I kept one eye closed to prevent from keeling over. But I knew that if I fell over I would not be able to get up again, not to mention the thousands of dollars worth of damage I would do to the costume—and the possibility of death by electrocution if any of the wires in my costume crossed. I could feel the throbbing power of thousands of volts of electricity coursing near the hair on my skin surrounding my body. I was also under assault from numerous pressure induced pains from the enormous weight that grew steadily stronger as each hour passed in the costume. The costume weighed about 175 lbs with 75% of that weight on my shoulders alone. Walking was very difficult, and had to be learned from scratch. The joints of the costume were not very flexible, so I could not bend my knees, and they felt something like high voltage ski boots. Walking had to be learned from scratch; right foot and then left foot, very slowly. Looking down with my right telephoto eye—the pavement appeared 30 feet below and very small—I had the sensation of falling. Looking with my left wide-angle eye, the ground looked like it was in my face, so I moved very unsteadily at first. The head was very uncomfortable with electronic objects jutting into my skull and at my right ear there was a slow throbbing pain that became intolerable in just a few minutes. A headache was coming on so I had to have aspirin administered to me through a very small slit where the mouth should be. I could not hear, and I also could not be heard. If I yelled, the sound was lost in the helmet. Someone had to lean very close to my mouth to hear anything and commands were almost impossible to understand. Most people did not pay any attention to me once the costume was on, so I was trapped, afraid, and very much alone on the set.

It was February, and we were shooting in freezing cold weather. While mechanically walking around in the costume I broke out into a cold sweat, but most of the time while the crew haggled and bickered over how to setup the next shot, I was left to hang on a robot rack—which fortunately had been designed to help take some of the weight off my shoulders. The Robot rack was the favorite thing about my day. Hanging in this place, I could rest my shoulders, which were red and sore from the 125 pounds of pressure that was crushing them.

Often I was left hanging there for hours, even when the crew went to get lunch. They forgot about me. I remember the freezing cold creeping into my toes and coursing up my body. Inside the costume, there was only enough room for me to wear long underwear and socks.

Shooting each day lasted 12-16 hours. I remember being afraid that I would not be able to walk and move like the previous Golddigger. Soon those fears were dispelled; I was told that my Robot movements were even better than the last guy. So, when it was my turn to act, I did it with bravado. The scenes that we shot were ridiculous. It seemed like there was nobody in charge. Actually, Jack was in charge. We were all his pawns. I felt like I was in Hitler’s bunker and it was the last days of the war. It would only be a few days before Berlin fell, and Hitler would either; be caught and executed, or he would take his own life. But that was just a fantasy—this was reality, and reality can be worse than fantasy. Jack was no Hitler he was just an over excited eight year old trapped in grown man’s body—with barely enough money to hire a bunch of desperate out-of-work filmmakers to turn his crazy ideas into a nonsensical nightmare…

We were shooting a scene where my friend John played a fast talking neurotic NYC traffic cop. A job that he actually looked convincing, doing. As usual Jack and the crew were arguing how to get the last shots. Everyone on the set was directing and no one was listening. We were running out of daylight and there were still a number of shots to do, and we were shooting quicker than anyone could think or plan. There was no time for a rehearsal—Jack insisted that to save time, “we just shoot the damn thing”. The traffic cop’s tow truck was supposed to peel out of its parked spot and drive away. The driver of this vehicle, who was a hired hand did it just like Jack told him—as fast as possible and like a maniac. We were shooting on Broadway near Astor Place during the 5pm end of day rush hour. There were thousands of people on the street, using cross walks and going from one place to another. Jack yells, “Action”—the tow truck driver peels out of the parking spot. There is 40ft of heavy chain that is dragging behind the tow truck with large hooks on the back, unsecured. As the tow truck quickly picks up speed, these chains go airborne and start swinging around wildly. He rounded the corner with hundreds of unaware pedestrians crossing the street with the chains swinging wildly, hitting signposts and poles with a tremendous crack as the truck sped past. It was a miracle that no one was decapitated. This was done three times, the same each time. No one said anything, no one seemed to be aware and no one wanted to interrupt Jack who was dead set on getting the shot at any cost….

More to come….

keep in touch, there is so much more on the way!! Ari Taub, the patron saint of making this project a reality, is responsible for all the pictures you see here. In the coming week we will be posting these pictures with the captions Ari provided to help give you more insight into his experience with “Robot in the Family”. Remember to spread the word!!