In another article from the Impact archives, January 1994, we bring you a piece on Robert Burke and his job of replacing Peter Weller for RoboCop 3…
When Robert Burke was offered the opportunity to pick up the mantle of cyborg cop Murphy for the title role in Robocop 3, his response was thanks but no thanks. "I wasn't really interested", said the easy-going actor of the offer the replace Peter Weller (who played Murphy in the first two Robocop movies) inside the suit. "I didn't think it was an acting opportunity and wasn't thrilled with the script's violence."
Fortunately neither were Robocop's filmmakers (particularly director Fred Dekker and the film's co-writer, comic book scribe Frank Miller) who, in subsequent script drafts, toned down the violence, added a socially conscious storyline in which the metal man aids the homeless and then offered Burke another shot at the part. "At that point taking the part became more of a personal challenge", chuckled Burke. "I put on the costume and my first impulse was to fall down. But I thought Well, Peter Weller wore the costume for two movies and didn't fall down once'. I figured I could keep from falling down as well." Unfortunately, what the actor discovered once Robocop 3 began filming was that the suit had gotten heavier since Weller's tour of duty. "The heaviest suit in the first two films was sixty pounds. My lightest was ninety. It was like acting with somebody on your shoulders. During filming, the costume kept breaking and they (Rob Bottin and his FX mob) would have to reinforce it with steel so, by the tune we were finished filming, the suit weighed more than one-hundred-and-fifty pounds". And it was a suit, groaned the actor, that could be unforgiving. "I basically had to stay in shape the entire five months of filming because I literally could not gain a pound and still fit into it", he laughed. "And sure enough, one day I went to get into the suit and I couldn't get the legs on. I went off the set, did a quick steam bath, jumped some rope and lost a couple of pounds on the spot so I could get the daunted thing on.
Burke, whose memories of previous Robocops is that "the first one was good, the second one was bad and that Peter was quite good in both of them", found his background in mime and karate invaluable elements in putting some lethal punch in his walking metal cop. "The first day I got on the set and just started to move around and improvise inside the costume and Fred (Dekker) and the others came around watching and saying that's very good. Having an awareness of my body inside the costume was pretty important, especially in the scenes where I've got a bunch of people rushing at me. I had to know what to do before I did it and the tuning had to be real split second or somebody, possibly me, could have been hurt." Burke's recollections of Robocop rough work included a sequence in which a wall of flame bounced back at hunt; a sequence the actor recalled being safe right up to the moment it became unsafe'. "I had all this gasoline strapped to my body and I looked at the assistant director at one point and he's sitting there smoking a cigarette," he reports of the sequence in which he incinerates a desk. "That worried me. Then the scene continued mid bullets were fired at me and I started getting concerned about what would happen if one of the bullets hit the gas container on my body? That worried me a lot."
Burke recalled the night he had to carry actress Nancy Allen down a seventy-five foot church aisle. "How do I put this delicately? Nancy weighed a bit and, when added to the weight of the costume, it made that walk one of my biggest physical challenges." His other big challenge was dodging bullets. "They would yell 'action! and there would be five special effects guys firing off a thousand rounds: of bullet hits all around me. In the beginning I would close my eyes because I was scared to death. But, towards the end of filming, I realised the costume would protect me and so I kept my eyes wide open." Burro, who admits to not having seen Robocop 3 in nearly three years (owing to a financial mess that has kept the film and others on the shelf for ages after completion) has high hopes for the movie. "I don't want Robocop 3 to be perceived as just a good film. I want it to come across as fantastic. It's classic action-adventure stuff. It's the good guys vs the bad guys. The only difference is the good guy I play is really bad."
Robert Burke, born in Long Island, New York, gravitated toward acting at an early age mid, while still in high school, performed with the Long Island Performing Arts Foundation Playhouse. He furthered his acting education at Adelphi University and the State University of New York's Purchase Acting Conservatory. He then promptly left the profession. "To that point it had been more theory than actual acting and I just decided to get out of the business for a while," remembered Burke of his six year hiatus. "I took some time off, got sidetracked, did some teaching, did some carpentry and was basically away from the business until I got a call from director Hal Hartley to appear in the film The Unbelievable Truth."
Burke, who has also appeared in Ramblin' Rose and the cult horror film Dust Devil and will shortly appear in Heaven and Earth and Tombstone, does not see his turn in Robocop 3 or any of his other roles as career moves. "Hey," he laughed, "I've only been back it this game for three years. I'm in a good place. I can do a Robocop and then go do a small independent thing. It's not like anything I decide to do at this point, people will say why did he do that?" Robocop 3 has already opened in the States as well as in parts of Europe and Asia and, as a result, Burke has already been the recipient of a fair amount of fan mail. He appreciates it but is also amazed by the intensity of it. 'I've never been a science fiction fan so maybe that's why I'm knocked out by what people are getting out of this movie. My feeling is 'hey it's only a robot, fellas. Calm down'."
