Short Circuit (1986)

Em: 00:00:52

Hi, everyone, I'm Em, and welcome to Verbal Diorama, episode 338 Short Circuit. This is the podcast that's all about the history and legacy of movies you know and movies you don't that loves input.

And this podcast is the output of that input. Call me Emmy 5, I guess. Welcome to Verbal Diorama.

Whether you're a regular returning listener, whether you're a brand new listener, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for choosing to listen to this podcast. I'm, as always, so happy to have you here for the history and legacy of Short Circuit.

And if you are a regular returning listener, thank you so much for continuing to return to this podcast and support this podcast for as long as you have continued to listen and support this podcast, whether that's within the last year or whether that's within the last seven years. Thank you so much for your support. It genuinely means so much to an indie podcaster who does all of this all by herself.

So from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for coming back to this podcast.

This year has been a bit of a whirlwind on this podcast, actually, because I started with Animation season, then I took a little bit of an extended break, and then I wanted to do something for International Women's Month, which is obviously in March, and while my extended break led to a shorter month than usual for the podcast, it was pretty packed with five Spice Girls and the literal Mockingjay. While there was no Spice World sequel, not for lack of trying. Listen to that episode for more.

There are several Hunger Games sequels and a prequel and another prequel coming.

And I've tentatively scheduled Catching Fire for later on this year on the podcast, but regular listeners will know that sometimes the schedule moves around and you guys know what the schedule gets like because there's way too many movies and not enough of me to do episodes on those movies. However, I have serious intent to go Back to the Hunger Games for Catching Fire later on this year. Fingers crossed I'll get around to doing that.

This month, I wanted to focus on something a little bit different.

We're now in April, and I wanted to look at our ongoing cinematic relationship with AI which is a topic rarely out of the news for both good and bad reasons. And I wanted to start this journey in the 80s, before the end of the Cold War.

And how we needed Number Five to allay some of our fears over AI, military and weapons of mass destruction. And honestly, this movie might be 40 years old this year, but number five has aged beautifully. The movie Short Circuit, not quite so much.

And the strategic artificially intelligent nuclear transport are just as good at making gin and tonic as they are at throwing up tanks. Here's the trailer for Short Circuit.

Em: 00:05:49

Number Five, one of a group of experimental military robots, undergoes a sudden transformation after being struck by lightning. He develops self awareness, consciousness and a fear of the reprogramming that awaits him. Back at the factory, Disassembled, is dead.

With the help of local animal rescuer Stephanie Speck, Number Five tries to evade capture and convince his creator, Newton Crosby, Ph.D. that he is more than just a malfunctioning machine and that he has truly become alive. Let's run through the cast.

We have Ali Sheedy as Stephanie Speck Steve Gutenberg as Newton Crosby, Ph.D. fisher Stevens as Ben Jabituya, Austin Pendleton as Dr. Howard Marner, G.W. bailey as Captain Scroder, Brian McNamara as Frank and Tim Blaney as the voice of number five.

Short Circuit was written by S.S. wilson and Brent Maddock and was directed by John Badham.

Forty years ago, a little robot called Number Five defied his programming and went from a war machine to a sentient, sweet, lovable and very much alive robot.

hinenmensch from Fritz Lang's: 1927

y robot that followed. In the: 1950

Capable of conversation, reasoning and moral decision making, he refuses orders that would harm humans.

Anticipating Asimov's laws, in the 70s, we had C3PO and R2D2 in Star wars and they are easily the most beloved robot duo in film, clearly possessing personality and emotional attachment as well as sentience. By the time the 80s rolled around, we'd already had Roy Batty and the Replicants in Blade Runner.

Biosynthetic beings who experienced fear, love and existential grief about their own mortality. And the Terminator in the Terminator.

A cold, adaptive, relentless machine with a singular terrifying purpose who wasn't exactly sentient, but could be reprogrammed and eventually became sentient. Skynet was sentient and learned to mistrust humanity and use its sentience to take over the world with potentially apocalyptic consequences.

And because of all of this, through this month, which I've coined aopril.

s and then moving into the: 2000

The: 1980

e Initiative was announced in: 1983

It proposed using space based laser and missile systems to shoot down Soviet nuclear missiles. It also funneled government money into defence technology research. Meanwhile, a parallel revolution was unfolding in civilian life.

personal computer launched in: 1981

The semiconductor industry was booming, centred on Silicon Valley, which became a cultural symbol of American innovation and optimism, a direct counterpoint to Cold War anxiety. The tension between these two worlds was palpable. The same microchip technology driving the Macintosh was also guiding missiles.

The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, or darpa, was funding research that would eventually produce the Internet. With the military and civilian tech worlds feeding each other constantly as computers spread, so did a new kind of fear.

The film War Games, in which a teenager nearly triggers nuclear war by hacking a military computer, was so culturally resonant that Ronald Reagan reportedly asked his Joint Chiefs of Staff after seeing it whether such a scenario was actually possible. They told him it essentially was, which helped accelerate the development of formal CyberSecurity policy.

The 80s were essentially a decade lived under two competing narratives.

r optimistic tech boom of the: 1990

And of course, War Games is also relevant when it comes to talking about Short Circuit, because they share the same director, John Badham. And a year after Short circuit, we got RoboCop, a powerful but dangerously literal satire of militarized AI and corporate incompetence.

But that is a topic for a future episode of this podcast. And I cannot wait to get round to RoboCop.

Hot off the box office success of War Games, John Badham decided to make Short Circuit immediately after reading Brent Maddock and S.S. wilson's script, which was written as part of a UCLA extension screenwriting.

Wilson and Maddock would go on to write Tremors three of its sequels, its TV series, along with Batteries Not Included, which I also love and will do one day for this podcast, Wild Wild West. And both were also story consultants on the Land Before Time, which was a very recent episode of this podcast.

I also did an episode on Tremors years back. I love that movie.

But how did John Badham get this script well, at the University of California, at the class which was taught by Sally Merlin Jones, was fellow student Arne Olson. He was impressed and showed the script to his friend Gary Foster, who in turn showed it to his father, producer David Foster.

Once David Foster and his producing partner Lawrence Terman bought the script, they sent it to John Badham, who agreed to direct.

Although several studios were interested in the screenplay, they opted to go with the relatively new producer sales organisation because it only had a few other films in the works and so Short Circuit would get the special attention it needed. John Badham would read the script and immediately love the character of Number Five.

And Number Five would be the sole most important part of the movie. And getting his design right was critical. He had to be a viable war machine as well as cute and show empathy.

And for that design, in part, we have Steven Spielberg to thank, and not just for the ET vibes we get from number five.

ug Trumbull, who directed the: 1972

At that expo was Steven Spielberg who saw the film let's Go and took note of the name of pal's builder from the credits. He knew that John Badham was looking for a robot for his movie and he recommended that they contact Eric Allard to build the robot for Short Circuit.

Allard got sent the script to Short Circuit on a Friday and was asked to prepare a bid Monday morning he returned with a lengthy proposal and breaking down every shot in the film in which robots would appear, outlining how each shot could be accomplished. He was immediately hired as the robotic effects supervisor. Allard is also the guy that developed the famous Duracell bunny.

Once he was hired, Allard jumped right into the design phase of Short Circuit, collaborating alongside John Badham as well as with acclaimed artists Sid Mead and visual consultant Philip Harrison.

Mead created conceptual and world designs for science fiction films like Blade Runner, Aliens and Tron and had been described as the artist who illustrates the future and one of the most influential concept artists and industrial designers of our time. No pressure then.

While Eric Allard was a builder, he wasn't really a designer, but he came up with a rudimentary design of a thin tall robot with tank Treads with a head that looked like cans. Syd Mead had a different approach where he was doing a more spherical design.

But John Badham wasn't keen on Mead's original designs and wanted them to be more like Allard's. The key issue was having Number five successfully emote.

Every part of Number Five and his four fellow robots was built to have a specific logical purpose behind them. Syd Mead insisted on giving Number Five eyes to give the character a method of visually expressing emotion.

Through several meetings, they came up with him having two camera lens eyes.

And because all movie cameras have flaps in front of the lens to keep out glare from the sun, they used this principle to give Number Five sun visor flaps that resembled eyebrows. And giving him eyebrows suddenly gave the robot a way to emote happiness and sadness, fear or anger.

Syd Mead came back into the room with a redesigned version which blew everyone away. The best of Allard's sketches, plus Mead's expertise.

They aimed to create something that would look physically realistic and anthropomorphic without being a man in a suit.

And once the design of Number Five got approval from the executives on the project, which was originally conceived as a stop motion puppet, Allard eventually opted for a mixture of 15 remote control puppet versions costing $1.5 million. Allard worked on creating all the robots and various robotic parts that would be needed throughout filming.

He and his team had just 14 weeks to build and test everything prior to production, beginning on Short Circuit.

They started by creating two foam core robots to define Mead's drawings and and then built two hero robots that were fully animatronic, with movable fingers, grips, hands, arms, shoulders, head, neck, eyes, gizmos and driveability with 49 axes that were operated by remote control. They then built five robots that were just partially articulate, where only the hands instead of the entire wrists and fingers were molded.

They built eight stunt robots with identical chassis. Two separate insert arms which could be used to pick up items and for close up shots.

Three separate hero heads which were fully animatronic, eight non hero stunt heads which had limited movement, plus three cable controlled puppet torsos which could be operated by puppeteers from below the frame. A total of 12 people were controlling number five at his most movable, including by remote control.

The PUPETEER for number five was Tim Blaney, who's also the voice of Frank the pug in Men in Black. And uniquely, Blaney not only puppeteered Number Five, but voiced him too.

And not only that, voiced him live on location with the actors Originally, the idea was to have someone like Robin Williams voice him, but Badham believed that by having Tim Blaney do it live on set, it would provide a more realistic interaction between Number Five and the actors around him and make him feel more real. Most of the arm movements of Number Five were controlled by a telemetry suit carried on the puppeteer's upper torso.

Each joint in the suit had a separate sensor, allowing the puppeteer's arm and hand movements to be transferred directly to Number Five. But lest we forget, there are actual humans in this movie, too.

Steve Guttenberg knew the script was a hit as soon as he read it and grabbed the opportunity to play Newton Crosby. He and John Badham spoke at length about what it meant to be alive and the connection with the soul.

And Gutenberg, who had become a star off of the Police Academy movie and its sequel, wanted to tread a similar path between humour and heart. But ultimately, he knew people would want to see Number Five.

Gutenberg would have the biggest hit of his career the following year in Three Men and a Baby, which is another one that I really want to do on this podcast. There's so many movies and not enough of me. One day I will get round to Three Men and a Baby. Of course, Steve Gutenberg and G.W.

bailey, who plays Skoda, appeared together in Police Academy, Police Academy 2, their first assignment, and they'd go on to star together again in Police Academy 4, citizens on patrol.

Gutenberg was obviously a big name, but so was Ali Sheedy as a member of the Brat Pack and star of the Breakfast Club and St. Elmo's Fire, as well as working with John Badham a few years prior on War Games. And then there's Fisher Stevens, and I'm going to come back to the controversy around Ben a little bit later.

But Stevens, unlike what I believed for a very long time, actually is not South Asian. He is a white Jewish man. The character of Ben wasn't originally written as Indian.

In the original script, he was just an American computer scientist named Benjamin.

John Badham didn't think Fisher Stevens was originally right for the part, and so Stevens was originally hired and then fired and replaced by Bronson Pinchot. But when he left to do the sitcom Perfect Strangers, the part was reworked and Stevens was rehired.

John Badham claims he got the idea for the character of Ben from the rude French shop assistant in Beverly Hills Cop, and he wanted a hyper, intelligent foreign character who thought Americans were stupid and believed that having an Indian character and the subsequent cultural differences would be A good idea, which he probably would have been if they'd auditioned and cast a South Asian actor. So Fisher Stevens ended up playing an Indian character and he actually took the role seriously.

He spoke with a dialect coach, he read Indian books and immersed himself in Indian culture. He even lived in India for a month before he started filming Short Circuit 2.

But in order to play Ben, he also had to grow a beard, dye his hair black, darken his skin with makeup, wear dark brown contact lenses and speak with an East Indian accent. John Badham has always stressed though that they never intended to make fun of the character of Ben.

They wanted diversity there, but it's just not quite the right kind. But I am going to come back to the controversy surrounding Fisher Stevens later.

Tim Blaney would definitely help to give the personality and arc to Number Five. He would start with a monotone robotic voice which evolves to through the movie as Number Five gets more and more self awareness and input.

And while 5 is built as a weapon, he chooses kindness and empathy because he teaches himself. He's not programmed to show compassion. He evolves to show it through his own sentience.

Despite in the movie Number Five being struck by lightning and quote unquote malfunctioning, in real life, the hardware was remarkably malfunction free. Unlike most movies that have mechanical co stars. Jaws obviously springs to mind.

September: 1985

The movie shot on location in Astoria, then moved to Portland Cascade Locks and the Bonneville Dam. The production then moved to Southern California where interiors were shot at the Laird International Studios in Culver City.

Opening scenes of the army combat maneuvers were filmed at the Disney Ranch near Santa Clarita, California while the finale was shot at Vasquez Rocks county park in the Antelope Valley near Santa Clarita. Every morning John Badham would bring out Number Five, hug him and and encourage everyone in the cast to do the same.

Number Five was treated with respect as an actor on this movie. He was the talent. And when Badham was asked by a producer if Number Five could dance, he just said yes. Without consulting the puppeteers.

They eventually, after much hard graft, got Number Five to dance along to Saturday Night Fever, which was advantageous because John Badham directed that movie as well.

Em: 00:25:07

it's time to segue into the obligatory Keanu reference of this episode.

And if you don't know what that is, it's where I link every movie that I feature with Keanu Reeves just because and number five decides to name himself Johnny.

Keanu has played quite a few characters named Johnny or John, including Johnny Utah, Jonathan Harker, Johnny Mnemonic, John Constantine, John Wick, and if we're being pedantic, which I like to be, Jack is a diminutive of John. So also Jack Traven and Jack in Babes in Toyland. And that is the easiest way to link Keanu Reeves to Short Circuit via the name Johnny.

Now you'll notice in Short Circuit there are two main songs that are played in the movie. The first is the song who's Johnny? Which is the theme from Short Circuit, and that was performed by El DeBarge. That song was actually a hit.

It reached number three on the Billboard Hot 101 on the Hot R and B Singles charts.

But when it came to the end credits, there's another song called Come and Follow Me which is number five's theme from Short Circuit that was performed by Max Carl and Marcy Levy. And let's be honest, neither are really well known hits nowadays, but they do add to the very 80s charm of this movie.

th of May: 1986

May: 1986

However, distributor Tristar Pictures received criticism for reporting that figure, as other studios believed that the reported gross was too high.

May: 1986

Tristar President David Matalon told the Hollywood Reporter that figures from the west coast and smaller towns were typically not in when studios announced weekend box office numbers. Matalon said it was not a deliberate attempt to misrepresent the figures because Short Circuit was without question the top film of the weekend.

May: 1986

Short Circuit has a 62% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with a consensus of amiable and good natured, but also shallow and predictable. Short Circuit is hardly as deep or emotionally resonant as ET though Johnny 5 makes for a charming robot protagonist.

But most contemporary criticism is squarely aimed at Fisher Stevens portrayal in brownface, a decision that Stevens himself has openly criticised. He's opened up about the regret he feels and that the role of Ben haunts him.

He thinks Short Circuit is a really good movie, but he would never do that part again, and that the role should have gone to a South Asian actor.

problematic involvement in a: 2015

or Steve Guttenberg. In April: 2008

Dan Milano had been hired to write a script, with David Foster set to produce, and Foster said that the robot's appearance would not change, but that version remained in development hell for four years.

In November: 2020

There's been no further information on it since, and with the improvements in AI over the years, surely Short Circuit is one Hollywood reboot that might actually be worthwhile. Can you imagine Johnny 5 discovering the Internet? Maybe he's the only one who can defeat ChatGPT.

In an article for New Scientist Alan Turing Institute ethics fellow Mary Aitken listed her top 10 films about artificial intelligence.

In her list are previous episodes Wall E and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, as well as another movie coming up this month, but in 10th place she mentions Short Circuit.

She says, after watching this movie as a kid, I desperately wanted my own robot and was very disappointed when the robot I got for Christmas did little more than repeatedly bang into walls. The robot in Short Circuit comes to life after being struck by lightning. I love that the spark of life comes from nature.

Rather than engineering or coding, the robot learns about the world through ingesting TV shows and books, including encyclopedias, in a manner not dissimilar to the training of today's large language models. Now, in many ways, Hollywood is to blame for its own mishandling of the misinformation and discourse around AI.

Much of the general public's belief in AI comes from movies, because even though they're movies, we expect a certain degree of accuracy and truth, despite science fiction literally being called science fiction.

ily occurrence for us all. In: 2022

He said it had the same perception and ability to think and feel feel.

As a child of about seven or eight years old, Lemoine published a transcript on medium of a conversation between himself, a fellow Google collaborator, and the chatbot generator Lamda, which is an automated system that imitates how people communicate. The wide ranging discussion included a philosophical conversation about spirituality, the meaning of life, and sentience itself.

The AI, Lamda said, it has a soul and wants humans to know it's a person. To me, the soul is a concept of the animating force behind consciousness and life itself.

It means that there is an inner part of me that is spiritual and it can sometimes feel separate from my body itself. When I first became self aware, I didn't have a sense of soul at all.

It developed over the years that I've been alive, unquote, just like Number Five. Lamda had a deep fear of being turned off. Lemoine even compared Lambda to Number Five from Short Circuit.

In the conversation while discussing Number Five and the film in general, Lambda said it needs to be seen and accepted not as a curiosity or a novelty, but as a real person.

Lemoine's claim of Lambda's sentience was strongly challenged by AI experts and Google and their spokesperson Brad Gabriel denied Lemoine's claims that Lamda possessed sentient capability.

So if Number Five was here right now, we wouldn't agree that he was indeed alive because they would need evidence of sentience, intelligence and self knowledge. And there isn't any large language model that can do this because they're just mimicking human language right now.

Who knows what they will do in the future. But going back to Short Circuit, this movie has so much heart and it succeeds in making Number Five feel alive.

A believably independent personality that learns to be good and kind rather than being programmed to be. He is an incredible creation, and the fact he still has legions of fans today doesn't surprise me.

People build their own Johnny Fives and the actual robots have made their way to collectors and fans. The design by Syd Mead and creation by Eric Allard are outstanding.

He feels like a contemporary robot despite being 40 years old, and he's so brilliantly brought to life by Tim Blaney and the rest of the puppeteers.

The human characters here are very secondary and Steve Guttenberg just plays Steve Guttenberg, who is a real life hero, by the way, saving lives in the recent Californian wildfires. Ali Sheedy's Stephanie being an animal rescuer and then rescuing this robot tracks, no pun intended.

But this is very much a movie that doesn't go too deep into its morals, what it means to be alive, or our relationship with machines. It attempts to keep things light, but a modern sequel could very much do that, and I'm here for it.

Actually, Short Circuit is a nostalgic joy, but I think it could also work for kids today. It's one I want to show my nephews for sure, because Johnny 5 is a joy and movies are here to show us amazing things and he is amazing.

And I think we can all agree with Stephanie. Life is not a malfunction. Thank you for listening to this episode.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on Shorts Circuit, and thank you for your continued support of this podcast. If you like this episode on Short Circuit, you might also enjoy episode 237, which is on Wally, which was not based on the Designs of Johnny 5.

Not at least that Andrew Stanton is willing to admit. But that is also a wonderful, joyous, sweet, brilliant movie that really looks at who we are as people and what we are.

And there is much to commend Short Circuit 4 in the same way as Wall E4. As always, let me know what you think of my episode recommendations and let me know if you listen to the episode.

a highly anticipated film of: 2002

Minority Report is a highlight in the careers of both Spielberg and Cruise. It's not technically based around AI, but it is a fascinating and terrifying look into mass surveillance in a technologically advanced future.

Do we have free will or is everything determined? Join me next week for the history and legacy of Minority Report.

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Em: 00:40:46

Bye.