Dr. Peter Weller
speaker
668 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Dr. Peter Weller’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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The tragedy is that, and he's talking about tragedy, but when you're in the character, I'm not thinking this is tragic. You see the movie 20 years later, it's tragic. He says the one thing they can't, they've taken everything. But the most important thing is they've taken your identity. But the most important thing is they've taken your family. They've taken your wife and child.
And they've taken your consciousness away from you. But they cannot take your soul.
And your soul wakes up on its own. And so I'm remembering that conversation in my suite. And I tell you, I could cry like that thinking about it. But when I listened to it, I thought it was the weirdest fucking thing. Like, I don't want to really hear about it. That, in spite of the fact that I was sober at the time, and I really had no serious spiritual program.
But to hear Paul talk about it then and talk about it now, and then when you see that the idea of resurrection, which, by the way, is the theme to that film. I asked people that. I love the film. I asked a kid the other day. He said, oh, you know, I grew up with that film. And it was at the World Renaissance Society, and here's this young academic. I grew up with that film.
I said, what's the theme of it? And it's like great Elia Kazan said, my mentor Uta Hagen says, if you can't say what the theme of a work is in one word, all you're talking about is plot, story, significance, you know, resonance with whatever. It's all important. But what is the damn theme?
It's resurrection. It's rebirth. Like all great stories. It's not war. It's not this. It's not that. It's like the theme of Chinatown. I got to tell Robert Towne, thank God, with John Milius when they were smoking a cigar. Thank God I got to tell Robert Towne. Listen, Chinatown is the, or one of the three, greatest pieces of visual rhetoric on America ever made. Ever made.
And because the theme of it is dynasty and incest. Now, people don't want to see that. People want to say, oh, it's power. No. Oh, it's water. No. Oh, it's land. No, it's not. What's the last thing John Huston does? Take that girl out of that car, say, come with me.
She's my mother.
I mean, she's my daughter. She's my sister. She's my daughter. She's my sister. She's my daughter. That's the theme of it. That that guy, like the Egyptians and everybody else, wants that dynasty.
Fuck the valley. That's the plot, man. So I get to say to Robert Towne this, and I said, you know, I was at Bob McKee's story analysis course, and everybody missed it. I'm sitting with Diane Keaton. I'm sitting with other famous actors, my friends. I'm sitting with the entire development team of Paramount Pictures, and Bob McKee's saying, what is the theme of Chinatown?
And people are saying power, water, land, blah, blah, blah. And McKee goes, no, it's not. It's the thing you don't want to look at. It's the most horrible thing in the world. It's fucking incest. It's dynasty. Yeah.
It's the Ptolemies. That's right. It's the fucking Ptolemies. And so I get to tell Robert Towne. I said, Robert Towne, bless his heart, man. I was sitting with John Milius. John Milius is a hero to me. And they're both going, yeah, yeah. Because they don't want to see it. They don't want to see it.
Especially when it's an alien on your face. Speaking of beautiful stories.
Especially when it jumps out of the thing. It jumps on your face. No one would do that. So that's the beautiful thing about RoboCop. It's not about army. It's not about society. That's the stories in it. And all those ideas in it about trickle-down economics and privatization of this and militarization of whatever. Just for power. But it's not about that. That's what people want.
It's about rebirth. You know, it's about finding, it's about resurrection, man. It's a theme that goes all the way back to the Egyptians.
And so I ask that all the time. I stand in classes and somebody will ask me about Robocop. You know, I got to give a thing for the LA Breakfast Club. Uh-huh. So, okay, what's the theme of this film? Uh-huh. Once in a blue moon, somebody will say, rebirth. And I say, thank you. And everybody goes, oh, how? Oh, yeah, it is. Yeah, because of what?
Because of metaphysics, not because of any physical world. The beauty part of story is, as Casey's husband, who's an extraordinary writer, Dan, the beauty part is that you can encase a metaphysical or spiritual something and bury it in an incredibly entertaining plot arc, you've got lightning in a bottle, man. Because people won't even know why they love it.
And I venture to say, thanks to Paul Verhoeven's imagery that he puts in there, thanks to his drive of it, if you gave that to an average American action director, that movie would not be that movie. In spite of Ed Neumeier's and Mike Miner's gifts, in spite of whatever us actors lent to it, it would not be that movie without Paul. Without that vision of resurrection driving it.
Right? It would be a nice action movie and funny and kind of cool and about America.
It is the soul of the movie.
Showing 341–360 of 668 · page 18 of 34
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