a***@coolgroups.com
2004-04-19 05:41:02 UTC
Reviewed by Galen Strickland
http://templetongate.tripod.com/robotfilm.htm
Sometime late in 1977, Harlan Ellison encountered a film
producer in the Warner Brothers studio commissary, and the
conversation eventually came around to the fact that
Warners had optioned Isaac Asimov's I, Robot but had yet to
see an acceptable screenplay. When it became apparent that
Harlan was both exceedingly familiar with the stories, and
also had a definite idea of how it should be adapted to the
screen, he was asked to take a crack at a script.
Touching base with Asimov himself on several occasions,
Ellison devoted nearly a year to the project, working on it
exclusively and putting several other stories and script
ideas on hold for the interim. When it was complete and had
received Asimov's complete support, Harlan began a series
of frustrating meetings with Warners executives. Many
changes were suggested, none of which Ellison was willing
to implement. As written, his concept of the stories would
have been a bold, mature, and complex examination of the
life of Susan Calvin, a "robo-psychologist" in the employ
of U. S. Robots and Mechanical Men, the world's largest
manufacturer of robots. The studio heads, of course, knew
exactly what was wrong with the script. It didn't feature
cute and comical robots as had become enormously popular
the previous year in the original Star Wars film, now known
as Episode IV: A New Hope. Nothing Ellison could say was
going to alter their perception of the film, so his script
was shelved and they went looking for other writers.
Several times over the next few years different directors
were also approached in connection with the project, and on
more than one occasion they asked to see Ellison's script
but were informed his version was unacceptable and would
not be used.
PLEASE NOTE: The upcoming film starring Will Smith is not
based on this screenplay, and from what I have read was not
even originally based on Asimov's stories. Instead, changes
were made to the new script to add the elements of Asimov's
Laws of Robotics and acquire rights to use the title.
Years later, when it seemed apparent a production based on
his script was not likely to be undertaken, Ellison was
still anxious for the general SF audience to be able to
read and appreciate his work. He was successful in
persuading Warner Brothers to allow the screenplay to be
printed in a serialized version in Asimov's Science Fiction
magazine, and it appeared in the November, December and
Holiday issues of 1987. In 1994, Warner Books also issued a
hardcover edition of the script, with both color and black-
and-white illustrations by Mark Zug. In his introduction,
Ellison expressed the desire for readers who enjoyed the
book to contact Warner Brothers and petition them to use
his script for a production of the film. Unfortunately,
this book is currently out of print, and since back-issues
of 24-year old Asimov's would be extremely difficult to
find, there are many SF fans who would probably appreciate
it but might never get the chance to read this screenplay.
Perhaps my descriptions and analysis of it here can aid you
in understanding why this is possibly the greatest SF film
never made.
When first informed of the project Ellison correctly
surmised the basic mistake other screenwriters had made
with their scripts. Since I, Robot is a collection of short
stories rather than a continuous novel storyline, most had
envisioned it as an omnibus type of film, i.e. an anthology
of short vignettes. Even though Ellison also took an
episodic approach, his screenplay focused on the character
he felt was the most important to the whole saga, that of
Susan Calvin. For book publication, Asimov had added
connecting passages between many of the stories that
related the efforts of a reporter to interview Calvin on
the occasion of her retirement from the robot firm for
which she had worked her entire adult life. This gave
Ellison the idea of emulating one of his favorite films,
Citizen Kane, in which a reporter interviews friends and
acquainances of Charles Foster Kane following the death of
the reclusive tycoon.
An early segment of the screenplay recounts the events of
the story "Robbie," with an alteration that replaces Gloria
Weston with the young Susan Calvin as the child whose nanny
was a robot. It was the devotion of Robbie to young Susan,
and her to it, that compells her to pursue a career in
robotics. I have read I, Robot several times, and I have
also read a few of Asimov's other robot stories, however I
have not read them all, which were collected as The
Complete Robot in 1982. Ellison used some elements from
some of these extra stories in his screenplay, but because
of my lack of reading experience with all of the stories I
am not sure if some scenes were creations of Ellison
himself or based on stories I have not read.
Two different stories in the original I, Robot concerned
Stephen Byerly, a lawyer who was suspected of being a robot
in disguise and who later entered a career in politics and
eventually became chairman of the World Council. Ellison's
screenplay begins with the announcement of the death of
Byerly, who is described as a chairman of the Galactic
Council. Many aspects of Byerly's life had been shrouded in
mystery for many years, and an enterprising reporter sets
his sights on penetrating these mysteries when he
encounters Susan Calvin at the memorial services. Rumors
had been rife concerning a possible relationship between
Calvin and Byerly, and the reporter figures to uncover
truths about the man by probing into the life of Calvin.
She rejects his bid for an interview, so instead he embarks
on the task of interviewing co-workers of Calvin's, among
them Gregory Powell and Michael Donovan, trouble-shooters
for the robot manufacturing firm. In a flashback to their
younger days, they tell the reporter of an occasion in
which they had observed the ingenuity and strength of will
Calvin brought to her profession as robo-psychologist, a
discipline which had made her the most knowledgeable
authority on the positronic brains of the robots. The story
Ellison used for this segment, "Runaround," was one in
which Calvin was not featured, however her inclusion in the
script version of this story was handled with complete
logic.
Another segment of the script is a recreation of the
story "Liar." This time the flashback is related by another
of Calvin's colleagues, the mathematician Peter Bogert, who
is temporarily revived from cryonic suspension for the
interview. This is an element I am assuming was a construct
of Ellison's that had not appeared in one of the stories,
but I may be wrong about that.
The usual instructions for screenwriting is not to include
too much description of the scenery, and certainly not
camera movements and placement, which is the prerogative of
the director and his cameraman. Thankfully, Ellison has
ignored this advice and given an excellent description of
this scene. It would have been very easy to visualize it
even without Mark Zug's illustrations, but I am glad they
were included because they are as masterful an
interpretation of Ellison's ideas as Ellison's words are of
Asimov's original stories. I have no idea if Harlan had
another film in mind when he wrote this scene, but it
reminded me of John Carpenter's first film, Dark Star, in
which a starship crewman converses with his "dead,"
cryonically frozen commander.
"Liar" is my favorite of the robot stories, one in which a
unknown element in the manufacture of a robotic prototype
has rendered the machine capable of reading the minds of
its human creators. Herbie, as the robot is known,
constrained from harming humans by the restrictions of the
Three Laws of Robotics ยน, is forced to lie to them in order
to protect them from what it considers information that
would harm them psychologically. Even though Herbie knows
the reason behind his unusual ability, he witholds this
information from Bogert and executive officer Alfred
Lanning, since he realizes this information would damage
the humans' self-esteem.
When Herbie learns that Susan Calvin harbors an infatuation
with another of her colleagues, Milton Ashe, the robot
informs her that Ashe is secretly in love with her but is
too shy to broach the subject himself. Normally shy and
reclusive herself, Calvin eventually begins to believe this
lie, but before she is able to open up to Ashe about her
feelings he informs her that he is considering marriage to
someone else. Devastated by this revelation, Calvin
confronts Herbie about the lie. She is able to drive the
robot into a catatonic state when it realizes its lies have
harmed the humans as much as the truth would have, and thus
it has inadvertantly broken the First Law.
One of the Susan Calvin stories not included in I, Robot
but that Ellison incorporated into his script is "Lenny."
Lenny is another robot prototype which suffers from an
error in its manufacture, the error in this case rendering
its positronic brain into the semblance of a human infant.
All of the robots' brains had been designed for specific
purposes, such as off-world mining operations or an
intricate manufacturing procedure. Lenny's malfunction
occured as a result of a child's random keystrokes on a
keyboard inadvertantly left open during a school group's
tour of the robot factory. Every official with the company
but one feels that Lenny should be destroyed since he would
be unable to perform the function intended. Calvin argues
in his defense that it is the perfect opportunity to see if
a positronic brain could be trained from scratch much as a
child learns from its experiences. Her speculation was that
such a procedure might result in a multi-purpose, versatile
robot capable of learning many tasks. The others relent,
and Calvin devotes the rest of her professional life to
Lenny's training.
The original story ended there with no indication of
whether her experiment was successful or not, but with the
implied assumption that anything to which Calvin set her
mind would be accomplished. Ellison used this idea as a
springboard to tie it into the previously mentioned stories
about Stephen Byerly. Toward the end of the screenplay,
Calvin finally relents and allows an interview with the
crusading reporter. As she tells the story of Lenny it
gradually dawns on the reporter what Byerly's great secret
had been all along. He was indeed a robot, in fact was the
mature Lenny. The most fantastic story of the reporter's
career is one he has difficulty accepting himself.
Byerly had been the most successful and respected statesman
Earth had ever produced, one who had led humanity into a
bold new future that spanned many star systems and had
encountered multitudes of other sentient species. To
realize that it was a robot that had shaped man's destiny
to such a remarkable degree was more than most people would
be willing to tolerate, as the hatred of robots was still
extremely strong among those who had never ventured off-
world where robots were commonplace.
Since reading this screenplay, I have often wondered if
some of the ideas presented by Ellison had possibly
influenced Asimov in the creation of the series of novels
he produced in the 80's which bridged the gap between the
robot stories and those of the Foundation series, which had
previously not been thematically connected. I have not read
all of them either, but one aspect of them that I do know
is that Asimov presented the concept that the robots helped
create the Galactic Empire as a way to assure the survival
of the human species, which the robots felt to be essential
in order to literally comply with the First Law.
Regretably, a film based on Ellison's screenplay may never
be produced. Even if a film of I, Robot is ever made using
his script as a guideline, it would more than likely be re-
written by so many other writers, directors and/or
producers into such a state as to make it practically
unrecognizable to Ellison as his own work, and what is
worse it would probably resemble Asimov's stories even
less. I was fortunate to be able to obtain this book from
the Science Fiction Book Club several years ago, but it is
no longer offered by them, in fact at the current time they
do not offer any of Ellison's titles and very few of
Asimov's either. I hope that others who have any interest
in this screenplay have luck finding it in their favorite
used bookstore or from an online bookseller. It is a
perfect compliment to the Asimov collection, and it is also
an insight into what is really wrong with the production
process of Hollywood. This is a film that cries out to be
made, just as Ellison envisioned it!
http://templetongate.tripod.com/robotfilm.htm
Sometime late in 1977, Harlan Ellison encountered a film
producer in the Warner Brothers studio commissary, and the
conversation eventually came around to the fact that
Warners had optioned Isaac Asimov's I, Robot but had yet to
see an acceptable screenplay. When it became apparent that
Harlan was both exceedingly familiar with the stories, and
also had a definite idea of how it should be adapted to the
screen, he was asked to take a crack at a script.
Touching base with Asimov himself on several occasions,
Ellison devoted nearly a year to the project, working on it
exclusively and putting several other stories and script
ideas on hold for the interim. When it was complete and had
received Asimov's complete support, Harlan began a series
of frustrating meetings with Warners executives. Many
changes were suggested, none of which Ellison was willing
to implement. As written, his concept of the stories would
have been a bold, mature, and complex examination of the
life of Susan Calvin, a "robo-psychologist" in the employ
of U. S. Robots and Mechanical Men, the world's largest
manufacturer of robots. The studio heads, of course, knew
exactly what was wrong with the script. It didn't feature
cute and comical robots as had become enormously popular
the previous year in the original Star Wars film, now known
as Episode IV: A New Hope. Nothing Ellison could say was
going to alter their perception of the film, so his script
was shelved and they went looking for other writers.
Several times over the next few years different directors
were also approached in connection with the project, and on
more than one occasion they asked to see Ellison's script
but were informed his version was unacceptable and would
not be used.
PLEASE NOTE: The upcoming film starring Will Smith is not
based on this screenplay, and from what I have read was not
even originally based on Asimov's stories. Instead, changes
were made to the new script to add the elements of Asimov's
Laws of Robotics and acquire rights to use the title.
Years later, when it seemed apparent a production based on
his script was not likely to be undertaken, Ellison was
still anxious for the general SF audience to be able to
read and appreciate his work. He was successful in
persuading Warner Brothers to allow the screenplay to be
printed in a serialized version in Asimov's Science Fiction
magazine, and it appeared in the November, December and
Holiday issues of 1987. In 1994, Warner Books also issued a
hardcover edition of the script, with both color and black-
and-white illustrations by Mark Zug. In his introduction,
Ellison expressed the desire for readers who enjoyed the
book to contact Warner Brothers and petition them to use
his script for a production of the film. Unfortunately,
this book is currently out of print, and since back-issues
of 24-year old Asimov's would be extremely difficult to
find, there are many SF fans who would probably appreciate
it but might never get the chance to read this screenplay.
Perhaps my descriptions and analysis of it here can aid you
in understanding why this is possibly the greatest SF film
never made.
When first informed of the project Ellison correctly
surmised the basic mistake other screenwriters had made
with their scripts. Since I, Robot is a collection of short
stories rather than a continuous novel storyline, most had
envisioned it as an omnibus type of film, i.e. an anthology
of short vignettes. Even though Ellison also took an
episodic approach, his screenplay focused on the character
he felt was the most important to the whole saga, that of
Susan Calvin. For book publication, Asimov had added
connecting passages between many of the stories that
related the efforts of a reporter to interview Calvin on
the occasion of her retirement from the robot firm for
which she had worked her entire adult life. This gave
Ellison the idea of emulating one of his favorite films,
Citizen Kane, in which a reporter interviews friends and
acquainances of Charles Foster Kane following the death of
the reclusive tycoon.
An early segment of the screenplay recounts the events of
the story "Robbie," with an alteration that replaces Gloria
Weston with the young Susan Calvin as the child whose nanny
was a robot. It was the devotion of Robbie to young Susan,
and her to it, that compells her to pursue a career in
robotics. I have read I, Robot several times, and I have
also read a few of Asimov's other robot stories, however I
have not read them all, which were collected as The
Complete Robot in 1982. Ellison used some elements from
some of these extra stories in his screenplay, but because
of my lack of reading experience with all of the stories I
am not sure if some scenes were creations of Ellison
himself or based on stories I have not read.
Two different stories in the original I, Robot concerned
Stephen Byerly, a lawyer who was suspected of being a robot
in disguise and who later entered a career in politics and
eventually became chairman of the World Council. Ellison's
screenplay begins with the announcement of the death of
Byerly, who is described as a chairman of the Galactic
Council. Many aspects of Byerly's life had been shrouded in
mystery for many years, and an enterprising reporter sets
his sights on penetrating these mysteries when he
encounters Susan Calvin at the memorial services. Rumors
had been rife concerning a possible relationship between
Calvin and Byerly, and the reporter figures to uncover
truths about the man by probing into the life of Calvin.
She rejects his bid for an interview, so instead he embarks
on the task of interviewing co-workers of Calvin's, among
them Gregory Powell and Michael Donovan, trouble-shooters
for the robot manufacturing firm. In a flashback to their
younger days, they tell the reporter of an occasion in
which they had observed the ingenuity and strength of will
Calvin brought to her profession as robo-psychologist, a
discipline which had made her the most knowledgeable
authority on the positronic brains of the robots. The story
Ellison used for this segment, "Runaround," was one in
which Calvin was not featured, however her inclusion in the
script version of this story was handled with complete
logic.
Another segment of the script is a recreation of the
story "Liar." This time the flashback is related by another
of Calvin's colleagues, the mathematician Peter Bogert, who
is temporarily revived from cryonic suspension for the
interview. This is an element I am assuming was a construct
of Ellison's that had not appeared in one of the stories,
but I may be wrong about that.
The usual instructions for screenwriting is not to include
too much description of the scenery, and certainly not
camera movements and placement, which is the prerogative of
the director and his cameraman. Thankfully, Ellison has
ignored this advice and given an excellent description of
this scene. It would have been very easy to visualize it
even without Mark Zug's illustrations, but I am glad they
were included because they are as masterful an
interpretation of Ellison's ideas as Ellison's words are of
Asimov's original stories. I have no idea if Harlan had
another film in mind when he wrote this scene, but it
reminded me of John Carpenter's first film, Dark Star, in
which a starship crewman converses with his "dead,"
cryonically frozen commander.
"Liar" is my favorite of the robot stories, one in which a
unknown element in the manufacture of a robotic prototype
has rendered the machine capable of reading the minds of
its human creators. Herbie, as the robot is known,
constrained from harming humans by the restrictions of the
Three Laws of Robotics ยน, is forced to lie to them in order
to protect them from what it considers information that
would harm them psychologically. Even though Herbie knows
the reason behind his unusual ability, he witholds this
information from Bogert and executive officer Alfred
Lanning, since he realizes this information would damage
the humans' self-esteem.
When Herbie learns that Susan Calvin harbors an infatuation
with another of her colleagues, Milton Ashe, the robot
informs her that Ashe is secretly in love with her but is
too shy to broach the subject himself. Normally shy and
reclusive herself, Calvin eventually begins to believe this
lie, but before she is able to open up to Ashe about her
feelings he informs her that he is considering marriage to
someone else. Devastated by this revelation, Calvin
confronts Herbie about the lie. She is able to drive the
robot into a catatonic state when it realizes its lies have
harmed the humans as much as the truth would have, and thus
it has inadvertantly broken the First Law.
One of the Susan Calvin stories not included in I, Robot
but that Ellison incorporated into his script is "Lenny."
Lenny is another robot prototype which suffers from an
error in its manufacture, the error in this case rendering
its positronic brain into the semblance of a human infant.
All of the robots' brains had been designed for specific
purposes, such as off-world mining operations or an
intricate manufacturing procedure. Lenny's malfunction
occured as a result of a child's random keystrokes on a
keyboard inadvertantly left open during a school group's
tour of the robot factory. Every official with the company
but one feels that Lenny should be destroyed since he would
be unable to perform the function intended. Calvin argues
in his defense that it is the perfect opportunity to see if
a positronic brain could be trained from scratch much as a
child learns from its experiences. Her speculation was that
such a procedure might result in a multi-purpose, versatile
robot capable of learning many tasks. The others relent,
and Calvin devotes the rest of her professional life to
Lenny's training.
The original story ended there with no indication of
whether her experiment was successful or not, but with the
implied assumption that anything to which Calvin set her
mind would be accomplished. Ellison used this idea as a
springboard to tie it into the previously mentioned stories
about Stephen Byerly. Toward the end of the screenplay,
Calvin finally relents and allows an interview with the
crusading reporter. As she tells the story of Lenny it
gradually dawns on the reporter what Byerly's great secret
had been all along. He was indeed a robot, in fact was the
mature Lenny. The most fantastic story of the reporter's
career is one he has difficulty accepting himself.
Byerly had been the most successful and respected statesman
Earth had ever produced, one who had led humanity into a
bold new future that spanned many star systems and had
encountered multitudes of other sentient species. To
realize that it was a robot that had shaped man's destiny
to such a remarkable degree was more than most people would
be willing to tolerate, as the hatred of robots was still
extremely strong among those who had never ventured off-
world where robots were commonplace.
Since reading this screenplay, I have often wondered if
some of the ideas presented by Ellison had possibly
influenced Asimov in the creation of the series of novels
he produced in the 80's which bridged the gap between the
robot stories and those of the Foundation series, which had
previously not been thematically connected. I have not read
all of them either, but one aspect of them that I do know
is that Asimov presented the concept that the robots helped
create the Galactic Empire as a way to assure the survival
of the human species, which the robots felt to be essential
in order to literally comply with the First Law.
Regretably, a film based on Ellison's screenplay may never
be produced. Even if a film of I, Robot is ever made using
his script as a guideline, it would more than likely be re-
written by so many other writers, directors and/or
producers into such a state as to make it practically
unrecognizable to Ellison as his own work, and what is
worse it would probably resemble Asimov's stories even
less. I was fortunate to be able to obtain this book from
the Science Fiction Book Club several years ago, but it is
no longer offered by them, in fact at the current time they
do not offer any of Ellison's titles and very few of
Asimov's either. I hope that others who have any interest
in this screenplay have luck finding it in their favorite
used bookstore or from an online bookseller. It is a
perfect compliment to the Asimov collection, and it is also
an insight into what is really wrong with the production
process of Hollywood. This is a film that cries out to be
made, just as Ellison envisioned it!