| ORIGINAL CANNON FILMS' CYBORG PRESS RELEASE |
| CYBORG
Publicity Department ABOUT THE PRODUCTION Set sometime in the future, when the land is shrouded in an eerie mist of evil and the stench of death and decay fill the air, Cyborg offers a gripping and provocative portrait of the possible world of tomorrow. Like most futuristic thrillers, the backdrop of Cyborg is a world gone amuck, a world where violence and depravity reign supreme, and there are absolutely no rules by which the game of life is played. It is a vivid tale of good versus evil, with a singular anti-hero pitted against overwhelming odds in his quest for survival…and revenge. Beneath this colourful and brutal tapestry of man’s inhumanity to man, however, there lies a fabric laced with symbolism. It is this sub-texture that makes Cyborg unlike so many other films of it’s genre. The vision of director Albert Pyun ( Sword and the Sorceror, Radioactive Dreams ) , Cyborg employs a vast array of special effects, along with highly-stylised lighting and cinematic techniques, to turn this futuristic nightmare into a primal reality. “ What I’ve attempted to create is a stylised hard-action movie with a relatively simple storyline, but a substantial sub-texture,” Pyun says. “ The idea behind the film,” he explains, “ is that when times get bad, people start moving towards the belief that there is an over-all powerful entity that can give them salvation. So, they believe, even if this life is bad, there’s another life that can be better. “ They begin to believe that there’s a saviour, in whatever form. Hitler was considered Germany’s saviour. So you’ve got good and evil, the two most powerful emotions in society. Standing between them, of course, you have religion, which is why the film has a feel - a texture - of religious overtones.” ( Cyborg had musical overtones as well : most of the major characters - including the protagonist, Gibson Rickenbacker and his antagonist, Fender Tremelo - are named after equipment and techniques associated with electric guitars. ) “ This film is about beliefs, about faith - what you choose to believe, and why, “ says Pyun. “ Even the hero, Gibson Rickenbacker, is racked with doubt about what he feels. He questions whether he’s doing the right thing with his life - and, if not, then what he should be doing. Ultimately, of course, he arrives at the answer we all reach; and that is to feel positive about what you are, about what you are doing with your life, is really the only hope for your future. “ The idea behind Cyborg, “ Pyun continues, “ is that it’s very dangerous during difficult times because people become very susceptible to a powerful and charismatic leader. Fender Tremelo, the main villain, for example, is an anti-Christ figure. Fender realises that the more misery there is in the world, the stronger he becomes. He doesn’t have to promise deliverance; all Fender has to do is create enough misery and people will follow him because he’s stronger than anyone else. “ Then you have Pearl Prophet, the Cyborg. She represents the rational part of all of us - the part that tries to do away with all emotion. As a Cyborg, Pearl is pure logic. At the end of her odyssey, though, Pearl is less mechanized, more humanized - less a machine than a human being. She discovers that technicians can cure the body but, in order for civilisation to continue to exist, the soul also has to be cured. “ Filmed entirely on location in Wilmington, N.C. , with it’s vast vistas of marshland, white sand beaches and ocean, Cyborg reflects the heavy influence of filmmaker Sergio Leone upon Pyun. “ I admire Sergio Leone tremendously, “ Pyun acknowledges. “ What I wanted to do with Cyborg , not unlike what Leone did in ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’, was to make a stylized hard-action movie set within an environment in which we could create our own world. That’s why the landscape becomes such an important element of the film. With the backdrop of the swamp, the marshes, the great expansive vistas, you can really feel the isolation of one man alone. Watching Leone’s films taught me to do more of this kind of visual storytelling, through composition and spatial relationships. “ Noted for having created precisely this sort of exotic, self-contained fantasy world in his earlier films such as The Sword and the Sorcerer, Pyun cites Stanley Kubrick as another important influence on his work. “ I like the way he translates his thoughts on to the screen, “ he explains. “ He’s always very innovative, very fresh. I feel the same way about Francis Coppola, who’s also been a strong influence on my approach to film, especially my approach to sound on film, “ he adds. “ I won’t even let a scene be cut unless I know how it’s supposed to sound. “ Before I even begin the movie, I generally know what the soundtrack is going to be like. In the case of Cyborg, for instance, most of the sound effects and music had already been pulled before we started shooting. “ I had a very strong vision in my head of what I wanted the film to be, so I’ve been very careful to keep the ideas fairly simple and not too oblique. In my other films I buried the symbolism deeper, which may make Cyborg a more accessible and commercial film. “ In addition to filming at various locations on the outskirts of the city, Pyun utilised the backlot of the DEG studios in Wilmington, turning several city blocks into a smouldering remnant of the past. Rubble lined the streets and sidewalks. Abandoned cars, cryptic graffiti scrawled across them, sat on flattened tires in varying stages of stripped deterioration. Household items, including family photo albums and portraits, lay strewn about. The atmosphere was ghostly and ghoulish. It was no easy task turning Pyun’s post-apocalyptic vision of civilisation into a reality, according to Yvonne Hegney, the set decorator. “ Well, for starters, “ she explains, “ I had 8 different sets to decorate, including a swamp that we built on the back set using 25 loads of dirt, 56 cubic yard per load, and 80 garbage bags filled with Spanish moss. Then we had another 20 bags filled with Spanish moss and a hundred 5-ton truckloads of vines. And that doesn’t count the trees we rented ! “ We also rented the dirt, by the way. It was easier and cheaper that way - $1700 to rent it and put it in place versus $6000 if we’d actually bought it - and besides, on the rental they come and pick it up when you’re through ! “ According to Hegney, she and her staff began looking for the set furnishings for Cyborg two months prior to the June 6 start of production. It was a search which continued throughout the shoot. “ I went around all the city dumps and scap iron places, “ Hegney recalls, “ and I got a list from the Wilmington Sanitation Department with the addresses of people asking for special trash pickups. Once I had the list, I went around and beat them to the collection.” These morning rounds sometimes threw her into the same sort of surreal, post-apocalyptic confrontations which are part of the fabric of the film itself. “ One morning, I guess it was around 4.30 am, I got in a fight with a bag lady over a nightstand, “ Hegney remembers. “ She was determined to have it, so I backed off and let her cart it away. “ All tolled, Hegney estimates that more that 4800 pounds of scrap metal were hauled to the DEG backlot, not including the 24 cars she procured from a local wrecker. “ That doesn’t include the four boats in various stages of ruin which we hauled to the other locations, or the 15 ton metal boat we had to unstuck from a two foot mud bottom on the inter-coastal waterway. Or the abandoned cement mixer. “ And out of this amazing agglomeration of junk, what did Hegney consider her best find ? “ Well, “ she answers slowly, “ I think , probably, the voodoo doctor set with its shrunken monkey heads…! You know, it’s amazing how well you get to know a city and it’s people by their trash. I know for at least a year after the movie wraps I’ll still be looking at it with a fresh eye.” Another member of the Cyborg crew with an unusual creative challenge on its hands was Joey DiGaetano, the special effects supervisor whose credits include War Games, Manhunter, Ten to Midnight, and Scared Silly. “ Albert wanted a certain realism to the weapons but, at the same time, he wanted everything surrealistic, larger-than-life. He wanted believable and primitive weapons that were also sophisticated. “ That’s a rough line to draw, “ DiGaetano concedes with a laugh. “ So what we decided to do was to expand on weapons already in existence, keeping the believable in terms of guerrilla warfare fighting. “ Working with his partner, Larry Reid, DiGaetano designed and manufactured all of the custom-built weapons used in Cyborg. Gibson’s weapon, for example, Is a 4-barrel arrow blaster, which actually shoots arrows in one-at-a-time rapid fire, like a Gatling gun. Fender’s weapon, however, Is a 6-barrel gun which shoots steel balls like a machine gun. The other Flesh Pirates have mere single barrel guns shooting steel balls. Other special weapons featured in Cyborg include a Bang-Stick, which is carried by Rickenbacker, and is fashioned after the kind of shark dart gun carried by divers. In all, DiGaetano and Reid designed and manufactured more than 100 weapons for Cyborg’s battle scenes - everything from rubber knives to wooden swords to metal knives and swords which, when touched together during a fight, would send out sparks creating a blazing trail during night scenes. “ Each knife had to have a wire attached, “ DiGaetano explains, “ then that’s hooked up to an arc welder to generate electricity. One knife would be wired negative, one positive, so that sparks would fly when they touched. Of course, the handles had to be insulated so the actors wouldn’t be electrocuted. I think it all worked very well. It’s very realistic. “ Taking Pyun’s request for realism seriously, DiGaetano shipped a special weapon of his own to Wilmington - a customised gun that can actually shoot arrows, knives and spears accurately. Designed by special effects trailblazer Ross Taylor more than 30 years ago, the gun is the only one of it’s kind in existence and belongs to DiGaetano. “ What this means, “ DiGaetano explains, “ is that an actor can be shot, stabbed or speared while running, turning or standing, and move immediately after being hit. This means the director can have continuous action, rather than having to stop the camera and pick up the shot. Again, it lends a lot more realism to the film. “ According to DiGaetano, the actor is protected by special plates worn underneath the costume. The plate is an eighth of an inch of steel backing with a one-and-a-half inch balsa wood front. With more than 30 fight scenes peppered throughout the film, both DiGaetano and Tom Elliot, the stunt co-ordinator, had their hands full and their expertise challenged throughout the 6 week shoot. The same is true of Philip Waters, the cinematographer chosen by Pyun to record Cyborg for posterity. The film marks Waters’ transition from music concerts and videos to full-length feature films. “ I think Albert decided to take a chance on me because of my background filming concerts, “ Waters says. “ I am used to working fast , getting as many shots as possible, something this film required. I mean, for every fight scene you have to do anywhere from two to six cuts. And that requires very fast set-ups, not at all unlike music concerts where you get no run-throughs. “ Shooting a concert, “ Waters concludes, “ means you shoot 100, 000 feet of film that night and the next day somebody sits down and looks at your work. You either get the shots or you don’t. And if you don’t, you don’t get the next job. So despite the fast pacing on Cyborg, it was nothing compared to the pressure I’ve felt shooting concerts.” When Cyborg completed filming in mid-July, Pyun returned to Los Angeles, where he spent two months putting the finishing touches to the special effects and overseeing the editing of the film. “ As I say, I have a pretty strong vision in my head of what I want the film to be, and I’ve been careful in this movie to keep the ideas fairly simple - not too oblique, “ Pyun says with a smile. “We think it will all combine into a film movie-goers will find entertaining and provocative. I hope so, because Menahem ( Golan ) and Yoram ( Globus ) have been very energetic and totally supportive of the film - and that always motivates you to do your best. “ Cyborg Main Page Press Release Page 2 - The Cast >>> |
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