Is Robocop based on a real person?

When looking up some Zodiac stuff on the ethergut, I came across Chasing the Frog a pretty detailed movie site that specialises in comparing the fact and fiction of movies based on real-life cases, like Hollywoodland. Well they do stretch it a bit by including The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Their 300 section has some inadvertant laughs:


Was the Persian King Xerxes really bald and 9-feet-tall?

No. The real Persian King Xerxes had a beard and was much shorter. He never went to the front line at the Battle of Thermopylae as his character does in the movie 300. Actor Rodrigo Santoro portrays the 9-foot-tall Xerxes in the film. Rodrigo, who stars on ABC's Lost, is around 6'2". His height and voice were both altered for the role of the Persian King. Director Zack Snyder talked about Xerxes' exaggerated features in an interview, "...because we scaled him as we did, when his normal voice played, it was even stranger to me. He was out of scale of his voice, not that it wasn't commanding." The actor's actual voice is heard in the film, only with the pitch scaled down.down.

phew, at least that's settled.

P.S. looking up zodiac stuff is a foolhardy enterprise, see the real TV phone-in thing the Brian Cox bit is based on, now Robert Graysmith's scrupulously researched investigation is open to the ramblings of the random yahoos that comment on youtube videos.

Zodiac...it doesn't put the lotion on its skin....

Wow! what the hell is going on? a summer film that is three hours long, looks beautiful, makes sense, has characters you believe in. Jesus, it's like I've fallen into a parallel dimension where there is movie justice, sure there was this and this pirate plop but for three hours I sat in a movie theatre and enjoyed a movie on every level how rare is that these days?

As HH had warned there was a high quotient of postfeminist fatherhood, hey I'm a lonely single obsessed guy, is it too much to ask to see a lonely single obsessed guy on screen without cutsy mopsy mook kids all about the place...can you imagine if Taxi Driver was remade today? it would involve Travis coming home to his hovel where he has (for some bizarre reason) a kid by Cybill and the wee kid would be there drawing a gun in crayons and he has a wee mohican and he's there 'dawdy can I drive wit you in de cab today' and De Niro's there like 'no little Bickie I got some business in town today and you have to stay here and take care of your mother and blah blah sensitive family hollywood shit boo hoo...' Christ just leave an obessed geek to his mountains of files, like it happens in the real world, would ya, there's no Chloe Sevigny that gonna want you even though you act maybe.like.the.zodiac.killer.yourself....

In fact, the only down side of Zodiac was having the amazing Sevigny on board and giving her nothing.to.say. apart from sporting various period hair cuts, glasses and expressions, you could put her whole script on either side of a little notecard. And yes, Gyllenhaal's inability to look older over a 25-odd year period is slightly disconcerting. Obviously after Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and being that he's gonna be Iron Man Robert Downey Jnr. rocks at the minute and is amazing in this.

Hey, as you may have guessed, I'm a media geek so any film that involves a cartoonist as the main character and is set in the world of 1970s journalism is gonna have me up the walls with enthusiasm, even if didn't have a serial killer in it. So the fact there's not a serial-killer-balls-between-the-legs-it-puts-the-lotion-on-its-skin shootout doesn't bother me none....