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Starlog: The Paranoid Android

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The Encyclopedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed to do the work of a man. The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation calls a robot "Your plastic pal who's fun to be with." And for actor Warwick Davis, playing the role of Marvin the Paranoid Android in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was the most physically demanding job he has ever had.

What started out as a conversation with Jim Henson Creature Shop's Jamie Courtier ended up as another costume gig for Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy actor Warwick Davis.

"I've done many costume jobs or 'skin work' before," he says, "whether it's a foam padded suit or playing a creature in prosthetics, but those have all been soft-bodied creatures. I've never been a hard-bodied robot before, so it was extremely different in that respect. I weigh six stone [84 pounds], and the costume itself weighed about four stone [56 pounds], so it was nearly as heavy as I was. So I had this extreme weight to deal with as well as the heat factor, but it also became apparent once the costume was completed that this wasn't just about looking fantastic. The costume was a piece of art that should be put in a museum, but that wasn't going to work on film. It would look great for the first five seconds as people gasped and said, "That's beautiful!" But if it didn't move right, it was going to be a disaster.

"Movement director Peter Elliott - who also coordinated much of the Vogon work - and I spent several days together. What we discovered was the motions had to come from the feeling and thought of the character, as opposed to trying to choreograph movements. I had to be in Marvin's frame of mind, and the performance sprung from the suit. His character is all about feeling down and depressed, so I needed to be like that within to see it on the outside. We also found that the subtlest gestures came through. If I needed to nod my head, I had to be ever-so-careful that it didn't look like a total over-exaggeration, because Marvin's head is so huge. I barely had to do any action, and it would read perfectly as sorrow or whatever the mood was supposed to be.

The cinematic Marvin the Paranoid Android differs in design from Douglas Adams' novel description.

Great Depressions

Davis' involvement with the Hitchhiker's film came about in a somewhat indirect fashion, starting with a call from Jamie Courtier at the Jim Henson Creature Shop. "We've been running Willow Management for about seven years," says Davis, "and become quite well known in the business as one of the biggest agencies representing short actors. Jamie had been in touch with my father-in-law, Peter, my business partner and me years ago about another project being developed, and then he called us in late 2003 and said they were trying to cast this character for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. They weren't sure if it was going to work as a guy in a suit, and he wanted to know if we could come down and talk about it.

"So Peter and I went down there and looked at some of the early designs and the little maquette of Marvin, and we talked about how we could use an extremely short actor. His head would need to be inside Marvin's chest, while Marvin's head would be a mechanical remote-controlled thing on top. During the conversation, Jamie listened politely and finally said, 'Warwick, can we take a picture of you?' He sat there with his Mac, superimposed my photo over the maquette photograph and said, 'Look, you would fit! Do you fancy coming along so we can build a prototype to see if it will work?'

"I was then lifecast, and went back a few weeks later, and they had built a Marvin suit out of foamy polystyrene, which is very flexible. You can cut it, mold it, and do all sorts of things to form the shape, and they had made a prototype out of this material. I tried it on, Garth [Jennings, the director] came in and looked at it and - even though the suit was very crude - it convinced them that it was going to work with a person inside. And it just snowballed from there."

Over the next several months, Davis made countless trips to the Creature Shop in London, where Marvin's complex suit was developed. "I was there so many times, I thought I would end up with my own parking space outside Henson's," he jokes. "From a design point of view, it was a real challenge to make it work. They had to make it look like the original design. That was their constraint, but they also had to consider the fact that I had to wear this suit for however many days I was on the film and be able to move and perform the character. So for every component they added, they would weigh it and try to make it as light as possible, because every gram made a difference to how I could move it, especially the head, which sat very far forward, so the center of gravity wasn't over my feet. It was somewhere two feet in front of me, which meant they had to be extremely careful with everything they put in, including the lights and other stuff.

Davis has played Professor Flitwick in four Harry Potter pictures. He gives his next Hogwarts lesson in November's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.	Willow's popularity has endured over the years. Fans still approach the actor about the 1988 George Lucas-Ron Howard fantasy.	Essaying a member of a killer mutant family, Davis serves up deadly dishes as the aptly-named Plates in makeup maestro Gabe Bartalos' Skinned Deep.

"Vision was a problem as well, because Marvin has eyes, but they're basically lights, so I had a video camera right in the center - between the eyes - looking out. I also had another feed coming from an external camera and, during the shoot, I had two monitors inside where I could see myself as if I was looking in a mirror - plus a point-of-view from out of the front of the head. Between the two, I could gauge what was around me, because otherwise I wouldn't have had any peripheral vision.

Bartalos also handled the makeup duties on several of Davis' Leprechaun flicks. The long-running series has developed a huge worldwide folling among horror fans.

It all began with an Ewok, young Wicket of Return of the Jedi and several TV movie adventures.

"I had earpieces so I could hear the technician talking to me. He would check that I was OK, but also give me hints like, "You're walking up and there's a step in front of you now!' He would count me through the steps, and also warn me of any hazards when I was doing a take. It was a real team effort. I count myself as one of a group of four people who ran Marvin on set on a daily basis."

Sad Sacks

Because Davis would be spending so much time inside Marvin, it didn't make much sense for him to rehearse with the cast sans suit before lensing began. "We started off in the read-through, but it was quickly discovered that it wasn't particularly constructive having me at rehearsals," he says. "I was only feeding lines at that point, but it wasn't giving the right impression when they were trying to block out scenes. As Warwick, I was waist-high, but as Marvin, an actor could actually stand behind me and be hidden. So from that point of view, it wasn't helping much.

"And also, I wasn't getting time to work with the suit. To wear the suit in rehearsals would have slowed the whole process down, because I would have had to keep taking breaks. When you're rehearsing, you move along at a faster pace than the actual filming. So I would go off and work on my own, with Peter, and the first time the other actors saw me as Marvin was on the set, and their reactions were hilarious. The size of the head was what got them the most, and I remember that Martin [Freeman, who plays Arthur Dent] and Mos [Def, Ford Prefect] were completely taken aback by it."

Throughout the shoot, Davis was plagued by vision problems inside the suit, requiring multiple cameras and monitors to aid his movements. Hey Warwick, watch out for that ship!

For Davis, Hitchhiker's is the latest genre effort in a career filled with diverse SF, fantasy, and horror projects - from playing Wicket the mischievous Ewok in Return of the Jedi to his starring role in Willow. "I do look back and think I was pretty lucky," he reflects, "because I got into these films that have followings. Star Wars is probably the biggest example, but the Leprechaun series also has a huge following with horror fans throughout the world. And then, of course, Willow has its own fan base. Every year I think, 'Oh, they're going to forget about it,' but Willow seems even more and more popular. Even in my local area, four or five people a day come up to me with regard to Willow and say, "That's a movie I always watched as a kid. I've grown up with that film!" So it's massively popular. The most asked question I get is: 'Is there going to be a sequel to Willow?' And then there's Harry Potter, which is another hugely popular film series."

Davis plays Professor Flitwick in the Harry Potter movies, and returns this fall for the fourth installment, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. "It seems to be running very smoothly," he enthuses, "and it's probably the most fun I've had on any of them to date. I've really had a good time on it, and Mr. Newell [Mike Newell] is a very good director, in full charge of everything. He's bringing his own spin to it, as the other directors have done in the past. It's interesting, the films seem to have gotten better with each sequel, so let's hope that continues. To date, I've been on Goblet for about 40 days, so I've been in quite a bit of it this time around.

Martin Freeman, Davis, director Garth Jennings and Mos Def pose for a Hitchhiker's keepsake photo. Davis recalls that both Freeman and Def were "completely taken aback" when they first glimpsed Marvin's huge head.

"My role involves a lot of spectating and just being there, since I'm a professor. Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman and I are always around because we're part of that teaching group, but I also have some nice little moments as well that I think the audience will enjoy. I count myself very lucky to be asked to do Harry Potter each time; I don't know whether it's me doing something right or because I have a good agent. Everything is going in my favor at the moment."

Ironically, his Harry Potter co-star Rickman voices Marvin in Hitchhiker's. "I did all of the voicing as we shot the film, and I wrote quite a bit of the dialogue," says Davis. "I would listen to the radio series, look at transcripts from different performances of Hitchhiker's in the past and pick out key lines that I thought were clever and throw them in during appropriate situations while we were filming. Many of those ended up in the movie, so I feel I've made my mark on the character, not only in the performance but the things he says. But what a unique voice Alan has, and a perfect one for the character. It certainly seems to have been well-received in the test screenings. [I have no problem with it] - as long as no one forgets that I'm inside there toiling away and making this thing move!

Happy Meals

Marvin didn't work well with stairs on the Heart of Gold. So he got his own elevator.

Davis recently made a non-genre appearance in Ray, playing Oberon, a club emcee, opposite a young Ray Charles (Jamie Foxx). "The character is actually based on a few people," reveals Davis. "The clubs of that day had emcees who were short because it was hip, different and a bit unique. That's what the audiences liked, and Oberon is based on a conglomerate of those people. [Director] Taylor Hackford had me listen to a jazz CD with one of those emcees on it, giving the introductions. He told me, 'That's the kind of thing I want you to do.'

"I had a great scene with Jamie, but I don't smoke, and trying to talk and light a cigarette when you don't do it naturally is very hard. There were times when I would light it, hand it to Jamie, and it wasn't lit because I didn't do it properly.

"The BBC brought [the old] Marvin out and restored him, and he's in a scene that's quite special," says Davis.

Davis has been developing a secret agent spoof, Agent One-Half, which he would star in and produce. "It has been a long development process and, at the moment, I'm trying to get this film off the ground," he says. "I came up with the idea when I was filming Willow. At that point, I was growing tired of being in fantasy worlds and getting dirty, and I thought, 'Wouldn't it be great to wear a normal suit, look sharp, and drive a nice car in a film?' So I started to write this idea. It's a spy comedy, and it's quite unique in that much of the lead cast - even the arch-villain - are short actors. I think it's a lot of fun, and everybody who has read it says it's fantastic, but what I need is a person with a few million dollars to see that!"

But for now, Davis is looking forward to audience reaction to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. "I'm hugely proud of Marvin and that I was part of the team that brought him to the screen," he declares with obvious fondness. "I've already seen previews of the toys and things to come, and that stuff always thrills me, because if your character becomes a toy, then your child can play with it. It's wonderful.

"My son Harrison is going to be two and a half by the time the toys are out, so he's going to have a few Marvins around," smiles Warwick Davis. "When you have kids, you have to go to McDonald's a lot, and I'm hoping they get the license for the toys. It was great when I became a Wicket LEGO, because I grew up with LEGO. So it would be really exciting if I came out of a Happy Meal with Harrison's chicken nuggets!"