RAR
by Marc Shapiro
The bat wait is finally over
"I'm ecstatic!" says Bob Kane, the man
who created Batman in 1939. Bob is currently
helping stoke the hype machine for the
Caped Crusader's big screen adventure.
"There hasn't been this much hysteria sur-
rounding Batman since the TV series in 1966.
As far as I'm concerned, 22 years is too long
to keep this kind of mania bottled up."
Director Tim Burton, who hopped aboard
the Bat plane right after he delivered Beetle-
juice is, likewise, uncorked.
"That's right! After eight years, Batman
has finally been made," enthuses Burton.
"All systems are definitely go."
Batman: The Movie, from a script written
by Sam Hamm and Warren Skaaren, stars
Michael Keaton as Batman, Jack Nicholson
as The Joker, Kim Bassinger as Vickie Vale,
Pat Hingle as Commissioner Gordon, Billy
Dee Williams as Harvey Dent, Michael
Gough as Alfred the butler and Jack Palance
as crime boss Carl Grissom..
Filmed in Pinewood Studios in England,
this flick starts with the origin of the Bat cat,
then fast forwards to a time when a decidedly
loose-cannon crime fighter attempts to deal
with his own mental shakiness as well as an
assault on Gotham City by
criminal clown crazy, The
Joker. If your knowledge of
Batman begins and ends
with the old television series,
Kane warns that there won't
be much camp in this crowd.
"The film is taking Batman
back to what he was when I
created him in 1939," he
explains. "He's a troubled
dark knight who is more of a
vigilante than a crime fighter.
His look is more vampire-
like and Robin is not in the
picture." (He wasn't in the
original comics for quite a while either.)
Burton says the film will contain elements
of the comic books, some of the humor of
the TV series and a lot of the intensity of the
Dark Knight side of the character recently
revived in comics. But he is quick to point
out that Batman will not come across as a
big psychological drama.
90
Above: Jack Nicholson, bad and getting badder. Right: Foam lover Michael Keaton and his bitchin' ride, the
Batmobile. Below: Bat date Kim Basinger. All photos courtesy of Warner Bros. TMs and 1989 DC Comics, Inc.
"Batman is not going to be a psychological
poem," claims Burton. "The basic theme of
the movie is along the lines of 'Here's a child
who has grown up having to deal with the
fact that he watched his parents get killed
by a crook. It's a life-changing experience
and, as an adult, Bruce Wayne deals with
it by fighting crime."
The Batman film odyssey began in 1980
in New York when Kane and a bunch of
filmmaking types signed on the dotted line
to bring Batman to the screen. Kane
describes what followed as "emotional hell."
"The film was originally
going to be made by
Polygram Pictures, but just
about the time all the ele-
ments began to come to-
gether, the company went
under. The producers took
the film to Warner Brothers
and we went through what
seemed like an endless
round of scripts being written
and discarded and directors
coming and going. I wasn't
getting any younger and I
was wondering if I would live
to see this film get made."
Kane did, but not before everybody
involved in making the movie went head-on
over the delicate decision of who should play
the lead Bat. Names like Bill Murray and
Arnold Schwarzenegger were tossed
around. Adam West, who played Batman in
the TV series, put in a serious bid for the cape
and cowl and was vocally upset when the
film's producers said thanks but no thanks.
"It is difficult for me to walk away from Bat-
man, knowing someone else might replace
me and do a worse job," said West in a 1987
interview. "Without me, the movie won't be
the commercial success it could be."
"We definitely were not looking for a
hunk," says Burton. "We were looking for a
real human being with three dimensions who
could give the character an edge."
As the casting process continued, Kane
concedes that he was getting progressively
more nervous. "I was concerned about
whether the movie was ultimately going to
be done right. I wanted this to be the
definitive Batman movie and I have to admit
that I became really concerned when an
actor was chosen to play Batman.""
The reason being that Michael Keaton
(famous for laugh riots like Beetlejuice and
Mr. Mom) was registering zero, not only with
Bat fans but with Batman's creator as well:
"I was skeptical about the casting of
Michael Keaton as Batman. He didn't have
the physical stature and he was not the
square-jawed hero I had in mind. I had real
reservations."
Said reservations were withdrawn after
Kane did three things: 1. He saw the movie
Clean and Sober and discovered that Keaton
had the dramatic as well as comic goods.
2. He talked to director Burton and found that
he had a vision that was dramatic rather than
camp. 3. He read the script which also
boosted his confidence.
"There was no way I could stretch Michael
Keaton out to 6'2" and give him a square jaw,
but I felt confident that he could pull it off.
"Jack Nicholson as The Joker was a
wonderful choice," continues Kane. "One of
the only problems I had with the old Batman
TV series was that Caesar Romero played
The Joker as a buffoon. The Joker has, in
reality, always been a maniacal killer and
Nicholson plays him exactly that way."
Everyone connected with Batman: The
Movie concedes that the film is shaping up
as an action classic. But Tim Burton warns
that you shouldn't expect any "Pow" or
"Zap" cartoon balloons or a special effects
extravaganza.
"There will be effects but they will be more
natural and physical than bizarre," says Bur-
ton. "You'll see things like Batman swing
ing out over Gotham City on his bat rope but
you won't see anything disgusting exploding
out of anybody's stomach," he laughs.
Those "physical and natural" effects
became evident once production on Batman
motele;
WINGED FREAK TERRORIZES
GOTHAM'S GANGLAND
began in earnest last July. One of the big-
gest attractions is the Batman costume,
which in a sense made it possible for Keaton
(not the biggest or most muscular dude
around) to take on Batman's proportions.
The costume, created by veteran British
designer Bob Ringwood, began life as a
prosthetic mold of Keaton's body. The mold
was then cast in rubber, smaller molds of the
various body parts were designed and
subsequently glued on to the thin rubber suit
and covered with a silicone glaze. Ringwood
explained the benefits of the built-up muscle
costume during an on-set interview.
"The costume is extremely flexible.
because it's made of a very soft foam rub-
ber," he says, "and we sculpted the body
parts so that the thinnest parts of the rubber
come where the bends in the body are.
Consequently, it creases easily and folds into
muscular shapes. It was all made in
fragments, but it ends up looking like a one-
piece garment."
Also high on the Bat FX hit parade are
the main man's wheels, the Batmobile.
Production designer Anton Furst, after
numerous conferences with director
Burton, put pencil to paper and came
up with a design that is far removed
from the comic book conception of
the Bat wheels.
"The car we came up with was
basically this brute force
machine," said Furst during film-
ing. "We took elements of all
the heaviest images we could
think of, speed cars of the
'40s for example, and put all their brutal
elements into one design. The Batmobile has
a forbidding shrouded look to it and is
ultimately a creation of pure expressionism..
Bob Kane created Batman in 1939 as a
mixture of love for Da Vinci flying machines,
swashbuckling movies like The Mark of Zorro
and a classic mystery novel called The Bat.
The Caped Crusader, admits Kane, also
embodied the philosophy of his creator.
"Batman is basically an extension of my
attitudes and philosophies. I drew Batman
in my own physical image and I gave the
character my basic attitude against injustice.
Batman is, to a large extent, Bob Kane."
Because of his close ties to Batman, Kane
claims that on a purely personal level, he's
having the time of his life.
"Watching my creation come to life in this
big a manner is a real heady experience,"
says Kane. "It's an experience everybody
should have at least once in their life."
It is an experience that is proving all the
more sweet since Kane first set foot on the
eerie Gotham City set and saw Keaton as
Batman for the first time.
"Until that point I still had my reser-
vations, says Kane. "But then I saw.
Keaton walk onto the set in the costume.
He had the swagger and the attitude. He
was my Batman."