As Christmas of 1984 approached, the Batman project seemed hopelessly stalled. However, events were about to unfold that would prepare the public to see the character in a new light.
THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS
On the night of December 22, 1984, a self-employed New Yorker named Bernard Goetz got on the Seventh Avenue express subway in Manhattan. Fearing that four young black men on the train were going to mug him, Goetz pulled out an unlicensed revolver and shot five times, wounding all four men. When the train stopped, he jumped out onto the track, exiting at the next station. With his identity initially unknown, newspaper and TV reporters dubbed him “the subway vigilante.” The shooter was lauded by some and lambasted by others, as the incident set off a nationwide debate on self-defense. Nine days after the shooting, Goetz surrendered to police. Charged with attempted murder, assault, reckless endangerment and firearms offenses, a Manhattan jury found him guilty only of possessing an illegal firearm; he served eight months of a one-year sentence.
One resident of New York City who took notice of the Goetz case was a comic book writer and artist named Frank Miller. Miller broke into the industry in 1978 when, at age 21, he illustrated a story for Gold Key’s The Twilight Zone comic book. He was soon hired by both DC Comics and Marvel Comics. At Marvel, his work helped rejuvenate the Daredevil series. Miller had long hoped that comic books could attract a more adult readership, and after the subway vigilante shootings, he had an epiphany: “Think of the noise that came from what Bernie Goetz did, and imagine if there was a very powerful, huge, terrifying figure doing that on a regular basis.”53 Re-imagining Batman as “sort of like Zorro meets Clint Eastwood,”54 Miller wrote about a 55-year-old Batman coming out of retirement and fighting crime in a violent modern world, where he not only encountered his old nemesis the Joker but also faced opposition from the Gotham police force, the U.S. government, and the government’s chief enforcer, Superman.
Debuting in March 1986 and published in four issues stretching to June, Batman: The Dark Knight immediately sold out its first printing.55 Adults who hadn’t read a comic in decades snapped up the subsequent one-volume paperback edition. Re-titled The Dark Knight Returns and now called a “graphic novel” instead of a comic book, it sold over 110,000 copies.56 With that one story, the comic book world, along with its readership, matured.
Among those praising Miller’s interpretation was Batman creator Bob Kane, who said, “Frank Miller brought Batman back to his origins—back to that brooding, mysterioso quality.”57 At least, that’s what he told The Los Angeles Times’ Pat Broeske. In another interview, with Jeff Gelb of Comics Interview magazine, he said, “I’ve read the book, but I don’t understand it. I’m certainly appreciative that it brought the Batman back to the dark, mysterioso roots that I created him in. However, Frank went to another extreme. Frank is very political, and there is a lot of symbolism in there I’m not sure I understand, like swastikas on a woman’s breasts and buttocks.”58
For Michael Uslan, it was a vindication that his vision of a darker Batman would resonate with the public at large. His friend and fellow former junior woodchuck, DC Comics writer Paul Levitz, saw a similarity between The Dark Knight Returns and Return of the Batman, the script Uslan and Michael Bourne had written to promote Uslan’s film concept. As Uslan recalled, “Paul Levitz pointed out, ‘Oh, my god, remember that script you guys wrote?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘Really, it was The Dark Knight Returns. It was Batman in his 50s coming out of retirement really bitter for one last battle to the death.’ So I said, ‘Y’know, I never thought of it that way.’”59
A SURREAL, BRIGHT DEPRESSION
During the early years of Batman’s development, a young artist named Tim Burton was toiling away at Walt Disney Studios, creating concept sketches for their animated features The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron. By his own admission, Burton was not Disney material. “I almost went insane,” he said. “I really did...I could just not draw cute foxes for the life of me...And it took them five or six years to make a movie. There’s that cold, hard fact: Do you want to spend six years of your life working on The Fox and the Hound? There’s a soul-searching moment when the answer is pretty clear.”60
Born in Burbank, California in 1958, Burton was of that generation of filmmakers who grew up with a steady diet of television and genre magazines like Famous Monsters of Filmland. He and his younger brother grew up in a typical suburban environment. His father worked for the Burbank Parks and Recreation Department, his mother ran a gift shop called Cats Plus where all the items were cat-themed. The whole family lived in a house directly under the flight path of the Burbank Airport.61 Tim Burton, however, was not a typical youth. Speaking to David Breskin of Rolling Stone in 1992, he said, “I guess childhood was a kind of surreal, bright depression. I was never interested in what everybody else was interested in. I was very interiorized. I always felt kind of sad.”62 As a young boy, he enjoyed Edgar Allen Poe stories and horror movies starring Vincent Price, and dreamed of growing up to be an actor, though not just any actor—he wanted to be the guy inside the Godzilla costume, crushing miniature buildings under oversized rubber reptilian feet. “Since I couldn’t be Godzilla,” said Burton, “I decided to be an animator.”63
After graduating from Burbank High School, Burton enrolled in CalArts, a university located north of Los Angeles that was begun by Walt Disney in the early 1960s to help train talent for the Disney Studios. Burton thrived in the collaborative atmosphere of CalArts, a school he felt was much less competitive and cutthroat than other film schools. There, he created his own characters, wrote his own scripts, and shot and edited short films. “I got a very solid education,” said Burton.64 After graduation, he went to work for Disney, and found himself being expected to draw cuddly animals.65 He couldn’t stomach it. Luckily, the studio recognized that he wasn’t cut out for the assembly line, and funded Burton’s short animated film, Vincent (1982), the tale of a 7-year-old boy named Vincent Malloy who dreams of being Vincent Price. The clever black-and-white film, which succeeded in being both a tribute to Price and to the horror tales of Edgar Allen Poe, featured puppet animation and narration read by Vincent Price himself. “I was so struck by Tim’s amateur charm,” said Price. “I mean amateur in the French sense of the word, in love with something. Tim was in love with the medium, and dedicated to it.”66 Two years later, Burton made his next film, a live-action half-hour short, Frankenweenie.67 Also filmed in black-and-white, it starred Barrett Oliver as a young boy named Victor Frankenstein who reanimates his cherished dead dog—appropriately named Sparky—with electricity.
After seeing Frankenweenie, Warner Bros. president of worldwide production Mark Canton decided that Burton would be perfect to direct a movie the studio was developing with comedian Paul Reubens.68 As part of the Los Angeles comedy troupe The Groundlings, Reubens had created a character named Pee-wee Herman, a grown man who acted like a young child and always dressed in a tight gray suit, white shirt, red clip-on bowtie and white patent leather shoes. With fellow Groundling Phil Hartman and screenwriter Michael Varhol, Reubens had concocted a script called Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, and Canton felt Burton had just the right offbeat sensibility to bring it to the big screen. After showing Frankenweenie to Reubens, the comedian agreed. Entrusted with a $6 million budget, Burton and Reubens created the surprise hit of the summer of 1985; Pee-wee’s Big Adventure grossed nearly $41 million at U.S. theaters.
After the unexpected success of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Burton directed one episode each of TV’s Faerie Tale Theatre and the revived Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Around this time, he was approached by Roger Birnbaum, who—after becoming president of Guber-Peters Entertainment in 1986—became interested in the company’s languishing Batman project.69 “One of the unsung heroes of the Batman story is Roger Birnbaum,” said Michael Uslan. “Roger was instrumental in bringing Tim Burton onto the scene, and deserves a lot of credit for the success of that first Batman movie.”70 Birnb
aum pressed Guber and Peters to see Frankenweenie and Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. After the screenings, Peters said, “I felt that Tim was a very inventive director.” Warner Bros. production chief Mark Canton arranged a meeting. “Mark Canton had worked with him before and introduced us,” said Peters. “We really felt that he was very inventive and very creative and had a different approach to things.”71 Burton was asked if he would be interested in directing Batman. He was.
Eschewing Tom Mankiewicz’s Batman script, Burton wrote a treatment with Julie Hickson, his then-girlfriend, who had produced Frankenweenie. The 43-page treatment, completed on October 21, 1985, was divided into three acts. In an article he wrote for Wizard magazine, Andy Mangels synopsized the treatment, writing that Act 1, “Loss,” begins with a full-screen shot of the Joker laughing, then fades to a shot of Gotham City, described as “a little New York, a little Max Fleisher [producer of the 1940s Superman cartoons], a lot of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.”72 The scene then shifts to the Gotham Municipal Courthouse, where Thomas Wayne, counsel for the Subcommittee on Investigation into Racketeering, rails against mob boss Rupert Thorne. Next, Thomas Wayne is shown with his wife and child at their home, preparing to go to a costume party after a performance of Der Fledermaus at the Gotham Opera. Thomas wears a “majestic bat costume,” Martha a “delicately shimmering fairy queen” and Bruce the outfit of a “small whirling harlequin.” On their way home from the party, the Waynes are gunned down by a killer driving a Mr. Softee ice cream truck. Young Bruce catches a fleeting glimpse of the murderer—a green-haired, white-skinned 17-year-old boy with a red-lipped grin. The police show up, and so does the Wayne butler, Alfred Pennyworth, who tells Bruce, “as long as I live, you will never be alone.” The act ends with Bruce at his parents’ funeral, where he makes a vow to avenge their deaths and declares war on crime.
In Act Two, called “Preparation-Transformation,” Bruce trains to become Batman. He befriends Commissioner Gordon and collects information about Rupert Thorne, whom he believes ordered his parents’ death. Years later, Thorne becomes mayor of Gotham, and a newspaper headline announces “Joker Escapes Prison! Vows Revenge Against Mayor Rupert Thorne.” The Joker begins causing mayhem in the city, releasing animals from the zoo, painting skyscraper windows black, and causing subways to run backwards. When he inserts himself into a TV broadcast of The Love Boat—described as featuring guest stars Tom Bosley, Cloris Leachman, and Andy Warhol—Bruce Wayne takes notice. Bruce dons his Batman outfit for the first time and goes out a window; at this point, the treatment says, “The Prince of Darkness is Born!”
Batman encounters the Joker in Gotham Square, where the clown prince of crime is about to launch the city’s Christmas tree into space. They engage in a fight on the ice-skating rink, “punctuated by all the requisite silliness of pratfalls.” The Joker escapes and causes even greater chaos, painting the entire city in candy- stripe colors and setting off bombs. He also sets off fireworks at a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where Bruce intervenes and saves the life of the featured singer, Silver St. John. Bruce spends the night with Silver, while the Joker declares himself mayor and throws a parade with overhead balloons carrying his “grimacing gas.” Commissioner Gordon summons Batman with the Batsignal. The Joker next appears at a charity circus attended by Bruce and Silver. The ringmaster turns out to be the Penguin in disguise. The Riddler is also there, disguised as a clown, and the Catwoman, as a trapeze artist. Catwoman kills aerial artists John and Mary Grayson
by pouring acid onto their trapeze, but their son, Dick, survives. Bruce Wayne scoops up the sobbing lad and takes him to his car, where he tells him, “As long as I live, you will never be alone.”
In the final act, “Retribution—Family,” Bruce adopts Dick. Meanwhile, the Joker kills Rupert Thorne and throws a Christmas Eve parade, again with huge balloons filled with deadly grimacing gas. Batman attempts to stop the Joker, and both are carried aloft by the balloons, crashing through the skylight of the Gotham City Natural History Museum. There, Batman’s life is saved by a new hero, Robin. Commissioner Gordon arrives to find Batman choking the Joker and holding a gun to the criminal’s head. The treatment ends with Bruce, Silver, Dick and Alfred opening presents on Christmas Day. When he pulls the last present out from under the tree, Bruce is shocked to see that it’s wrapped in purple and green paper, with a clown face on it. The screen fades to black as the laughing face of the Joker appears again.73
Warner Bros. was not sold on Burton’s treatment. With the on-again, off- again project seemingly off again, Jenette Kahn, editor of DC Comics, decided to take some pro-active measures. She approached Steve Englehart, a writer of some of the darker-toned Batman comic books of the late 1970s, and asked him to write a treatment and to possibly act as a general consultant on the character for the movie. Englehart was told the treatment should include origin stories for Batman, Robin and the Joker, and a love interest. Since Englehart preferred to see Batman as a “creature of the night” rather than a father figure, his story began with Batman and Robin fighting thugs in an alley. Almost immediately, one of the thugs whips out a gun and “blows Robin’s head off.” Englehart felt this was the strongest way to differentiate the movie from the old TV series. Jenette Kahn wasn’t pleased; she told Englehart that according to the studio, Robin had to be in the movie.74
After several stormy meetings, Englehart wrote a second treatment that seemed to make everyone happy. About a month after he turned the treatment in to Jenette Kahn, he learned that a new scriptwriter had been hired for Batman. Englehart wasn’t surprised; he had been told at the outset that even if he wrote an outstanding treatment, he wouldn’t be writing the screenplay.75
It was Bonnie Lee, Warner Bros. vice president of creative affairs, who suggested that a young screenwriter and comic book fanatic named Sam Hamm should write Batman, despite the fact that Hamm only had one produced credit so far, the 1983 fact-based drama Never Cry Wolf. Following that film, Hamm had written a spec script that ended up at Columbia Pictures after a bidding war, but it was the other bidder, Warner Bros., who offered Hamm a two-year term deal. At Warners, Hamm wrote a basketball comedy called Hang Time, and began looking into the status of the long-simmering Batman project. One of the people he approached was Bonnie Lee, who had championed both Hamm and Tim Burton within the company. Lee got the word around that Hamm was interested in writing the Batman script, and Hamm eventually secured a meeting with Tim Burton, who asked if he would be interested in taking a whack at Batman.76 The two were soon collaborating on the screenplay. “We had a great time together,” said Hamm. “I think Tim’s the first director out there to be filtering junk culture through an art-school sensibility. He’s also got a fairly strong morbid streak, but he’s too much of an ironist to take his own morbidity seriously.”’
Hamm and Burton presented their ideas to Guber and Peters and then Warner Bros. “I essentially just wanted to play the story straight, and that sounded fine to Warner Bros.,” said Hamm. “The only thing that they really told us was to include the Joker and include Robin.”77
Michael Uslan and Benjamin Melniker provided research and ideas, and Hamm spent the next year working on the script with Burton and Birnbaum. “My instructions were to make it real,” said Hamm. “I felt that gave me a license to treat the material seriously as opposed to getting the yocks out of it. Once you try to ground the characters in the real world, the plot basically generates itself.”78 In an interview with Jeff Gelb in Comics Interview #70, Hamm said, “I’ve always conceived of this movie as sort of a really, really dark deadpan comedy. In other words, it’s not anything that’s going to play as comic, but the premise that we’ve got is that there is a millionaire who puts on a costume to go out and fight crime, you know. He discovers that not only is this very, very dangerous, but it starts to seriously screw up his love life. That, to me, is an inherently comic premise—but it’s played out in very straight and serious terms.”79
Hamm and Burton began del
ving into the psychology of Bruce Wayne, which brought up some interesting questions. “Is he nuts?” asked Hamm. “That’s the big question in the bat-fan community. Is Batman the real identity, or is Bruce Wayne the real identity? I feel essentially that they are two characters. That Batman erupts out of Bruce Wayne and takes control. In a sense, Bruce Wayne is an addict: He’s addicted to putting on the suit and changing himself into an entirely different persona.”80 Hamm saw Wayne as “somebody who’s larger than life and a little frightening...a millionaire who can have anything he wants, and what he wants is to get dressed up and scare people.”81 Burton felt that Bruce Wayne was mentally deranged. “What compels a man to put on a bat suit?” asked Burton. “If you hate crime, why not just write a letter to The New York Times?...He is as maniacally good as the Joker is maniacally evil. They’re two psychotics.”82 In a Rolling Stone interview, Burton said, “If Batman got therapy, he probably wouldn’t be doing this, he wouldn’t be putting on this bat suit, and we wouldn’t have this weird guy running around in a cape.”83
Mid-way through the first draft, Hamm began receiving notes from DC Comics editor Jenette Kahn and Batman creator Bob Kane. “Jenette had forwarded to me a sort of Batmanifesto—you know, various aspects of what they thought Batman should be—and I went through it going, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, how else would you do it!’ And we also got a memo from Bob Kane detailing the same kind of stuff. But the fact is that what DC wanted us to do was pretty much what we were doing already, so there was never any real area of conflict.”84
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