In his youth, Elfman had listened to the film scores of Bernard Herrmann and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, but for Batman, said Elfman, “they wanted a Wagnerian vibe.”’ At Burton’s invitation, Elfman went to London to visit the locations. “I’ve done that in all the films I’ve worked with him—spend a little time and see what it was like on the set,” said Elfman. “I actually wrote the Batman theme walking through Gotham City with Tim and seeing just a little bit of footage, so it was enough to get a real flavor and feel.”272 Elfman’s Batman theme begins with a note of mystery reminiscent of the music under the titles of the 1943 serial, but then builds into an energetic march. “In Batman, I wanted to approach it like an old-style film, almost like a 40s action movie would be,” said Elfman. “And I went for a single, very simple theme that I could play in a big way, in a small way, in a romantic way or in a dark way. And so I just found that and played it for everybody and they seemed to like it, and I just carried that throughout the movie. So it’s your old-fashioned style of composition in that respect.”273
Elfman knew before he began composing that there were a couple of scenes that would be scored with music from Prince, so he simply skipped those scenes. Before shooting began, the filmmakers had toyed with the idea of having the score composed by not one but two pop music giants, Prince and Michael Jackson. As Prince related to Joachim Hentschel, who interviewed him for the German edition of Rolling Stone, “Did you know that the album was supposed to be a duet between Michael Jackson and me? He as Batman, me as Joker?”274 Though those plans never went anywhere, Jack Nicholson—a Prince fan—was fervent about having the performer’s music in the film. So was Prince’s label, Warner Bros. Music.
Burton was also an enthusiastic Prince fan, but was less sure about how Prince’s music would fit with his dark vision. “This is what happened,” said Burton. “You learn something new every day. Now, here is a guy, Prince, who was one of my favorites. I had just gone to see two of his concerts in London, and I felt they were like the best concerts I’d ever seen. Okay. So. They’re saying to me, these record guys, it needs this and that, and they give you this whole thing about it’s an expensive movie so you need it. And what happens is, you get engaged in this world, and then there’s no way out. There’s too much money. There’s this guy you respect and is good and has got this thing going. It got to a point where there was no turning back. And I don’t want to get into that situation again.”275 Besides clashing with Elfman’s score, Burton felt the music might date the film. “It completely lost me,” said Burton. “And it tainted something that I don’t want to taint.”276
Prince, as it happened, was a Batman fan. Years later, when he was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey, the talk show hostess asked him, “What was the first song you taught yourself to play on the piano?” He played the theme to the 1960s Batman TV series.277 “I brought Prince over to London and you could just tell his kind of genius was in touch with the movie,” said Mark Canton. “By the time we had dinner that night, he had three songs in his head. Three weeks later he had nine songs. He did a few more that we felt would be better for the film and ended up creating an album up there with Purple Rain.”278 In the end, two of Prince’s compositions, “Partyman” (heard cranking from the Joker’s boom box in the museum scene) and “Trust”(heard during the parade near the finale) were prominently featured in the film, with three others being used incidentally: “The Future” at the beginning when the family is walking down the alley, “Electric Chair” during the party at Wayne Manor, and “Vicki Waiting,” at the beginning of the party scene. Another song, “Scandalous,” was used in the end credits. But Prince, in his enthusiasm to be involved, had written nine songs, enough for an entire album. Warner Bros. released Prince’s “soundtrack” of Batman, including all the songs he had written for the film, on June 20, 1989, three days before the film opened. The album had pre-orders of 800,000 copies, eventually selling 4.3 million disks and spending six weeks at the #1 position on the Billboard 200 chart. On the U.S. charts, the “Batdance” single also went to #1, “Scandalous” went to #5, “Partyman” rose to #18, and “The Arms of Orion,” a duet with Sheena Easton, climbed to #36. Regarding “Batdance,” Warner Bros. VIP of A&R Michael Ostin said, “Prince was adamant about it being the first single, and he was right. It’s a tremendous teaser for the film and the album. He’s taken so many pieces of the dialog from the film and other music that’s in it that it’s like a collage.”279
Tim Burton kept working on the edit of the film right up until four weeks before it was due to open. Once the final cut was locked, Danny Elfman set to scoring and recording with the London Symphony Orchestra, finishing two weeks later. The delay in getting the final edit meant that Elfman’s soundtrack was delivered to Warner Bros. record division much later than Prince’s; Prince delivered his soundtrack on April 22, while Elfman didn’t get his in until June 6. As a result, Prince’s soundtrack was released concurrently with the film, while Elfman’s didn’t come out until seven weeks later.280
Even as the film was in production, producer Jon Peters turned his attention to promoting it. He looked at the artwork that was supplied by Warner Bros. marketing department and hated it. Having spent nearly a decade bringing the movie to the big screen, he didn’t want to blow it now with an inferior press campaign. He summoned production designer Anton Furst to his office. “Jon was there with the artwork in front of him,” recalled Furst. “He said, ‘Look at these.’ One was sort of like Conan, or RoboCop—the word ‘Batman’ spelled in Conan the Barbarian type. Nothing original, nothing you hadn’t seen before many times.”281 Peters told Furst to drop everything and design a logo that would tie all the merchandising together.
Furst created a logo that looked as though it was stamped out of Batman’s body armor. “It became a sort of trompe l’oeil, it became ambiguous, so you had to look twice,” said Furst. “But it was very definitely the Batsymbol, so there was no problem in people identifying it.” Peters loved the design, and decided that the posters advertising the film would consist solely of the logo on a black background. The only lettering would be the opening date of the film: June 23. The studio wanted the names of the stars on the poster. Peters felt the star was Batman. The producer later told Furst that he had fought enormous battles with Warner Bros. over the poster, to the point of pinning executives against the wall.
The Batsymbol became ubiquitous in the months leading up to the film’s release. “You couldn’t walk across Times Square,” said Michael Uslan, “it’s like every fifth person either had a Batman hat or a tee-shirt on. People were breaking into the bus stops to get the posters. People were finding out what movies were showing the trailer, they would pay, go in and see the trailer and then leave, wouldn’t even stay for the movie. Bootleg copies of the initial trailer were being sold at Comic Cons for twenty-five bucks back then. It was absolutely insane. How many movies are advertised without even putting the name of the movie on the poster? The symbol was so iconic, it was just the symbol and a date, and it became like a mania. It was unbelievable. People now who’ve only known in their consciousness what happened with The Dark Knight, have no idea how equally crazed it was with that first Batman movie. I think it might’ve been the best-marketed film up to that time.”282
Even before Batman hit movie screens, Warner Bros., anticipating how to thwart pirated videotape copies from diminishing their box-office receipts, employed a technological solution worthy of Batman. The studio revealed that all 4,000 prints of the film shipped worldwide carried an electronic marking code not visible on the projected film that could be detected in all pirated film-to-video transfers. In addition, Warner Bros. offered rewards of $200 for the first 15 prated copies of the film received by the studio, as well as up to $15,000 for information leading to the conviction of anyone distributing pirated Batman cassettes.283
With anticipation for the film reaching a fever pitch, Warner Bros. booked not one but two theaters to host the premiere, the 1,500-seat
Village Theatre and the adjacent 850-seat Bruin Theater in Westwood, a Los Angeles suburb adjoining the campus of UCLA. For the night of the premiere, the studio had originally planned to host a huge Batbash, turning Westwood into Gotham City at a projected cost of $100,000. But as they considered the idea, they began to get cold feet, worried that someone would get hurt. “When you make plans for these events, you have to think on all levels,” said Rob Friedman, Warners’ advertising chief. “From a security point of view, we got really afraid.” When the studio canceled plans for the event, they decided to donate $100,000 to the Zahn Memorial Center for Social Services, an organization allied with the Salvation Army that earmarked the funds to help the homeless in Los Angeles. “We decided to think in the spirit of Batman—who works to better Gotham, if you will,” said Friedman.284
The Batman premiere was set for 8 PM on the evening of June 19, 1989. With the studio announcing that seats would be set aside in both theaters for the general public, hundreds of fans began congregating on the sidewalks around the theaters in the early afternoon, segregated from the red carpet by police barricades. Though mostly young males, the fans were all ages, and many were in costume. There were Batmen in the all-black outfit of the movie, and there were Batmen in the Adam West costume from the 1960s. There were a few Robins, and more than a few white- faced, green-haired Jokers. Rising above the two theaters were brightly colored and rather silly-looking helium parade balloons, props from the movie’s finale. As 8 PM approached, the crowds cheered the arrival of the movie stars. A thunderous roar went up for Jack Nicholson, and Michael Keaton emerged from his limousine and rushed to the fans, high-fiving several of them before whirling around to enter the theater. Celebrities in attendance included Eddie Murphy, Sylvester Stallone, Don Johnson with Melanie Griffith, Winona Ryder, Vanna White, Tom Selleck, Valerie Bertinelli and Eddie Van Halen, Randy Quaid, Kirk Cameron, Chevy Chase and Glenn Close, who said, “It feels like the Academy Awards.”285 Kim Basinger, who turned heads in a black party dress that had a sheer skirt that revealed her sheer black stockings and lace panties underneath, said, “It’s amazing. This isn’t a film, it’s an event.”286
When the theaters were filled to capacity, the fans outside remained, hopeful that there would be a second showing and they would be among the first to see the summer’s most highly-anticipated film. They weren’t disappointed. To help set the mood, the theaters shined a Batsignal onto the theater curtains until the lights dimmed completely and the film began. The Warner executives in the back rows must have breathed a deep sigh of relief when the audience let out a collective astonished “Ooooooh!” when Batman was seen in the opening scenes, gliding down into the background of a mist-filled shot of two petty crooks. In the packed house, the film played like gangbusters.
Screenwriter Warren Skaaren, who had never encountered Bob Kane on the set, got a chance to meet him at the premiere. “I wouldn’t have missed that for the world!” said Skaaren.287 Michael Uslan echoed Skaaren’s sentiments, saying, “As a fanboy, at the premiere of the first movie, to me the greatest thing was not the stars that were there and hanging out with them, it was hanging out with Stan Lee and Bob Kane at the premiere of my first Batman movie. That was as good as it gets for me.”288
After the Los Angeles premiere, a private Washington, D.C. screening was held on June 22, with an audience of politicians including Vice President Dan Quayle and his family.289 Then, on June 23, Batman opened at 2,193 U.S. and Canadian theaters.290 There were reports that at some theaters, moviegoers had begun camping out the day before.291 In its first weekend, Batman took in a record-shattering $42.7 million. Over the next ten days, it earned $100 million, the first movie in history to earn such a phenomenal amount so quickly.292 By the time it ended its run, it had grossed over $400 million.293
TV reviewers Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert split on the film. They both admired the art direction, and Siskel called it “the first summer spectacular that I’ve really enjoyed...there’s some true originality in the film’s art design, sound and performances.” Ebert also praised the art design, but felt the characters were not ones he could care about. The reaction of the TV critics mirrored the split among the nation’s newspapers. In The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote that “The wit is all pictorial. The film meanders mindlessly from one image to the next, as does a comic book. It doesn’t help that the title character remains such a wimp even when played by Michael Keaton. Nobody could do anything with this ridiculous conceit, but asking Mr. Keaton, one of our most volatile actors, to play Bruce Wayne/Batman is like asking him to put on an ape suit and play the title role in King Kong...Batman is a movie without any dominant tone or style other than that provided by Mr. Furst. It’s neither funny nor solemn. It has the personality not of a particular movie but of a product, of something arrived at by corporate decision.”294
Richard Corliss, in Time magazine, concurred, writing, “Batman’s style is both daunting and lurching; it has trouble deciding which of its antagonists should set the tone. It can be as manic as the Joker, straining to hear the applause of outrage; it can be as implosive as Batman-Bruce, who seems crushed by the burden of his schizoid eminence. This tension nearly exhausts the viewer and the film.”295
In The Omaha World-Heral/dv, Jeff Bahr wrote, “Yes, the Joker is definitely wild in Batman. Nicholson’s role is so large, in fact, that this film should almost be called The Joker...Considering all of the buildup this film has received, many moviegoers will find it a letdown. If Robin were around, he probably would say, ‘Holy Disappointment, Batman!’”296 Jeff Strickler in The Minneapolis Star Tribune echoed Bahr’s sentiments, writing, “Bad news, batfans. In Batman, the Joker finally gets the better of the hero. He pulls off the crime of the century right below the Caped Crusader’s nose: He steals his movie.”297
In The Wall Street Journal, which had bashed Keaton’s casting months before, Julie Salamon wrote, “Batman, as directed by Tim Burton, may be descended from the cartoon original, but it is no action comic, nor does it have either the camp jokiness of the ‘60s television show or the slick cut-and-shoot of the Superman pictures. Though there’s plenty of high-powered gimcrackery, especially the Batmobile, Batman is least compelling during its action sequences. The big confrontation between Batman and his nemesis, the Joker, seems almost like an afterthought. Mr. Burton and his associates had something more complex and fascinating in mind—and they almost pull it off.”298
Variety, on the other hand, said, “Director Tim Burton effectively echoes the visual style of the original Bob Kane comics while conjuring up a nightmarish world of his own... What keeps the film arresting is the visual stylization. It was a shrewd choice for Burton to emulate the jarring angles and creepy lighting of film noir.”299
In USA Today, talk-show host Larry King raved, “I finally got around to seeing Batman. Wow! This is easily one of the best movies I’ve ever seen in my life. There was not one minute where I was bored. The lighting was right on the mark, the direction superb and the performances flawless. If you don’t enjoy this flick you are comatose, my friend.”300
Many parents thought the film was too dark for small children, but they were only too happy to introduce their kids to reruns of the old Adam West Batman series on television. A San Diego station doubled its 6 P.M. ratings when it began running the classic TV show, and the WWOR superstation in Secaucus, New Jersey beat all the New York network affiliates in the ratings when it broadcast the 1966 Batman feature. Cable’s Family Channel had been about to drop the series, until the ratings shot up after the release of the new Batman film.301
In the Bronx, a desire to see Batman cost one young man his life. Before the 12:30 AM screening began on July 3 at the Whitestone Cinemas complex, two men got into a dispute in the concessions line over the last remaining bag of popcorn. One of them said he was going out to his car to get his gun. The other said, “Go ahead.” Minutes later, the men encountered each other again inside the theater. Both pulled guns and fired. O
ne fell dead; the other, a black man about 19 years old, ran. Police recovered the victim’s gun, a .38-caliber revolver, which had been reported stolen in Pennsylvania. Luckily, no other patrons in the theater were injured.302
Some European countries found the film too dark and violent for children. In Britain, the film became one of the first to carry the new “12” rating, which meant that children under 12 were barred from seeing the film regardless of their parents’ supervision, while in Belgium, filmgoers under 16 were banned.303
In Canada, Montreal psychiatrist Dr. Yves Lamontagne, speaking for The Association of Quebec Psychiatrists, said, “The film, despite its undeniable cinematic qualities, is too intense and contains scenes of violence that are much too frightening for children under 10 years.”304 A Montreal father, Xavier Lefebvre, after taking his son to see Batman, responded, “If anyone is going to have nightmares about this, it’s parents. They have to pay for the admission, for the comics, for the lunch pails, for all that Batman junk they are selling.”305
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