Billion Dollar Batman

by Bruce Scivally

  Once filming began, Christian Bale enjoyed working with Heath Ledger. The two actors were kindred spirits, both known for going to mental and physical extremes in the pursuit of perfection in playing a role. “I was almost kind of chuckling inside and I didn’t want to let it show when we were doing our first scene,” said Bale, “which was in the interrogation room and I saw what he was going to do with it, and I felt I recognized the satisfaction he seemed to be getting in the pleasure from the role to be similar to the satisfaction that I get from acting as well. I felt very comfortable working with him.”111

  Christian Bale as Batman looms over Heath Ledger, the scariest incarnation yet of the Joker, in The Dark Knight (Warner Bros./Photofest, © Warner Bros. Photographer: Stephen Vaughan).

  Christopher Nolan also found Ledger to be a pleasure. “If there was anything surprising about him maybe it was how easy he was to work with. Because he was somebody who put so much into his performances I was a little worried that he might take himself very seriously and all the rest. Yet he didn’t. He was very warm and fun to have around, a great collaborator.”112 When Michael Caine got his first glimpse of Ledger’s performance, he was stunned. “I turn up every month or so and do a couple of bits then go back to London,” said Caine. “I had to do this bit where Batman and I watch a video which The Joker sends to threaten us. So I’d never seen him, and then he came on the television in the first rehearsal and I completely forgot my lines. I flipped, because it was so stunning, it was quite amazing.”113

  The Dark Knight was Christian Bale’s third film for Nolan, having just worked with him on The Prestige. “I think Chris has a great talent for satisfying the need for a rollercoaster ride, for just being purely entertained, without forgoing moments of great personal conflict and the duality within the characters,” said Bale. “He manages to do both without compromising either.”114 Bale said that Nolan was clearly “a director who is very focused and knows what he wants but is open to the collaborative process and finding unexpected things in performances. He makes you feel very safe and prepares you for success.”115

  Nolan also had high praise for Bale, saying, “Working with Christian is a joy and just a lot of fun. He is a very engaging presence to have on the set. He also has an intensity about him; he is incredibly focused on tapping into the psychological reality of whatever character he’s playing. He applies the same disciplined approach to finding the truth of that character and sticks to it. That is a great help to me as a filmmaker because I know he is prepared and has a handle on how his character is going to move through the story. In fact, he has a lot of the same qualities that Bruce Wayne brings to bear in changing himself from an ordinary man into this extraordinary crime-fighting figure.”116

  Nolan said that while Bale portrayed the same character in The Dark Knight and Batman Begins, the two films presented the actor with very different challenges. “On Batman Begins, it was a lot of physical effort—he had to get himself in terrific shape and learn all kinds of skills in terms of the way Batman fights, the way he moves,” said Nolan. “On this film, I would say it required more of an internal process because Bruce is realizing the personal toll of living this double life and is questioning the choices he’s made. Christian conveys that emotional struggle very convincingly, often without saying a word.”117

  Nolan was determined to expand Batman’s world and do more location filming on The Dark Knight than he had on Batman Begins. “The real world is built on a scale you could never reproduce in the studio,” said Nolan.118 After months of filming in England, the cast and crew moved to Chicago for filming of exteriors and action sequences. “I spent some time growing up in Chicago, so it’s a city I know and love. It is famous for its architecture and it is also a very film-friendly city. We shot there for weeks on Batman Begins...and the help and encouragement we got from the city was extraordinary.”119

  After shooting exteriors for the Joker’s bank heist and school bus escape in the city from April 18 to the 24th, the unit returned to Chicago on June 9 for more than three months of filming. As with Batman Begins, Nolan shot every frame of the film himself, unlike other big-budget films that would delegate filming of action scenes to a second unit. Although Nolan storyboarded particular scenes, he nonetheless encouraged improvisation among both his cast and his crew. Speaking of his method, Nolan said, “It scares people a bit. We just go and shoot the stuff, and see what looks the best and what works. But on a big movie, you actually have more freedom. You can say, ‘O.K., it’s 3 in the morning—can we get the police to close down that street?’”120

  The Dark Knight was the fourth film Nathan Crowley had worked on in the Windy City. “The Chicago architecture is phenomenal,” said Crowley. “All of the great architects of the last century have worked there. And it’s wonderfully cinematic.”121 Crowley chose the IBM Building and One Illinois Plaza, both designed by famed architect Mies van der Rohe, for use as a variety of sets. The IBM Building became the Wayne Enterprises Boardroom, Harvey Dent’s office, the Mayor’s office and the Police Commissioner’s office, while the lobby of One Illinois Plaza became the main living area of Bruce Wayne’s new penthouse.122

  Using the lobby level of One Illinois Plaza for a penthouse meant employing a little movie magic to create top-floor views of Gotham City through the floor-to- ceiling windows. Bruce’s bedroom was built separately on the 39th floor of Hotel 71 on East Wacker Drive.123

  The penthouse was definitely more modern than the gothic corridors of Wayne Manor. “We were given access to these great modernist floors, and we felt that era of architecture was better suited for what we were trying to convey emotionally,” said Crowley. “It’s cold and it’s vacant; there’s no warmth to the environment.”124 Nolan agreed with Crowley’s use of the sets to reflect Bruce Wayne’s emotional state. “Bruce is living a very lonely existence in a way,” said Nolan, “so the stark design of the penthouse was meant to reflect his state of mind.”125

  The party scene at Wayne’s penthouse provided another opportunity for Vermont Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee who had been seen in crowd scenes of Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, to return for another cameo appearance. This time, he was given dialogue. When the Joker bursts in, Leahy steps forward, proclaiming, “We’re not intimidated by your thugs.” The Joker says, “You remind me of my father. I hated my father.” Then he grabs Leahy’s head and thrusts a knife to his face.126 Leahy said he spent all of one night filming the scene, in which Ledger would “punch or throw me halfway across the room.”127 It took a couple dozen takes for Leahy to nail his lines. “We tried it two different ways—one was authoritative, the other one was with a lot of fear in my voice,” said Leahy. Nolan ultimately directed him to spout the line with a take-charge attitude reflective of the prosecutor Leahy once was.128

  Other Chicago locations included the Convention Hall at McCormick Place West, which became the vast warehouse of Wayne Enterprises’ Applied Science Division, and Navy Pier, where panicked citizens of Gotham City protested prisoners being loaded onto a ferry boat. In addition, the exterior of Chicago’s Trump Tower, which was in the early construction stage at the time of production, was used for exteriors of the final confrontation between Batman and the Joker.129

  The Sears Tower, the tallest building in the United States, became the location for a soaring exterior shot of Batman looking out over his city. When it came time to film it, Christian Bale decided he couldn’t pass up such a rare opportunity. “I overheard my stunt double, Buster Reeves, saying he was heading up to the Sears Tower to do that, and I said, ‘Sorry buddy, no way. I just have to do this one myself,’” said Bale. “I mean, how often do you get to be 110 stories up, looking out over all of Chicago? But it’s a funny and probably quite dangerous thing, how quickly I felt very at home out there and how soon I was able to move around right on the edge, looking straight down.”130

  While most directors would have denied their star’s willingn
ess to put their neck at risk on insurance grounds alone, Christopher Nolan supported Bale’s decision. “Christian likes to challenge himself and I knew we weren’t putting him in any actual physical danger,” said Nolan. “It was perfectly safe; it just required guts to stand there. I certainly wouldn’t want to do it, but he seemed to enjoy it and it made a beautiful shot for us. And after that, standing out on a ledge on a building in Hong Kong must have been easy.”131

  Nolan also made dramatic use of Chicago’s multi-leveled streets, with parallel upper and lower roadways, for the climactic car chase between the Joker, the police and Batman. The fast-paced chase sent a variety of cars, armored trucks and an 18-wheeler hurtling down Upper and Lower Wacker Drive, Lower Randolph, Lower Columbus and LaSalle Street.

  For one portion of the chase, the Bat-Pod took a detour through the newly-remodeled train station under Millennium Park.132 Stunt driver Jean-Pierre Goy was astride the Bat-Pod for the entire chase scene, except for close-ups of Christian Bale, which were achieved with the Bat-Pod actually being towed behind a camera car. “There were world class bikers who were getting on this thing and coming straight off of it,” said Bale. “I had to recognize at that point I wasn’t going to manage it either. So whenever you see me on it, it’s still an adrenaline rush, but I am getting dragged behind another vehicle. It’s embarrassing to admit, but I have to give kudos to Jean- Pierre for being the only person in the world who was able to master it. He said so himself, it’s not a motorbike, you have to actually ignore all of the skills you have learned as a biker in order to learn how to operate the Bat-Pod.”133 Bale did, however, get to ride an MV Agusta F4 motorbike in the film.134 “I spent days just roaring up and down,” said Bale. “All I had to do was pull up and get off it. I insisted it was absolutely necessary for my preparation.”135

  Bale also was not involved in any of the Batmobile scenes. For all of the chase scenes involving the Tumbler, stuntman George Cottle was at the wheel. “He’s a wonderful driver,” said Bale. “I mean, I did drive it, but I didn’t drive it on film. I would just race up and down.” Nonetheless, Bale managed to get behind the wheel of Bruce Wayne’s Lamborghini. “Oh, I had to go practice on that for many hours,” said the actor. “I would have to learn how to do the 180s on that, it was really essential.”136

  “The city of Chicago did extraordinary things,” said producer Charles Roven. “They let us take over their financial district at night as long as we were safe and they made sure that we were. They were fantastic to us. We had one day where we had the Bat-Pod coming out of an alley and coming onto the street, and it created a huge sonic boom that bounced off the walls of the building and blew out a bunch of windows.

  That was not planned. But that was the only mishap. But because they were so great to us, we made sure that we honored that and we mobilized glaziers, the guys who put the windows in, and within 24 hours we had fixed every window.”137

  Even more incredible is that the city allowed Nolan and his film crew to flip a 40-foot tractor-trailer rig end-over-end in the heart of the financial district on LaSalle Street.138 Chris Corbould, after reading the stunt in the script, was skeptical that it could even be done. He went to Nolan to discuss the problems. “I tried to make compromises with Chris—like maybe the whole truck doesn’t go over or maybe we could use a smaller truck—but he wasn’t having any of it,’ said Corbould.139 After listening to Corbould’s misgivings, Nolan said that, “Finally I turned to him one day and said, ‘Chris, it really ought to be an 18-wheeler. And I know you can find a way to do this because that’s just who you are and that’s what you do.’”140 Corbould had previous experience working with tractor-trailers, having supervised special effects on the 1989 James Bond film Licence to Kill, which concluded with a chase scene involving big rigs.

  With a direct challenge from Nolan, Corbould gave in. But now he had to find out if doing the stunt, which required using a nitrogen cannon to shoot a telegraph pole through a hole in the cab to bring the truck to an immediate stop, was even possible. “After about six weeks of calculations, we were ready to do an actual test,” said Corbould. “We went out to an open space, got the truck up to speed and pressed the button, and it just sailed over. I had to go to Chris Nolan and tell him it worked perfectly.”141 Still, doing a test in the middle of nowhere was much different than doing the shot for real in the middle of a busy city street. Before they could film the scene, city engineers inspected the location to make sure that the tons of force necessary to send the truck end over end would not damage the infrastructure of LaSalle Street, including the various utility lines that run beneath it. Once safe parameters were determined, the production was given the green light.142

  When the cameras rolled, Corbould hit the switch and the truck flipped exactly as expected. The cast and crew applauded. “It was an impressive thing to watch this truck fly over and land precisely where Chris said it was going to land,” said Nolan. “At the top of its arc, it looked almost like a skyscraper standing there, and then it just continued going over very gracefully. I’ve never seen anything like it.”143

  A final spectacular shot came on August 28, when the crew destroyed a disused building that had once been the Brach’s candy factory. Corbould and his crew teamed with Controlled Demolition, Inc., a company run by Doug Loizeaux, for the explosion. “Chris didn’t want the building to go down like a deck of cards, like a conventional demolition,” said Corbould. “I worked with Doug, who came up with a system to make the building go down more like a wave, in sequence. Then we added our special effects elements to make it more spectacular.”144

  Safety was a primary concern for the filmmakers, especially considering the surrounding street traffic and active rail lines that ran near the building. The railroad companies were contacted and the train schedules coordinated to make sure that no trains would be coming through at the time of the explosion. Nearby street traffic was blocked off to keep onlookers and passers-by from getting too close to the blast. The scene required a bus to be close to the explosion, so polycarbonate sheeting was placed on its windows to ensure that even if they broke, no glass would fly into the bus with cast members inside.145 Again, when the time came, the effect went off without a hitch.

  With these big stunts going so smoothly, it was a shock to Corbould when a relatively simple stunt went awry after the crew returned to England. On Monday, September 24, 2007, while the main unit was filming at Cardington, Corbould and his special effects crew went to the QinetiQ racetrack at Longcross near Chertsey, south of London, to do test runs involving a stunt vehicle.146 Part of the test involved firing an old American police car off a ramp with a black powder cannon while pyrotechnic explosions were set off in its trunk. Upon landing, another cannon inside its trunk was supposed to fire and cause the car to flip over. The camera crew was to follow alongside the stunt car at about 20mph in a Nissan 4x4 driven by special effects technician Bruce Monroe-Armstrong.147 Leaning out the window of the Nissan from the back seat was cinematographer Conway Wickliffe, operating the camera that was following the police car.148 When it was time to do the test, the cannons in the police car went off as planned, but the Nissan failed to negotiate a 90-degree turn at the end of the run and collided with a tree.149 Wickliffe suffered severe head injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene.

  The cast and crew were stunned by the accident. A father of two, Wickliffe had previously worked on Batman Begins and Casino Royale.150 Warner Bros. released a statement saying that the producers, cast and crew were “deeply saddened by this tragedy and their hearts and prayers go out to the family and loved ones of the deceased.” Christian Bale and other film celebrities attended his funeral.151

  Britain’s Health and Safety Executive investigated the accident,152 and the case went to the Crown Court in Guildford in March 2011. In court, prosecutors alleged that the accident was a result of a catalogue of safety blunders by special effects supervisor Chris Corbould.153 Prosecutor Pascal Bates told jurors that Wickliffe
’s death was a tragedy waiting to happen, since Corbould had allowed Wickliffe to lean out of the car without wearing a safety belt while filming the practice scene. As Corbould sat grim-faced in the dock, Bates argued that the special effects supervisor was responsible for the “planning, conduct and supervision of the filmed special effects test. We say that there should have been a more thorough management of the risks.”154 After two hours of deliberation, the jury disagreed—unanimously. Corbould was found innocent of any negligence.155

  Heath Ledger finished his work on the film in October. By the time shooting wrapped, the weeks of putting all his energy into the role had totally fatigued him. “He was exhausted, I mean he was really tired,” said Michael Caine. “I remember saying to him, ‘I’m too old to have the bloody energy to play that part.’ And I thought to myself, I didn’t have the energy when I was his age.” Cinematographer Wally Pfister said that Ledger was so intense he seemed “like he was busting blood vessels in his head...It was like a séance, where the medium takes on another person and then is so completely drained.”156

  A few weeks later, Ledger told The New York Times that he was having trouble sleeping after finishing the shoot. “Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night,” said Ledger. “I couldn’t stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going.” The actor said he took two Ambien sleeping pills and fell into a stupor, then woke up an hour later.157

  On November 6, a week of shooting began in Hong Kong. The city had been scouted nearly a year earlier, at the end of 2006. Once a decision was made to definitely film there, it took the producers nearly nine months to get all the necessary permits. The most prominent location in Hong Kong was the city’s tallest building, the IFC2 Building. “I liked the idea of sending Batman someplace more exotic,” said Nolan. “We had done that with Bruce Wayne in the first film, before he became Batman, but I really wanted to show the character of Batman outside the realm of Gotham City. I had been to Hong Kong many years ago at a film festival, and remembered it as a great location. It’s an incredibly visual place, which makes it ideal in cinematic terms.”158 In fact, sending Batman to the Asian city marked the first time in the history of the Batman film franchise that the Caped Crusader was seen outside of Gotham City.