Batman (1989) vs. The Dark Knight (2008): Part 1

<v Speaker 1>This is a podcast from Minute Media.
<v Speaker 2>Gentlemen, let's broaden our minds.
<v Speaker 3>Lawrence, Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Surely You
<v Speaker 3>Can't Be Serious Podcast, Season number three.
<v Speaker 2>I am so stinking excited. It's been too long, man,
<v Speaker 2>I'm glad to be back doing this with you. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Who needs Christmas? Who needs New Year's? Who needs time off?
<v Speaker 2>Who needs families and children? Yes, I've missed my buddy, man,
<v Speaker 2>I've missed you. And you know what, here's what I think. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>it's like we're made for each other, beauty and the beast.
<v Speaker 2>But if anyone else calls you a beast offered pair long,
<v Speaker 2>I just want you to know that you are my
<v Speaker 2>number one a guy. All right, everybody, welcome back for
<v Speaker 2>season three. We're starting off with a mammoth task. We
<v Speaker 2>are tackling Batman, Dark Knight, and a little bit of
<v Speaker 2>the Batman. I can't wait to see this. I think
<v Speaker 2>it's really promising looking. Yes, I think it's it's going
<v Speaker 2>to be more of a character study. It's going to
<v Speaker 2>be the darkness that the two movies that we were
<v Speaker 2>talking about jumped into, and not the bright and shiny
<v Speaker 2>made for kids garbage. Oh, my gosh.
<v Speaker 4>You know, I went through Batman eighty nine. I studied
<v Speaker 4>Batman Returns, I studied Batman forever. I studied Batman and
<v Speaker 4>Robin along with Batman begins The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight,
<v Speaker 4>I said.
<v Speaker 2>I did it all. Okay, Okay, I looked into all
<v Speaker 2>of it.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, the Batman Burton franchise of the eighties and nineties, Yeah,
<v Speaker 4>went down so fast.
<v Speaker 2>It was just appalling how terrible those got so quickly. Yes,
<v Speaker 2>And as it turns out, it's really just history repeating itself,
<v Speaker 2>and it starts all the way back with the comic books.
<v Speaker 2>This darkness turned into bubblegum, campy pop, just to return
<v Speaker 2>to darkness, just to go back to pop. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>it just goes back and forth. I'm glad that they
<v Speaker 2>seemed to be resisting the urge to lighten things up. Well.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, if we were talking about what's happened after
<v Speaker 2>the Dark Knight trilogy, if we're talking about Zack Snyder's Batman,
<v Speaker 2>he went in directions that I think a lot of
<v Speaker 2>us weren't happy with. And certainly when Joss Whedon got
<v Speaker 2>a hold of it in the Justice League, he turned
<v Speaker 2>it into a bright colorful ball of puke, right, and
<v Speaker 2>so yeah, I think once again where we've reached that
<v Speaker 2>point that people said, why did we go bright and
<v Speaker 2>colorful with Batman yet again, when what truly works is
<v Speaker 2>our dark knight. You know, one of the things that
<v Speaker 2>excites me about the trip it looks gritty and dark.
<v Speaker 2>The thing that caught my ear more than anything, yeah.
<v Speaker 4>Was the Something in the Way by Nirvana Underneath and
<v Speaker 4>you've really got to be listening for it.
<v Speaker 2>And it's dark, and I'm like, man, that flashes me
<v Speaker 2>back to our episode absolutely, and it was you that
<v Speaker 2>you tuned me onto that. You're like, you got to
<v Speaker 2>you gotta see this preview right now. It's so good.
<v Speaker 2>And you start off with that sound of the ripping
<v Speaker 2>duct tape and the darkness that unfolds, and you've got
<v Speaker 2>a muscle car as the Batmobile, and you've got characters
<v Speaker 2>that are still characters. I mean, you see that villain
<v Speaker 2>and he it harkens back to those guys, even from
<v Speaker 2>the campy Batman nineteen sixty six version. But it's got
<v Speaker 2>the darkness and I'm really excited about who they have
<v Speaker 2>for the villain. I know, I'm Jim Carrey, no no, sorry, no,
<v Speaker 2>that's the wrong Riddler. Yeah, no, not that one.
<v Speaker 4>It does look like they're gonna make the Riddler the
<v Speaker 4>bad guy, yes, but he is that same dark joker,
<v Speaker 4>anarchist looking character.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, there's something going on there that's much much darker
<v Speaker 2>than a guy in a bright green spandex with question marks. Olover. Awesome, Awesome. Well,
<v Speaker 2>this is a mammoth task because people love these two
<v Speaker 2>movies and people strong feelings about this third one that's
<v Speaker 2>coming out. Yeah, so let's just talk about this for
<v Speaker 2>a second. The comic book the character first came about
<v Speaker 2>back in nineteen thirty nine, so we're talking over eighty
<v Speaker 2>years of history here, and we're only going to do
<v Speaker 2>a couple episodes on this, so we can't really devote
<v Speaker 2>the time that a full analysis of the Batman character deserves.
<v Speaker 2>We could spend probably an entire season just on the
<v Speaker 2>comic books and the cycles that it's gone through. We're
<v Speaker 2>going to give it the justice that we can give it,
<v Speaker 2>but focus mainly on the two most iconic movies, that
<v Speaker 2>being Batman eighty nine and The Dark Knight from two
<v Speaker 2>thousand and eight. Exactly exactly. So you mentioned it Batman first,
<v Speaker 2>appeared in Detective Comics number twenty seven, March thirtieth, nineteen
<v Speaker 2>thirty nine. Yeah. So the concept came about because Superman
<v Speaker 2>had become a success for DC Comics, and this young
<v Speaker 2>guy named Bob kin was interested in becoming involved in
<v Speaker 2>comic books. He loved to draw. He found out that
<v Speaker 2>Schuster and Segull were making like six hundred dollars a
<v Speaker 2>week back in nineteen thirties, money, which was something to behold. Right,
<v Speaker 2>this is the depression time, right, Detective Comics was trying
<v Speaker 2>to find another character, and so his answer was to
<v Speaker 2>come up with somebody that was kind of the antithesis
<v Speaker 2>of the Superman. You know, you mentioned that Bob Kane
<v Speaker 2>was right place, right time. Yeah, he was also very entrepreneurial. Yes,
<v Speaker 2>he saw them making some money and he's like, man,
<v Speaker 2>how can I get on board this train. It is
<v Speaker 2>important to note that Bob Kaine's primary goal was to
<v Speaker 2>become rich and famous. Well you know what he did that.
<v Speaker 2>He did do that. Now, he used some tactics that
<v Speaker 2>are questionable at the very best at best is questionable
<v Speaker 2>and downright dirty might be what some other people say,
<v Speaker 2>but we'll we can talk about that in a bit, okay, okay,
<v Speaker 2>So Bob kin to come up with an idea that
<v Speaker 2>he thinks is going to sell, decides to make something
<v Speaker 2>that is sort of the polar opposite of Superman.
<v Speaker 1>Right.
<v Speaker 2>He's not bright and shiny, He's dark, He's mysterious, and
<v Speaker 2>he has three inspirations that lead him to creating what
<v Speaker 2>he would say would either be the Birdman or the Batman.
<v Speaker 2>By the way, I watched Birdman last night. Jed, who
<v Speaker 2>did our intro in our first season, Jet Who's got
<v Speaker 2>his own podcast out there called Limos and Roses. Be
<v Speaker 2>sure and check it out. He has been on me
<v Speaker 2>for like the last six years to watch this movie,
<v Speaker 2>and finally I did it, and I loved it. You
<v Speaker 2>hated it, right, dude, are you crazy? I thought it
<v Speaker 2>was great. I could see why you hated it because
<v Speaker 2>it's not your type of movie. But I really, I
<v Speaker 2>truly enjoyed it. But I thought it was interesting that
<v Speaker 2>the name of that was the Birdman, and the two
<v Speaker 2>ideas that Bob Kine had were either the Birdman or
<v Speaker 2>the Batman, and his inspiration came from a book he
<v Speaker 2>read by Leonardo da Vinci, where he had a glider
<v Speaker 2>a single man glider that he had drawn, and the
<v Speaker 2>wings looked like the wings of a bat, and so
<v Speaker 2>he thought, well, this is this is great. I'm going
<v Speaker 2>to take this and I'm going to combine it with
<v Speaker 2>my other hero, who is Zoro. Right. And you'll notice
<v Speaker 2>a lot of times in the Marquee when the family
<v Speaker 2>walks out of the movie theater, they've been watching the
<v Speaker 2>Mask of Zorro. Okay, So he's like, okay, I'm going
<v Speaker 2>to combine these guys. So what he comes up with
<v Speaker 2>is a guy in a red suit, a red suit,
<v Speaker 2>a red suit, and he has the Zoro style mask
<v Speaker 2>just over the eyes, and he has literal bat wings
<v Speaker 2>coming out of his back, right, not a cad but
<v Speaker 2>like fixed glider wings. Yeah, fixed slider wings. So he
<v Speaker 2>goes to his buddy Bill figure. Bill Finger is an
<v Speaker 2>important feature in our story. We will we will talk
<v Speaker 2>about that in more detail as we go on down
<v Speaker 2>the line, but it is important to note that Bill
<v Speaker 2>Finger is the one that said this is not quite right.
<v Speaker 2>To Bobcaine's credit, he knew it wasn't quite right. So
<v Speaker 2>he goes to his gifted and talented friend Bill Finger yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and says, well, what do you think, and he's like,
<v Speaker 2>well he needs to since he's fighting crime at night
<v Speaker 2>and he's a vigilanti and stuff like that, he needs
<v Speaker 2>to be you know, masked and covered.
<v Speaker 4>And so that little domino mask that's not really going
<v Speaker 4>to do the trick. So let's cover him up and
<v Speaker 4>give him a cow.
<v Speaker 2>Also, those fixed wings, it's not really practical, and what
<v Speaker 2>happens when he's walking around, so let's give him a cake? Right,
<v Speaker 2>And he also changed it from red to gray, right, right,
<v Speaker 2>because he's at night, right, he's got to blend into
<v Speaker 2>the shadows. Yeah. And so Bob Kane takes this creation,
<v Speaker 2>which also the cowl included the little bat like ears
<v Speaker 2>on top, and takes it to DC Comics, then Detective
<v Speaker 2>Comics and says, here's my character. They say, we love it.
<v Speaker 2>They signed a contract and on the contract is his name,
<v Speaker 2>Detective Comics name, and nobody else.
<v Speaker 4>Yes, and there's a whole We watched a document around
<v Speaker 4>this called Batman and Bill.
<v Speaker 2>I recommend it to everybody, whether you are a comic
<v Speaker 2>book fan or not, you definitely need to watch this
<v Speaker 2>dive in because what happened that day was one of
<v Speaker 2>those make or break moments and Bob Kane chose to
<v Speaker 2>do the wrong thing and had to double down on
<v Speaker 2>it again and again throughout the course of his life,
<v Speaker 2>and it cost poor Bill Finger a career. Yeah, so
<v Speaker 2>we got the comic books. He's immediately he is a
<v Speaker 2>hit out of the gate, and interestingly his first year
<v Speaker 2>he's got guns right, and he's market people. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>it's he really is a vigilanting right, the no kill
<v Speaker 2>Batman did not exist yet. This was a guy who
<v Speaker 2>was a vigilante, who was going out and doing dirty
<v Speaker 2>work and important to the idea of detective comics. He
<v Speaker 2>was solving mysteries. He was like a detective. And then
<v Speaker 2>things changed. Okay, so we can keep on going on
<v Speaker 2>the comic books, but we're here to talk about movies.
<v Speaker 2>I want to talk about nineteen forty three Batman's first
<v Speaker 2>appearance in film. It was that was really pretty much
<v Speaker 2>just World War two propaganda. You had a evil mustache
<v Speaker 2>toiling Japanese guy as the villain. Uh huh, I am
<v Speaker 2>that guy.
<v Speaker 5>I'm observing of this much. Just the hero hit that
<v Speaker 5>by divine destiny, my country shall destroy the democratic forces
<v Speaker 5>of evil in the United States to make way for
<v Speaker 5>the new Order.
<v Speaker 2>But Interestingly, this is the first time the concept of
<v Speaker 2>the bat Cave appeared really okay in the movie. Yes,
<v Speaker 2>in this it was a serial, you know, like cereals
<v Speaker 2>in the nineteen forties. This is forty three, So you've
<v Speaker 2>got You've got the Batman. He's got the bat Cave
<v Speaker 2>in this, which first time you see that, and also
<v Speaker 2>the concept of him going to it through the Grandfather clock,
<v Speaker 2>which is both of those things have just become iconic,
<v Speaker 2>but most people don't know about this old thing, or
<v Speaker 2>that they came about from a movie and not from
<v Speaker 2>the comic books. Originally interesting, it was also the first
<v Speaker 2>time you had a thin Alfred in the comics. He
<v Speaker 2>had been this little portly fat dude. Okay. And the
<v Speaker 2>guy who played Batman and that was named Lewis Wilson.
<v Speaker 2>He didn't appear in film again until nineteen forty nine.
<v Speaker 2>It was another sixteen episode serial, and this one was
<v Speaker 2>Batman and Robin Robert Lowry had played Batman. And in
<v Speaker 2>that one we had Jane Adams as Vicky Vale. Stop
<v Speaker 2>the brand who.
<v Speaker 1>Sticky Vail, Sticky Vale.
<v Speaker 2>I like that Vicky Vale.
<v Speaker 4>The one thing I know about old time Vicky Vale. Yeah,
<v Speaker 4>I know she was a reporter, and I know she
<v Speaker 4>had red hair.
<v Speaker 2>That's it. I don't think we could have sold Kim
<v Speaker 2>Bay Singer as a red head. No, but thankfully we
<v Speaker 2>got Nicole Kidman as doctor Chase Meridian a couple of
<v Speaker 2>pictures later. Well, I wish I could say that my
<v Speaker 2>interest in you was purely professional. Well as nice as
<v Speaker 2>she looks, she didn't save that film, true, right, Okay, So,
<v Speaker 2>so by the nineteen fifties, comic books had really increased
<v Speaker 2>in popularity and they had basically become the TikTok or
<v Speaker 2>the violent video games of the nineteen fifties. That's right.
<v Speaker 2>They had the parents and the psychologists and all of
<v Speaker 2>the adults of the time were saying, corrupting the minds
<v Speaker 2>of the youth. I know, right, this is the MTV
<v Speaker 2>of the nineteen forties. Well, and you've got Batman out
<v Speaker 2>market people, right, he had a machine gun on the Batmobile.
<v Speaker 2>So what happened is a crusade started against them, and
<v Speaker 2>ultimately what they did is they created their own governing
<v Speaker 2>morality board, and there were rules that were put in
<v Speaker 2>place to censor the comic books, to keep them from
<v Speaker 2>corrupting the minds of the youth. Okay, now we said
<v Speaker 2>a bit ago. You know, we've got this idea of
<v Speaker 2>Batman does not kill, right, I'm no executioner. Yes, now
<v Speaker 2>people have tread on that rule. You you idiot, You'll
<v Speaker 2>made me. And so the question is where the rule
<v Speaker 2>come from?
<v Speaker 6>Right?
<v Speaker 2>It turns out that it probably came from this sensor board.
<v Speaker 2>Interest as a matter of fact, it's definitely came from
<v Speaker 2>this sensor board. What they said is superheroes cannot kill villains.
<v Speaker 2>They can fight the villains, the villains can die, but
<v Speaker 2>the villains cannot be murdered by the superhero. They have
<v Speaker 2>to die as a result of their own macanizations. So
<v Speaker 2>if say, the Joker falls off a gigantic cathedral, that's okay, Well,
<v Speaker 2>it depends.
<v Speaker 4>But if Batman tastes grenade and sticks it in his
<v Speaker 4>pants like he does, and Batman returns, that would be wrong.
<v Speaker 2>Well yeah, Or if he throws a grapple hook around
<v Speaker 2>his ankle and then ties the other end to a
<v Speaker 2>two ton gargoyle, is that one bunt run a foul?
<v Speaker 2>I would say it probably would. Yeah, interesting, But I
<v Speaker 2>think that's key to the beauty of this character. If
<v Speaker 2>you have a Batman and the Kills, you just have
<v Speaker 2>a vigilating It is that one rule which we can
<v Speaker 2>talk about more, especially when we get to Dark Knight,
<v Speaker 2>that he does not kill. That makes his character more interesting. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>that is interesting because, like you said, in the Dark Knight,
<v Speaker 2>that is his rule. That is the rule he will
<v Speaker 2>not break. Right, that's the one rule I will not
<v Speaker 2>be an executioner. In Batman eighty nine, he doesn't have
<v Speaker 2>that rule. Doesn't seem too In fact, he goes to
<v Speaker 2>the joke and he's like, I'm gonna kill you, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>right after he threw some guy down a gigantic bell shaft.
<v Speaker 2>The ninja who happened to appear at the top of
<v Speaker 2>the cathedral, the ninja who just happened to show up.
<v Speaker 2>But we can get into those all right, when we
<v Speaker 2>find flaws. Now, let me say this. Let me say this. Now, yes,
<v Speaker 2>we will discuss some flaws with these movies. But keep
<v Speaker 2>in mind, we are diehard fans, We are total fanboys.
<v Speaker 2>So please don't think that we don't love these movies.
<v Speaker 2>We just we have to point out the things that
<v Speaker 2>are not quite perfect. Okay, So comic books, finally they
<v Speaker 2>got rained in a a little bit. They're still escalating
<v Speaker 2>in popularity. And one of the guys who was a
<v Speaker 2>huge comic book collector, like filled his parents' garage with
<v Speaker 2>the comic books he bought was a guy named Michael Uselin.
<v Speaker 2>So back in nineteen sixty five they had the very
<v Speaker 2>first comic con I heard about. This.
<v Speaker 4>This was in like a ghetto part of New York City,
<v Speaker 4>in the basement, like in this scummy hotel that actually
<v Speaker 4>burned down later.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, I think the original one was sixty four
<v Speaker 2>that was in New York and it was it was bad.
<v Speaker 2>That one was bad, but this one was also bad.
<v Speaker 2>This said, the one in sixty five is the one
<v Speaker 2>that became a recurring thing. Okay, And it wasn't in
<v Speaker 2>just in you know, some guy's basement or something, but
<v Speaker 2>it was the hotel in Detroit. And yes, there were
<v Speaker 2>bums asleep on the floor in the lobby. Yes. And
<v Speaker 2>then as they walked through to the convention area, they
<v Speaker 2>have to walk through the bar. And as they're walking
<v Speaker 2>through the bar, little Michael Uslan says, oh my gosh,
<v Speaker 2>that's Auto Binder, like he would go on he at
<v Speaker 2>the time he was doing Captain Marvel. He would go
<v Speaker 2>on to create Supergirl. He was a huge figure in
<v Speaker 2>comic books. And he's having you know, a whiskey sour
<v Speaker 2>up at the bar, and Kitty is exactly what he's
<v Speaker 2>come here kid. He goes and he says, do you
<v Speaker 2>want to meet the guy who created Batman? And Michael
<v Speaker 2>Luslan is like, I'm going to get to meet Bob Kane,
<v Speaker 2>and Auto Binder says, here, I'd like you to meet
<v Speaker 2>Bill Finger. Who is this? So this this comic con,
<v Speaker 2>this first one was the first time that Bill Finger
<v Speaker 2>had come out in public and talked about how big
<v Speaker 2>a factor he had been in the creation of Batman
<v Speaker 2>and all of the villains, which is huge. And I
<v Speaker 2>don't mean all, but I mean Joker, Catwoman, some some
<v Speaker 2>pretty big deals. Batmobile a lot of times got them.
<v Speaker 2>I think. Yeah, back in these days, they had ghost
<v Speaker 2>writers just like they do now. Sure, but this went
<v Speaker 2>beyond that. This was the guy who was truly creating
<v Speaker 2>all of the storylines, the brilliance behind all of the villains,
<v Speaker 2>and Bob Kane was drawing the pictures and he was
<v Speaker 2>along for the ride. And it wasn't as though he
<v Speaker 2>contributed nothing but the idea that the guy who was
<v Speaker 2>primarily responsible for the story ideas got no credit at all.
<v Speaker 2>It's truly troubled. Yeah, okay, so one year later, something
<v Speaker 2>happens nineteen sixty six. Yes, mister Adam West and Bert Ward.
<v Speaker 4>And Julie Numar and Burgess Meredith, they create Batman sixty
<v Speaker 4>six the TV show.
<v Speaker 2>Nona or the shark repellon. Oh the shark repellent. Oh yes,
<v Speaker 2>the spray can shark repellent. I had forgotten all about that.
<v Speaker 2>That's fantastic. So Michael Luselan is at this point a
<v Speaker 2>slightly older kid, you know, he's in his teenage years,
<v Speaker 2>and he is both excited and mortified at what is
<v Speaker 2>going on because now the world knows about Batman, which
<v Speaker 2>is exciting to him because he loves Batman so much.
<v Speaker 2>The troubling part is he's a goofball. Yeah, he's pow
<v Speaker 2>and KaBlam and bob. Michael Luselan is like, this is
<v Speaker 2>not my Batman. Holy can't be spoofed Batman? Right, right?
<v Speaker 2>So Batman the series definitely brings a lot of spotlight
<v Speaker 2>onto the Batman character, right Lunchbox's action figures. Adam West
<v Speaker 2>becomes a star, Julie Nimara Think described him as the
<v Speaker 2>carry Grant of TV. I mean, he was just this
<v Speaker 2>cool guy. And what Michael Luslan says when he sees
<v Speaker 2>this is I am going to make it my mission
<v Speaker 2>in life to show people the real Batman, the Batman
<v Speaker 2>of the dark, the Batman that is mysterious and troubled
<v Speaker 2>and torn and not capaw blam pow. I would say,
<v Speaker 2>like Bill Finger, Michael Uslin is the unsung hero of Batman. Lord.
<v Speaker 2>I've given away the storyline here, but he is involved
<v Speaker 2>in every Batman movie from the nineteen eighties on. I'm
<v Speaker 2>surprised we haven't heard more about this guy. Okay, so
<v Speaker 2>if you watch the documentaries, he's always there. It doesn't
<v Speaker 2>matter which Batman Bee that he is there. And what's
<v Speaker 2>interesting is he goes to college seventies, now goes to
<v Speaker 2>law school. And during this time, the University of Indiana says, hey,
<v Speaker 2>we are going to allow people to pitch us ideas
<v Speaker 2>for college courses that may be unusual and will decide
<v Speaker 2>whether they get credit or not. Say, Michael Uslin is
<v Speaker 2>like perfect, I'm going to teach a class on comic
<v Speaker 2>books and their relationship to mythology and to history, and
<v Speaker 2>he goes in to make his pitch and the Dean
<v Speaker 2>looks down his nose at him and said, oh, you're
<v Speaker 2>the funny books guy. Right, Yeah, he says, there's no
<v Speaker 2>way I am going to approve comic books. Don't get
<v Speaker 2>me wrong, I loved them. I read them when I
<v Speaker 2>was a kid. Entertainment is what he called them, Yes,
<v Speaker 2>just cheap entertainment. And so Michael Usland says, are you
<v Speaker 2>familiar with the story of Mosts? And the Dean says yes.
<v Speaker 2>He says, can you tell me the story of Mosts?
<v Speaker 2>And the Dean says, well, his parents were worried about him,
<v Speaker 2>afraid he was going to be killed, so they put
<v Speaker 2>him in a basket see him down the river. He
<v Speaker 2>was ultimately picked up by the Royal family, raised as
<v Speaker 2>one of their own, but went on to be a
<v Speaker 2>hero of his own people. And then Michael Usland said,
<v Speaker 2>now you said that you read Superman, right, and the
<v Speaker 2>Dean says yes. He goes, can you tell me the
<v Speaker 2>story of Superman's origin? And then the Dean said, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>his origin was he started off on Krypton as a baby.
<v Speaker 2>His parents were worried about him dying, and so they
<v Speaker 2>sent him off on a ship and he was raised
<v Speaker 2>by other parents. Mister Uslin, your course is approved. I
<v Speaker 2>love that story. Man. Oh thank you, mister Dane. I
<v Speaker 2>will take it and run with it. Now here's something
<v Speaker 2>that you don't know. Okay, so Uselin truly appreciating what
<v Speaker 2>he had in his hands with this college course, right
<v Speaker 2>one fame by anonymously calling local newspaper reporters and TV
<v Speaker 2>stations and complaining about the course. Really, as a result
<v Speaker 2>the news and the newspapers, the TV is like, oh,
<v Speaker 2>this is interesting. This is a somebody's teaching a college
<v Speaker 2>course on comics and it's dumb. Let's go check it out.
<v Speaker 2>And they all showed up. There were newspaper articles that
<v Speaker 2>came out, there were news stories that came out, and
<v Speaker 2>he immediately became famous from teaching this class. That's fantastic.
<v Speaker 2>I heard that. Stanley calls him out of the blue.
<v Speaker 4>Hey, man, I just want to tell you thank you
<v Speaker 4>for legitimizing comic books.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 4>And then you had guy Saul Harrison, who is the
<v Speaker 4>VP of DC. Yeah at the time, he invited him
<v Speaker 4>to come visit them in New York City.
<v Speaker 2>Check it out. He taught this class for quite a
<v Speaker 2>few years actually, and he had intended to have these
<v Speaker 2>guys each semester have different guest speakers come in and speak.
<v Speaker 2>But he found out that Dannie O'Neil, the guy who
<v Speaker 2>created Russell hal Goole is he was the one that
<v Speaker 2>everybody always asked for, and so he's just like, okay, well,
<v Speaker 2>I'm just going to make him the regular invitee. And
<v Speaker 2>so Dannie O'Neill, who's a huge part of the Batman cannon,
<v Speaker 2>became a regular speaker at this college classes class as well.
<v Speaker 4>Razill goul is the bad guy in Batman begins if
<v Speaker 4>you remember that, yeah, the Leem Neeson character exactly.
<v Speaker 2>Okay. So he ends up participating on talk shows and
<v Speaker 2>radio shows, and ultimately this spins into a job for
<v Speaker 2>him as as a production attorney for United Artists, That's right.
<v Speaker 2>And so he meets somebody there who's got an inside deal.
<v Speaker 2>He pitches this idea of making the Batman movie but
<v Speaker 2>making it in the Dark Night style. Now, Dark Knight
<v Speaker 2>had been coined, but wasn't the comic book yet, And
<v Speaker 2>so on October third, my birthday, nineteen seventy nine, I
<v Speaker 2>was four years old. Hey, they got DC Comics to
<v Speaker 2>option them the rights to Batman movie and Batman cartoons,
<v Speaker 2>and they formed Batfilm's Inc. On that day, nineteen seventy nine. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>let's talk about what was going on in nineteen seventy nine. Sure,
<v Speaker 2>so I'm old enough to remember nineteen seventy nine. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>during the seventies and early eighties, super Friends was on
<v Speaker 2>all the time. Yeah, did you watch super Friends? Absolutely
<v Speaker 2>Wonders when Powers activate and all that stuff. I always
<v Speaker 2>thought it was an injustice for the super twin who
<v Speaker 2>could only do form of water. What the other guy
<v Speaker 2>gets the big any animal, when you have to be ice,
<v Speaker 2>water or vapor, that's it. I'm a tideaway, I'm a
<v Speaker 2>bucket of water. But so, in nineteen seventy eight, Richard
<v Speaker 2>Donner released Superman in the Movie, right, and of course
<v Speaker 2>a couple of years prior to that, in nineteen seventy
<v Speaker 2>seventy of Star Wars, Right. And so now you're having.
<v Speaker 4>These big blockbuster, sort of popcorn entertainment movies. But really
<v Speaker 4>the father of the Batman eighty nine movie is Superman
<v Speaker 4>nineteen seventy eight.
<v Speaker 2>We talked about, and please listeners go back and listen
<v Speaker 2>to our Superman one and two versus Man of Steel.
<v Speaker 2>We did that episode with John Reid from the thirty
<v Speaker 2>something Movie podcast. Also go subscribe to that podcast is
<v Speaker 2>flat out awesome. We talked about that history and detail
<v Speaker 2>on Superman seventy eight happens and they say, oh wow,
<v Speaker 2>it turns out that a comic book movie can make money, right,
<v Speaker 2>which Warner Brothers also did Superman. They see this opportunity
<v Speaker 2>with these guys who are like, hey, we want to
<v Speaker 2>do Batman next, and it's the next logical step. But
<v Speaker 2>it was nineteen seventy nine, and we know Batman didn't
<v Speaker 2>happen for another almost ten years. Batman, Batman, Can somebody
<v Speaker 2>tell me what kind of a world we live in?
<v Speaker 2>We're a man dressed up as a bat it's all
<v Speaker 2>of my press. This town needs an enema. Yeah, so,
<v Speaker 2>what the heck happened? I don't know exactly why that
<v Speaker 2>took so long, but I can tell you what happened
<v Speaker 2>in that span. Yeah.
<v Speaker 4>Imagine you're holding the Batman property right and you're watching
<v Speaker 4>the box office. You're like, holy cow, Superman's out there.
<v Speaker 2>It's making money. Love it. It's fantastic.
<v Speaker 4>Superman two comes along in nineteen eighty one, people are like, hey,
<v Speaker 4>this is great. It's a little bit corny, but it's fantastic.
<v Speaker 2>People love it.
<v Speaker 4>Nineteen eighty three comes along, Superman three comes out. Eh,
<v Speaker 4>that movie sucked. No, that movie sucked.
<v Speaker 2>And then a bit of the Richard Pryor Show. But
<v Speaker 2>it was the Richard Pryor Show. Yeah. And then in
<v Speaker 2>nineteen eighty seven you have Superman four The Quest for Piece.
<v Speaker 2>Now imagine you're holding the Batman property and you see
<v Speaker 2>that piece of crap that comes up on the screen.
<v Speaker 2>The biggest tird that Superman ever shot is that turd
<v Speaker 2>worse than Jos four. We will find out later on
<v Speaker 2>this summer. That's gonna be fun when we do our
<v Speaker 2>worst of the number four. We know that Batfilm's Inc.
<v Speaker 2>Is formed October third, nineteen seventy nine. Yes, we know
<v Speaker 2>that ten years go by before the Batman comes to
<v Speaker 2>the movie theaters. So in addition to what happened with
<v Speaker 2>Superman movies, some other interesting things happen. Okay, a guy
<v Speaker 2>named Frank Miller. This is a guy who at six
<v Speaker 2>years old went to his mom and said, I want
<v Speaker 2>to draw comics for the rest of my life. That's
<v Speaker 2>all I want to do. He had it as a
<v Speaker 2>mission from six. He knew he wanted to go to
<v Speaker 2>New York City because that's where many of his comic
<v Speaker 2>book heroes were from. Ultimately, that's what he did. He
<v Speaker 2>got a job as a comic artist and he was very,
<v Speaker 2>very good. But he, like Michael Uselin, wanted to go
<v Speaker 2>back to that original concept of the Dark Knight detective
<v Speaker 2>mystery vigilante character, and so in nineteen eighty six he
<v Speaker 2>released a series called The Dark Knight Returns. There are
<v Speaker 2>a few storylines that play into both of these movies.
<v Speaker 2>One is the Killing Joke, one is The Dark Knight Returns.
<v Speaker 2>One is a Long Halloween, and then the other is
<v Speaker 2>Batman Year one. That's right. I get a strong feeling
<v Speaker 2>with the Batman that's coming out in March that we're
<v Speaker 2>going to get a lot of Batman Year one, Right,
<v Speaker 2>sure and hopeful. I think you're right. You know what
<v Speaker 2>else happened in nineteen eighty five other than Back in
<v Speaker 2>the Future. Other than Back to the Future, same summer,
<v Speaker 2>you have this movie called Pee's Big Adventure that comes out, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>directed by this guy named Tim Burton. Yeah, So here's
<v Speaker 2>the story on that one right. Yeah. So the reason
<v Speaker 2>they had taken so long to make Batman into a
<v Speaker 2>movie is because they couldn't get a good script and
<v Speaker 2>they couldn't find a script that worked. They had been
<v Speaker 2>talking about Bill Murray as Batman with Eddie Murphy as Robin,
<v Speaker 2>and I've been rymen directing. Yeah, we would have had
<v Speaker 2>a Richard Lester version of Batman. Had we probably had
<v Speaker 2>either one of those guys direct, right, we would have
<v Speaker 2>had Gremlins or Ghostbusters version of Batman. And that wouldn't
<v Speaker 2>have been right. Let's say that again. I've been rightman.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, Bill Murray as Batman, Eddie Murphy as Robin.
<v Speaker 2>Hysterical, but not the Batman that we have. Not what
<v Speaker 2>we want, No, not what we want.
<v Speaker 4>I want to get into castile in here a little
<v Speaker 4>bit because I've got a whole You know, when you
<v Speaker 4>have a movie that's developed for.
<v Speaker 2>Over ten years, Yeah, there's gonna be a lot of
<v Speaker 2>names associated with it. Sure, some of them will blow
<v Speaker 2>your skirt up. Yeah, they're gonna blow your mind. So
<v Speaker 2>Warner Brothers was ready to shelf the project. They couldn't
<v Speaker 2>get a script. They were going to put it on
<v Speaker 2>the shelf and say we're not making this movie. Bob
<v Speaker 2>Kane got on his knees and prayed for a savior,
<v Speaker 2>and that savior's name was Tim Burton. Will they get
<v Speaker 2>a load of me? So Tim had been working for Disney.
<v Speaker 2>He had made a couple of shorts, ones called Frank
<v Speaker 2>and Weeney. The other one is called Vincent's. Okay, both
<v Speaker 2>movies I saw when I was a kid and I
<v Speaker 2>will shorts I song was a kid and I love it.
<v Speaker 2>They're weird, very Tim Burton style. Sure, but he wasn't
<v Speaker 2>anybody famous at this point, and so he had found
<v Speaker 2>some favor with this lady named Bonnie Lee who worked
<v Speaker 2>over Warner Brothers, and she convinced him to come over
<v Speaker 2>and join Warner Brothers. Well, another prodigy of Bonni Lee
<v Speaker 2>is a guy named Sam Ham. Yeah, Sam Am And
<v Speaker 2>so Bonnie Lee is really I mean, she's the glue
<v Speaker 2>that brought these things together. And she said, Hey, Sam,
<v Speaker 2>could you come over to Tim's office. I would love
<v Speaker 2>for you guys to talk about some stuff. And Sam's like, okay, yeah, sure,
<v Speaker 2>and so they go over. They shoot the breeze for
<v Speaker 2>a while, and then Tim Burton's like, you know what
<v Speaker 2>about this batman? Script, What do you think we can
<v Speaker 2>do on that? And so sam Ham, you know, secretly,
<v Speaker 2>is jumping for joy and it's like, oh, yeah, you know,
<v Speaker 2>if you're interested in that, I guess I probably you know,
<v Speaker 2>look at it, right, And he ends up developing a
<v Speaker 2>script which becomes basically the first two acts of Batman.
<v Speaker 2>Act three is something we need to talk about when
<v Speaker 2>we talk about Warren's Yeah. So Warren Scarrin comes in
<v Speaker 2>later on as a writer and he touches up some
<v Speaker 2>stuff that sam Ham has done. But Samam couldn't do
<v Speaker 2>anything at the time because there was a writer's skip
<v Speaker 2>strike going on. He couldn't come in and make adjustments
<v Speaker 2>during the movie, so they were kind of winging things
<v Speaker 2>a little bit. Listen, Jack Nicholson and he's carrying Kim
<v Speaker 2>Basinger up to the top of the cathedral, says, says,
<v Speaker 2>where am I going? Like what am I doing here?
<v Speaker 2>And they're like, we're not sure what's going on just yet,
<v Speaker 2>but we're working on right, So here's the origin story
<v Speaker 2>on this on that thing. Okay, the night before I'm
<v Speaker 2>not even kidding. The night before, Tim Burton and Peter
<v Speaker 2>Guber go and watch Phantom of the Opera, and the
<v Speaker 2>last scene of Phantom of the Opera is him taking
<v Speaker 2>her up in this tower, and so they're like, we
<v Speaker 2>should do that. Hey, great idea, let's do that. Oh
<v Speaker 2>my gosh, here's the other half of the rest of
<v Speaker 2>the story. Yes, Kim Basinger, who is currently banging John Peters,
<v Speaker 2>who's the other producer on Batman, right, says, well, wait
<v Speaker 2>a minute, where's Vicky Vaiale. She needs to go up
<v Speaker 2>in the tower. She wasn't supposed to go in the tower.
<v Speaker 2>It was just supposed to be Batman chasing Joker. That's it.
<v Speaker 2>Oh my gosh.
<v Speaker 4>And so he's like, you know what, honey, I agree
<v Speaker 4>with you since you're laying in bed next to me.
<v Speaker 2>Oh my god.
<v Speaker 4>Kim Bay, Singer, John Peters, Peter Guber, and Tim Burton
<v Speaker 4>got together and created the third act out of Underwear
<v Speaker 4>and Chocolate.
<v Speaker 2>So Underwear and So rewind just a little bit. Bonnie
<v Speaker 2>Lee gets Tim Burton over. She introduces him to this
<v Speaker 2>guy from the Groundlings named Paul Rubins, Yeah, who was
<v Speaker 2>interested in making a movie based on this character. He
<v Speaker 2>had for a stand up routine called pee Wee Herman
<v Speaker 2>making mister Hermann, Mister Herman, you have a telephone call
<v Speaker 2>at the front desk, and I've seen that stand up
<v Speaker 2>routine and it is breaking hilarious. And when they meet
<v Speaker 2>each other, they are two peas in a pot. And
<v Speaker 2>then they decide, Hey, you know what, we need somebody
<v Speaker 2>to write the music for this thing. And Paul Rubin says, Oh,
<v Speaker 2>I know this guy. His name's Danny Elfman. He plays
<v Speaker 2>with his band called Oengo Buindo. He might be a
<v Speaker 2>good fit.
<v Speaker 4>You sent me a clip from the nineteen any six
<v Speaker 4>Gong show. Yeah, where the Knights of Oingo Boying the
<v Speaker 4>Mystic Knights of Oingo Boingo.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, we can talk more detail about that whenever we
<v Speaker 2>get to our composers. But man, there's some fascinating how
<v Speaker 2>Danny Elfman came through all that is incredible. So before
<v Speaker 2>Warner Brothers was completely ready to green light Tim to
<v Speaker 2>direct the project, they needed to see that he could
<v Speaker 2>make a movie that would put money in the bank. Yep.
<v Speaker 2>So Tim does this other movie that you might have
<v Speaker 2>heard of called Beeple Juice, People Juice, Wheele Juice. What
<v Speaker 2>are your qualifications? Ah well, I intended tally are. I'm
<v Speaker 2>a graduate the Harvard Business school. I travel quite extensively.
<v Speaker 2>I lived through the Black Plague and I had a
<v Speaker 2>pretty good time during that.
<v Speaker 5>I've seen the ex Or systembout one hundred and sixty
<v Speaker 5>seven times, and I can't getting buddier every single time.
<v Speaker 2>I said, not to mention the fact that you're talking
<v Speaker 2>to it.
<v Speaker 1>That guy, No what you'll think.
<v Speaker 2>It's a fantastic movie. And that's where you get. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis get their started it. Yep,
<v Speaker 2>you get Catherine O'Hara, who goes on to do Home Alone.
<v Speaker 2>The principal from Paris Bieler's Day Off is in it.
<v Speaker 2>How have you not, said Winona writer, I was waiting
<v Speaker 2>on you to say I was young enough at that
<v Speaker 2>point that it was okay for me to have a
<v Speaker 2>total cushion.
<v Speaker 4>Well, and Tim Burton uses her later in Edwards SUSA.
<v Speaker 4>And then of course you have the amazing performance by
<v Speaker 4>Michael Keaton.
<v Speaker 2>It's show Down. So you've got some pieces that are
<v Speaker 2>starting to fall together. We've got a director who has
<v Speaker 2>a vision, We've got a script that's got legs. We
<v Speaker 2>just need good financing and a star's face. I've got
<v Speaker 2>some great stuff on casting we'll come back to that
<v Speaker 2>here after we go through the beginning and the origins
<v Speaker 2>of the Dark Knights. Like I always say, if you
<v Speaker 2>got to go, go Smike, go with a smile. So interestingly,
<v Speaker 2>at this exact same time, nineteen eighty six, there's a
<v Speaker 2>young man nineteen twenty comic book fan. He sends a
<v Speaker 2>letter he sent actually quite a few letters that end
<v Speaker 2>up getting published, about to blow your mind, right, Are
<v Speaker 2>you ready for this? Yes? Okay? So he sends a
<v Speaker 2>letter to Marvel Captain America issue and says, let me
<v Speaker 2>congratulate you. You got me reading Captain America again. He
<v Speaker 2>goes on to give some ideas. Now think about the
<v Speaker 2>movies when I say this, all right, just what the
<v Speaker 2>letter says, the fact that Captain America is a symbol
<v Speaker 2>of the American dream creates a number of story problems.
<v Speaker 2>What type of man would have the audacity to proclaim
<v Speaker 2>himself a living symbol of America. So he's going to
<v Speaker 2>this psychological weight right of Captain America, and he says,
<v Speaker 2>what exactly does cap represent? Our government isn't nearly as
<v Speaker 2>upfront or virtuous as the elected officials would have us believe.
<v Speaker 2>Does the Captain unquestioningly accept whatever the current American policy is,
<v Speaker 2>or does he formulate opinions of his own. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>that's the Avengers plot line in nineteen eighty six, thirty
<v Speaker 2>years before the movie comes out. Who is this guy?
<v Speaker 2>His name is David S. Goyer. Yeah, he would go
<v Speaker 2>on just a year or two later to write some movies.
<v Speaker 2>The first one that got made was a terrible script,
<v Speaker 2>but he met a guy who was excited about it.
<v Speaker 2>He didn't speak very good English. His name was Jean
<v Speaker 2>Claud ven Dam and the movie was about a prison first.
<v Speaker 2>I just I gotta tell you this story, all right, Okay.
<v Speaker 2>So he's huge comic book fine, and he's also decides
<v Speaker 2>he wants to be a writer, wants to be a screenwriter.
<v Speaker 2>And he reads an article about this agent who is
<v Speaker 2>had become an agent at like twenty two years old,
<v Speaker 2>which is really young to become an agent. But he
<v Speaker 2>thinks this guy's got some moxie, he's got some drive,
<v Speaker 2>he's hungry, right, yeah, I'm going to give him a call. Okay.
<v Speaker 2>So he's in college and he calls this agent. He
<v Speaker 2>gets a secretary and she's like, okay, I'll let him
<v Speaker 2>know you called he's like, okay, he knows he's not
<v Speaker 2>going to call back, so he calls again the next day,
<v Speaker 2>and the next day and the next day for forty
<v Speaker 2>five days straight, and finally, on the forty fifth day,
<v Speaker 2>the agent picks up the phone and he's like, who
<v Speaker 2>them is this, and he's like, well, my name is
<v Speaker 2>David S. Koyer. He's like, I don't know why I
<v Speaker 2>threw the S in there. I guess it just made
<v Speaker 2>me think it sounded I sounded important that way, and
<v Speaker 2>I want to be a writer. And the guy's like, listen,
<v Speaker 2>send me your script. I'm probably not going to represent you,
<v Speaker 2>but send me your script and don't call here anymore.
<v Speaker 2>So he sends him the script and the agent calls
<v Speaker 2>him back. Nice, No, he doesn't. Two weeks go by
<v Speaker 2>and he's like, okay, I'm gonna start calling again. You
<v Speaker 2>ask for a buddy. So two weeks goes by, he
<v Speaker 2>calls again and the agent's like, you know what, the
<v Speaker 2>script sucks, but I want to represent you anyway, because
<v Speaker 2>you've got drive, You've got something here that can become something.
<v Speaker 2>And pretty soon that agent introduces him to Jean Claude
<v Speaker 2>ven dem who is a excited about the script that
<v Speaker 2>he has written where a cop infiltrates a prison and
<v Speaker 2>the name has changed from dust In to a movie
<v Speaker 2>you might have heard of called Death Point came out
<v Speaker 2>in nineteen ninety. A few years later, about ten scripts in,
<v Speaker 2>he writes a script based on a comic book and
<v Speaker 2>it becomes Marvel's first movie, first real movie, Blade with
<v Speaker 2>Wesley Snipes. You want to know what's crazy. They optioned
<v Speaker 2>Blade from Marvel for one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars.
<v Speaker 2>Come on, man, I mean the franchise is probably probably
<v Speaker 2>a multi hundreds of millions of dollars, if not a
<v Speaker 2>billion at this point from the three that came and
<v Speaker 2>the second one they got for one hundred and seventy
<v Speaker 2>five just because it was part of the contract. They
<v Speaker 2>didn't have any choice. It's about to be rebooted again.
<v Speaker 2>But keep in mind, this is what started Marvel in
<v Speaker 2>the movies, right. It's amazing. Every Marvel thing you saw
<v Speaker 2>before this was TV like thor on the incredible Hule
<v Speaker 2>TV series. Right. Nothing good. By the way, there's a
<v Speaker 2>movie that never got made on the Fantastic Four. I
<v Speaker 2>think we got to do a series on the Curse
<v Speaker 2>of the Fantastic Four because it's a great comic book
<v Speaker 2>series that has never produced a good movie. But Roger
<v Speaker 2>Corman was supposed to do a Fantastic Four movie back
<v Speaker 2>in the early nineties. Jay Underwood is Johnny Storm and
<v Speaker 2>it never came to see the light of day. But
<v Speaker 2>they filmed the whole movie and there's a documentary on them.
<v Speaker 2>We've got to do that thing. You watch it. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>we gotta find By the way, the paycheck that he
<v Speaker 2>got for death warrant went out and bought an a
<v Speaker 2>Zuzu Trooper, which got stolen the same Well, I'm glad
<v Speaker 2>to see that he did better for himself later on
<v Speaker 2>Den Round. So blade happens. He's doing well. And in
<v Speaker 2>two thousand and two, a guy pitches a Batman reboot
<v Speaker 2>to Warner Brothers. Guy's name Josh Whedon. Interesting, and Warner
<v Speaker 2>Brothers said, nah, no thanks. So what happens is they
<v Speaker 2>think it's a good idea to reboot Batman. This is
<v Speaker 2>just the wrong script for it, and so they start
<v Speaker 2>sending out calls to directors they're interested in. Well, one
<v Speaker 2>of the directors that they're interested in is a guy
<v Speaker 2>who has done two movies. One of them was fantastic
<v Speaker 2>called Memento. Right. The other one was Insomnia, which is okay,
<v Speaker 2>I didn't really care for it that much. Okay, but
<v Speaker 2>he's done a couple of decent movies right, right, And
<v Speaker 2>he has been trying to make this movie based on
<v Speaker 2>people going into the mind of others during their dream state,
<v Speaker 2>this idea for a movie called Inception. But the studios
<v Speaker 2>that he's talking to, I'll say, this is absurdly expensive
<v Speaker 2>if you are not qualified at this point to do it.
<v Speaker 2>You know, see if you can make an action movie
<v Speaker 2>and then come back and see us. And this is
<v Speaker 2>the same time that Warner Brothers is sending out calls
<v Speaker 2>and so this guy named Christopher Nolan's wife, Emma Thomas,
<v Speaker 2>gets a message that says, hey, this is Warner Brothers.
<v Speaker 2>We want to know if Chris might be interested in
<v Speaker 2>doing something with Batman. And she thinks, no way, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>he's a chance. He's a high yper intelligent independent filmmaker.
<v Speaker 2>And have you seen the Batman movies lately? No way, right,
<v Speaker 2>But she tells him anyway, and Christopher Nolan says, actually,
<v Speaker 2>I think there's a story on the Batman that hasn't
<v Speaker 2>been told yet. Now, are you familiar with Darren Aronsky.
<v Speaker 2>He did Requiem for a Dream and Pie and the
<v Speaker 2>Noah movie with Russell trow Right, right, Yes, I heard
<v Speaker 2>he was attached at one point. Moving on, so, Christopher
<v Speaker 2>Nolan says, I want to do a movie that truly
<v Speaker 2>tells the origin story of Batman. Everybody knows the kid
<v Speaker 2>with his parents outside the theater, they're murdered, et cetera,
<v Speaker 2>et cetera. Right, you have mcdams with a bit of
<v Speaker 2>by moon Light, but what happens in between there and
<v Speaker 2>the Batman? The only thing we really see in the
<v Speaker 2>comic books is he dedicates his life to making himself
<v Speaker 2>the best mentally and physically that he can't. But that's it.
<v Speaker 2>Christopher Nolan says, I think there's a story that can
<v Speaker 2>be told there that is worth telling. But there are
<v Speaker 2>a few things that I need to establish. We're not
<v Speaker 2>doing the same stuff that the Batman have been doing
<v Speaker 2>in the past. We are going to do a movie
<v Speaker 2>that could really happen. It's based in reality, right, and
<v Speaker 2>he admits, you know, this is cinematic reality, but we
<v Speaker 2>want to be as true to real life as we
<v Speaker 2>can possibly be. Okay, So before we go any further.
<v Speaker 4>For me, I wrote down some big ideas between these
<v Speaker 4>movies that I want to discuss, and one of the
<v Speaker 4>big ideas about the Dark Knights series the end of
<v Speaker 4>the Christopher Nolan Batman series is the plausibility of these movies, right, okay,
<v Speaker 4>So he went above and beyond, in my opinion, to
<v Speaker 4>make sure that these things are, as you say, cinematic realism.
<v Speaker 4>Right In Batman begins, for instance, Christian Bale's character Verusuayne
<v Speaker 4>goes across and study and becomes this ninja guy. He
<v Speaker 4>studies from Rozel Goal and he has these armor things
<v Speaker 4>on his arm because he's fighting swords.
<v Speaker 2>And so that that's why he has those armor plated
<v Speaker 2>foe arm things. Sure, okay.
<v Speaker 4>So with the talking about the plausibility, and the producers
<v Speaker 4>in the studio said, well, we really feel like it
<v Speaker 4>needs to have the Batmobile in some capacity. Just really
<v Speaker 4>not a Batman movie without the Batmobile. So Christopher Nolan's like, okay,
<v Speaker 4>you know, I think I can work with that. So
<v Speaker 4>he goes to his production designer. His name is Nathan Crullley,
<v Speaker 4>and Nathan's like, okay, well, what do you what do
<v Speaker 4>you have in mind? And Christopher Nollan's like, well, I
<v Speaker 4>think it's going to be some sort of combination between
<v Speaker 4>a Humbye and a nineteen seventies Lamborghini, and so he's like, okay,
<v Speaker 4>And so he actually went to like Toys r us
<v Speaker 4>or hobby Lobby and he got a model kit of
<v Speaker 4>both a Humby and a Lamborghini and made a hybrid
<v Speaker 4>in the like his living room, and that became the
<v Speaker 4>infamous tumbler from the Christopher Nolan movies.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah he's had it looked like crap, but ultimately it
<v Speaker 2>led to the It led to that Batmobile, and it
<v Speaker 2>led to what Christopher Nolan says was his first contribution
<v Speaker 2>to the script, which is does it come in black?
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah. So really interestingly, Bruce Wayne
<v Speaker 2>drives a Lamborghini and both Batman begins and in the
<v Speaker 2>Dark Night and it is a convertible Martial Lago, which
<v Speaker 2>means bat you got it. I have given a name
<v Speaker 2>to my Lamborghini, and it is the bats fantastic Okay.
<v Speaker 2>So after David Goyer sold his script and God is
<v Speaker 2>a Zuzu Stolen, he decided, Hey, I'm a writer. Now
<v Speaker 2>I'm gonna have some business cards made up, and so
<v Speaker 2>he had business cards that just said David S. Goyer
<v Speaker 2>writer and he's pretty proud of it. He takes him
<v Speaker 2>back to his screenwriting teacher, who's Nelson getting at usc
<v Speaker 2>and says, look look what I've got, and Getting looks
<v Speaker 2>at this and he's like, throw this away. Why he goes,
<v Speaker 2>you're not a writer, you are a human being who
<v Speaker 2>writes for a living. Throw these away and go live
<v Speaker 2>life saving way quote. To write about life, you got
<v Speaker 2>to live it. And so David throws away his business
<v Speaker 2>cards and he starts traveling the world. Goes to Africa,
<v Speaker 2>goes to Europe, and he also goes to Tibet. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>he didn't know that later on Christopher Nolan would be
<v Speaker 2>calling him up and saying, Hey, I've got this idea
<v Speaker 2>for Batman and how he becomes Batman, and I'm thinking
<v Speaker 2>that he needs to go through some sort of training
<v Speaker 2>like in the Orient or Asia. And David says, you
<v Speaker 2>know what, I just got back from Tibet, and I
<v Speaker 2>think I got a good idea how we can make
<v Speaker 2>that work. I would say that his travel probably influenced
<v Speaker 2>The Dark Knight on why he went to Hong Kong
<v Speaker 2>as well. Exactly. So Christopher and David es Gooyer they
<v Speaker 2>write this movie called Batman Begins, which is fantastic. I
<v Speaker 2>watched in preparation for what we're doing, but I can't
<v Speaker 2>get distracted on it because what we're really here to
<v Speaker 2>talk about is the Dark Knight. Now, David had written
<v Speaker 2>some treatments for sequels to Batman Begins, and they had
<v Speaker 2>the Joker, and they had Harvey Dent, and in it,
<v Speaker 2>as per the comic books, Harvey's scarring of his face
<v Speaker 2>happens because the Joker throws acid on him from the
<v Speaker 2>witness chair. That was what was going to happen in
<v Speaker 2>the movie. Now we still have a similar scene, right,
<v Speaker 2>We've got Harvey Dent who gets a gun pointed at
<v Speaker 2>him from a witness in a witness chair and takes
<v Speaker 2>it away. But imagine the anticipation of all of your
<v Speaker 2>comic book fanboys when he jumps up there like, oh,
<v Speaker 2>two faces about to happen now, and it doesn't. In
<v Speaker 2>case you missed that scene, it does happen in Batman Forever.
<v Speaker 4>Tummy Lee Jones is the district attorney Harvey Dent and
<v Speaker 4>gets acid thrown on his face while Batman is sitting
<v Speaker 4>in court and the most ridiculous looking thing of all
<v Speaker 4>the time.
<v Speaker 2>Is this the Belcomer one? Yes, okay, so the last
<v Speaker 2>one I watched before I watch Batman again. I'm just
<v Speaker 2>I gotta be honest. I love Batman, but I could
<v Speaker 2>not bring myself to watch the Colooney versions. You are
<v Speaker 2>really selling yourself short, I'm telling you, uh huh. I
<v Speaker 2>don't believe you. But anyway, you do see that court
<v Speaker 2>room scene and Batman sitting there in his bat outfit
<v Speaker 2>in court. It looks so ridiculous. But we're not here
<v Speaker 2>to talk about Mannett forever. Okay. So, so David Goyer
<v Speaker 2>has written these treatments, but really, when it comes to go,
<v Speaker 2>he's got a storyline that becomes The Dark Knight. But
<v Speaker 2>Christopher Nolan's brother, Jonathan Nolan, is also a major factor
<v Speaker 2>on writing the script for part two for The Dark
<v Speaker 2>Knight that we're here to talk about to day. One
<v Speaker 2>of the things that you mentioned you kind of refer to.
<v Speaker 2>At the end of Batman begins, Gordon says, Hey, we're
<v Speaker 2>having a little bit of a problem. We've got this
<v Speaker 2>guy who's causing trouble, and he shows Batman a Joker
<v Speaker 2>card in a ziploc bag, and when I saw that
<v Speaker 2>in a theater, people gasped. People were like, oh my gosh,
<v Speaker 2>that's incredible Joker. So there was a lot of anticipation
<v Speaker 2>for the Dark Knight and the Joker character. I think
<v Speaker 2>a lot of people wanted him to bring back Jack Nicholson.
<v Speaker 2>That wouldn't have been necessarily a horrible choice, except then
<v Speaker 2>we get what we get. Yeah, I want to know
<v Speaker 2>how I got these scars.
<v Speaker 1>My father was a drinker and a fiend. That one
<v Speaker 1>night he goes off crazier than usual. Mommy gets the
<v Speaker 1>kitchen knife and DEFENDERSLF. He doesn't like that, not one bit.
<v Speaker 1>So me watching he takes the knife to her, laughing
<v Speaker 1>while he doesn't. He turns to me and he said,
<v Speaker 1>why so serious?
<v Speaker 2>Okay, Jason, tell you a story about a young man
<v Speaker 2>who loses two loved ones on the same day, is
<v Speaker 2>totally distraught, leaves home, goes to learn how to be
<v Speaker 2>a fighter, to learn how to be a man, comes
<v Speaker 2>back and becomes an annenforcer of the law and becomes
<v Speaker 2>a hero to the people.
<v Speaker 7>Yeah, Bruce Wayne, Teddy Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt Okay,
<v Speaker 7>So I don't just say that because I'm like grasping
<v Speaker 7>his draws here.
<v Speaker 2>Teddy Roosevelt was the guy that Christopher Nolan told everybody
<v Speaker 2>as they started, Batman begins, this is the biography you
<v Speaker 2>need to read, because this is our Bruce Wayne. See,
<v Speaker 2>that's interesting that you say that, because I have always
<v Speaker 2>seen the Dark Knight Christopher Nolan Batman as George W. Bush.
<v Speaker 2>Oh wow, because and when we paint this picture for you, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>go ahead, this is post nine to eleven. You have
<v Speaker 2>a very serious person about fighting terrorism and using whatever
<v Speaker 2>means necessary to bring justice to those who are inflicting pain,
<v Speaker 2>and willing to bend a few rules to get the
<v Speaker 2>job done.
<v Speaker 4>And it just kind of fits that timeslot for me.
<v Speaker 4>That's why I always thought it was George W. Bush
<v Speaker 4>to tell me about Teddy Roosevelt. Well, so, Teddy Roosevelt,
<v Speaker 4>it's not his mom and his dad. Well, it's his mom,
<v Speaker 4>but not his dad. His dad actually died of cancer
<v Speaker 4>when he was very young. He didn't tell anybody that
<v Speaker 4>he had cancer. Just suddenly he's gone.
<v Speaker 2>So he grows up, he gets married, He lives in
<v Speaker 2>the house with his mother and his new bride and
<v Speaker 2>she is expecting a child, and his wife dies in childbirth,
<v Speaker 2>and just within an hour or two later, his mother dies.
<v Speaker 2>Both die on the same day he leaves. He leaves
<v Speaker 2>his newborn with nurses to take care of her, because
<v Speaker 2>that's the way things went back in the late eighteen hundreds,
<v Speaker 2>I guess. And he goes out and becomes a rough rind.
<v Speaker 2>He goes out and lives on the plane and probably
<v Speaker 2>is contemplating his own death much like Bruce Wayne is doing. Okay, right, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>get as dirty and nasty and hard as I can get.
<v Speaker 2>And then he comes back and he becomes a street
<v Speaker 2>out right, not a bicycle who ultimately becomes Commissioner of
<v Speaker 2>the police, who ultimately becomes President of the United States
<v Speaker 2>in credible Yeah and not know that story blow my
<v Speaker 2>mind all right now. For his inspiration for The Dark Night,
<v Speaker 2>Christopher Nolan looked at the Joker in his debut in
<v Speaker 2>nineteen forty the original Batman comic, right, was it April
<v Speaker 2>of nineteen forty? I believe it just says the spring
<v Speaker 2>issue of nineteen forty. Okay, so I think the month
<v Speaker 2>before Robin had gotten introduced, and then the next month
<v Speaker 2>Batman gets his own named comic book, and we get
<v Speaker 2>introduced to the Joker and Catwoman.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Wooh, that's a big one. Wow. So there's that. When
<v Speaker 2>he's looking at that, he's looking at the killing joke
<v Speaker 2>from nineteen eighty eight, and as we discussed before, the
<v Speaker 2>nineteen ninety six series The Long Halloween, which retold Harvey
<v Speaker 2>Dentz origin. By the way, the Dark Knight nickname first
<v Speaker 2>applied to Batman in Batman Number one, nineteen forty story
<v Speaker 2>by the Finger. All Right, so Christopher Nolan goes back
<v Speaker 2>to the guy who had done cinematography for him for Memento,
<v Speaker 2>guy named Wally Feister. Fantastic cinematographer. This was the first film,
<v Speaker 2>mainstream feature that utilized Imax seventy milimeter cameras. That's incredible. There.
<v Speaker 2>I think they used four IX cameras. They were huge
<v Speaker 2>and heavy and bulky, seventy milimeter cameras.
<v Speaker 4>That's incredible. There were I think they used four IX cameras.
<v Speaker 4>They were huge and heavy and bulky.
<v Speaker 2>Five hundred million dollars apiece, no, sorry, five sorry, got
<v Speaker 2>my war drone five hundred thousand dollars a piece, yes,
<v Speaker 2>and one of them was destroyed during the Joker Bazooka
<v Speaker 2>scene under the street in that and another one was
<v Speaker 2>destroyed in The Dark Knight Rises when Selena Kyle runs
<v Speaker 2>over it with the motorcycles. Basically a million dollars worth
<v Speaker 2>of lost cameras in just a couple of accidents. But
<v Speaker 2>that's those cameras are why you get those incredible city
<v Speaker 2>scope scenes of Gotham, which is actually Chicago, but it's incredible. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>it gives you a much taller picture. And there's twenty
<v Speaker 2>in the Dark Knight. There's twenty eight minutes of IMAX
<v Speaker 2>footage and that includes the semi flip, which is awesome,
<v Speaker 2>awesome and not cgi they flipped a freaking Simi And
<v Speaker 2>how are you going to get a semi going vertical.
<v Speaker 2>You got to have Imax. That's the aspect ratio that's
<v Speaker 2>going to give you something tall enough to get that.
<v Speaker 2>And then the other is all of that opening scene
<v Speaker 2>with the bank robbery and the Joker. Yeah, it's fantastic,
<v Speaker 2>so good, so clear and crisp man. I love it
<v Speaker 2>that opening scene, and I know will break down the movie,
<v Speaker 2>but it's such a rush to start the movie with
<v Speaker 2>a bank robbery heist that could be its own movie. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>let me touch on that real quick. Okay, I just
<v Speaker 2>want to say this now. So I recognize the mask,
<v Speaker 2>and it took me a while to figure out where
<v Speaker 2>I had recognized it from. It's from a Stanley Cooper
<v Speaker 2>movie called The Killing. The Guys. It's got the guy
<v Speaker 2>who's in He's also in Doctor Strangelove. He's the dirty
<v Speaker 2>cop and the Godfather. He's the main character in this one.
<v Speaker 2>This is the one that I mentioned way back when
<v Speaker 2>we were talking about Rodney Daingerfield and Cadashac. Rodney Dangerfield's
<v Speaker 2>first appearance in a movie is like as an extra
<v Speaker 2>at a bar in The Killing, which involves a bank
<v Speaker 2>robbery gone wrong, where they wear clown mask and it's
<v Speaker 2>this exact clown mask. But then watching something and they're like, oh,
<v Speaker 2>this mask was inspired by the clown mask that Caesar
<v Speaker 2>Romero wore in one of the Batman episodes where he's
<v Speaker 2>like doing the opera singer thing, and I'm like, wait
<v Speaker 2>a minute, can't be both. Well, it is. It's that
<v Speaker 2>mask from The Killing, but painted with the face paint
<v Speaker 2>like the one from Caesar Romera. Yes, Caesara Ramera is
<v Speaker 2>a guy who played Joker in the Batman sixty sixth series. Yes, Hello, kiddies,
<v Speaker 2>gonna Meet the Joker, which our buddies Brad and Jeff
<v Speaker 2>did an episode at the film by On the Killing
<v Speaker 2>by Stanley Kubrick. If you had an interest to check
<v Speaker 2>that out, Yeah, definitely check out a film. That's where
<v Speaker 2>I got my information about Rodney Dangefield, a film by
<v Speaker 2>Dot Dot. Yep, great podcast. So I just want to
<v Speaker 2>take a step back here, right, how many hundreds of
<v Speaker 2>millions of dollars Warner Brothers puts on the line to
<v Speaker 2>make Batman begins? Right? With a guy who's directed two
<v Speaker 2>movies if you don't count the cheap you know, I
<v Speaker 2>filmed this with my buddies on the weekend thing that
<v Speaker 2>he did to first start out right, He's done two movies.
<v Speaker 2>One of them is an Oscar movie, but it's not
<v Speaker 2>a big budget movie. Sure, he's an indie filmmaker and
<v Speaker 2>they're trusting him with the Batman franchise. Is that nuts?
<v Speaker 2>That is nuts? It is nuts. You want to get nuts?
<v Speaker 2>You're exactly right, I mean, let's get nuts. I don't
<v Speaker 2>really understand it.
<v Speaker 4>But in both of these series, they turned the Batman
<v Speaker 4>franchise over to Tim Burton, who had done Pee's Big
<v Speaker 4>Adventure in beel Juice to not exactly action movies, Nope,
<v Speaker 4>not comic goood not certainly not superhero movies. And then
<v Speaker 4>for Nolan, who had done Memento and Insomnia, not superhero movies. No, right,
<v Speaker 4>And they're their own money like crazy at these Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>And so you listen to the producers and they talk
<v Speaker 2>about how there just was never any doubt. It's like
<v Speaker 2>they got ninety percent finished with filming the movie and
<v Speaker 2>suddenly somebody was like, what had happened if this had
<v Speaker 2>worked out? And they're like, never even occurred to us. Gosh.
<v Speaker 2>And it's kind of the same thing with Tim Burton.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, they had to guide him, but they really
<v Speaker 2>let him create his own world. And it's because this
<v Speaker 2>is another quote from David es Gooyer, hire good people
<v Speaker 2>and get them out of the way. Yeah, And that's
<v Speaker 2>what they did in these two circumstances. They trusted their director,
<v Speaker 2>Tim Burton, they trusted their director Christopher Nolan, and what
<v Speaker 2>resulted were five of the most profitable movies in history.
<v Speaker 2>It's really amazing when a studio lets artists work. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and you and I have talked many times that movies
<v Speaker 2>are not as good as they used to be because
<v Speaker 2>the studio gets in the way and they don't let
<v Speaker 2>artists work. The first four days of The Dark Knight
<v Speaker 2>like filming, they didn't film one shot. Did you hear this? No,
<v Speaker 2>first four days okay, they.
<v Speaker 4>Screened two movies a day with the entire cast because
<v Speaker 4>they wanted to get the tone right.
<v Speaker 2>Now. Imagine you're a Warner Brothers studio exact and you're like, wait, wait,
<v Speaker 2>we're not filming where everybody's just sitting around watching movies,
<v Speaker 2>and you call the director.
<v Speaker 4>He's like, well, yeah, it's important to get the tone right.
<v Speaker 4>So here's what they watched, Heat nineteen ninety five, Cat
<v Speaker 4>People nineteen forty two. They watched Citizen Kane nineteen forty one,
<v Speaker 4>King Kong nineteen thirty three, Batman Begins two thousand and five.
<v Speaker 2>Logically, yes, Black Sunday from nineteen seventy seven, A Clockwork
<v Speaker 2>Orange nineteen seventy one. Absolutely, and Still Logs seventeen, nineteen
<v Speaker 2>fifty three. Two movies a day get the tone right.
<v Speaker 2>Before that happened, Jonathan was writing the character of the
<v Speaker 2>Joker and Christopher Nolan does the same thing. He's like,
<v Speaker 2>here's the movie that you need to watch to understand
<v Speaker 2>the Joker. The movie The Testament of Doctor Mabouse by
<v Speaker 2>Fritz Lang that we talked about in our episode where
<v Speaker 2>he literally was about to be arrested because he put
<v Speaker 2>the words of Hitler in his psychotic villain in this movie.
<v Speaker 2>So what does Christopher Nolan say, If you want to
<v Speaker 2>know how to write a psychotic villain, go see that movie.
<v Speaker 2>And that's what Jonathan did. Fantastic.
<v Speaker 6>All right, everybody that is going to do it for
<v Speaker 6>part one of our Batman comparison, be sure to come
<v Speaker 6>back next week when we talk about all sorts of
<v Speaker 6>more things Batman. Super exciting. Can't wait to jump into it.
<v Speaker 2>See that. We'll see you next week. One