- 2 days ago
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00:00Now, the real game begins.
00:30Now, the real game begins.
00:53Riddle me this, riddle me that.
00:57Who's afraid of the big black pad?
01:00There was a definite agenda to have a bigger battle,
01:04and my job was to put in everything new that I could.
01:09I guess the feel, the mood with a bunch of grown-ups is,
01:12it's Halloween, we get to do whatever we want,
01:14because it's a magical world.
01:16It's one of those strange, once-in-a-lifetime experiences.
01:20It was such a different feel, you know, from the first two movies.
01:23I think that when people saw, you know, they were doing the Riddler and stuff,
01:26and it just had a different look to it,
01:28and I think people were really excited when it was coming out.
01:30Bob thought that because the second one was perhaps in moments a little too dark,
01:36then the third one should be a little more upbeat,
01:41not like the television show by any means,
01:44but a little bit more lighter, brighter than the second one.
01:51The movie was bigger and more welcoming than we remember,
01:58because now we see it in the context of history.
02:01But it was a kind of spectacle,
02:03and a kind of spectacle that touched for a second what people seemed to be hungry for.
02:07It was wild summer entertainment.
02:11Joel always wants to push the envelope.
02:13He wants it fantastic, I mean, to use his own words, exciting,
02:17and a little extreme.
02:19Now, you look at it today, you wouldn't think twice about it.
02:22At the time, it was a little on the edge.
02:24It was sort of like Saturday Night Fever on acid.
02:27Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls of all ages,
02:52welcome to the greatest show on Earth.
02:55I thought that Batman Forever clearly captured that 1940s, early 50s era of Batman comics.
03:03Bill Finger used to write these great stories about Batman fighting villains,
03:08jumping from the keys of a giant typewriter that was in display in some world's fair or wherever,
03:14and giant pencil sharpeners,
03:16and Batman and Robin were fighting together for the first time.
03:20The Riddler made his first appearance in the comics around that time.
03:24So everything began to change, and I think that Batman Forever did capture that era of the comic book successfully.
03:31I think that they were looking to re-energize the franchise,
03:36to give it a new look, turn it more back to the comic strip,
03:42and probably, in a word, more pop.
03:45And Joel, of course, was a perfect choice for that.
03:47I'm sure this is one of the reasons they wanted Joel,
03:49because he wanted to sort of make it a comic book come alive.
03:54I'd never made a comic book before, and it's just great for the imagination,
03:58because you're not dealing with real life.
04:00And once you get into a comic book, you have a much different world,
04:03and you get to create a Gotham City.
04:06You get to create what all these characters are going to look like.
04:10And the studio did want another Batman, and they wanted it to be sort of reinvented.
04:15What I said was, I'd have to talk to Tim Burton, because he's a friend of mine,
04:19and I wouldn't do that if Tim wasn't comfortable with it.
04:23So I went and had lunch with Tim, and Tim said,
04:25No, no, I'm through. I'm out of there.
04:27Tim was sort of transitioning away from directing and staying on as producer,
04:32but handing the reins off to Joel.
04:34But we sat down in the room with the both of them, asking,
04:37What's your take on Batman?
04:39And Jen started talking about how Batman is always about duality,
04:42and Tim's eyes just lit up.
04:44He said, Yes! They get it. They get it.
04:46The transition was absolutely smooth from Tim to Joel.
04:50We had a couple of meetings with both of them,
04:52and then Joel was taking the reins,
04:54and it just seemed like the smoothest possible transition
04:57on a franchise of this size.
04:59The Bachelors wrote the first draft, and in it,
05:03Edward Nygma, who becomes the Riddler,
05:06was a scientist. He had a pet rat named Sidney, I remember.
05:10It had charming things to it.
05:13It was not quite where I thought we were going to ultimately go,
05:16but it was a wonderful start, and they were very creative,
05:20and they really cracked the ice.
05:22We always figure somebody's going to find a way to make it work.
05:27Somebody's going to find a way to put it on screen,
05:30and our job is to have the wild enough imagination
05:34for it to be worth putting on screen.
05:36I think Joel wanted to make it a little more poppy than Lee and Janet.
05:40They were a little more in the tradition,
05:42and Joel wanted to stretch it out a little bit,
05:44which is, I think, why he ultimately chose Akiva to come in.
05:47What I was trying to do was sort of make it a little bit more
05:50of a psychologically real story,
05:52try to infuse the characters with a little more pathos and angst,
05:57and those things that were slowly but surely getting allowed into comic book movies.
06:05You know, I thought the first movie with Nicholson and Keaton and those guys was amazing.
06:09The second one, I didn't like the second one as much.
06:11I thought it got really dark. I just didn't enjoy it as much.
06:15And Joel coming in, I thought that, you know, this is going to be perfect,
06:17because I think he'll make it a little bit more colorful and just lighten it up a little bit.
06:22These films are all about the visuals, and Joel's a very visual guy.
06:25Tim was more a psychological thriller,
06:29and Joel is more a viewing thriller,
06:34an excitement to look at.
06:37Joel's style is very presentational and operatic,
06:42very sort of beautifully lyrical and larger than life,
06:47and that was clearly the style he was taking to Batman.
06:52Go ahead. You can see it.
06:54You're a genius. Stop! Stop!
06:59Practically speaking, the first thing was to find space.
07:03To make a movie on this scale, you need an enormous amount of space.
07:08I mean, this was Warner Bros. studio. This got, what, 40 stages?
07:12There wasn't a stage big enough to build our sets.
07:15And that was the very first practical problem of where are we going to build these sets that we can get to in film, based in Los Angeles.
07:24And the second thing was the cost. It was critical.
07:29When I first started the film, I thought I was going to make it with Michael Keaton.
07:34When Michael Keaton fell out, I had just seen Val Kilmer in Tombstone, and I thought he was fantastic in it, and I thought he would be a great Batman.
07:43Michael didn't feel that he wanted to continue the same thing again, sort of like Tim, that he'd done two big Batman movies, and he wanted some change in his life.
07:53He dabbled with maybe coming into the picture, maybe not. And so we just sort of gravitated to Val.
08:00It turned out while they were discussing me as the next candidate for the role, I was researching a film about an African adventure.
08:10So on the day that Warner Bros. called my agent and said, yeah, he's who we want, I was in a cave full of bats in South Africa.
08:18Bruce Wayne has always been glamorous and attractive and charming on one level, and then dark and tortured, you know, underneath.
08:26And I knew Val could play all those sides.
08:28It's not that much fun to be Bruce Wayne. He's kind of in turmoil, you know.
08:33I mean, as a character, I was thinking of the character and doing stuff.
08:36It was kind of challenging playing the role, to be involved and appropriately involved in the depth of the truth of the character, the myth.
08:47And not be so far in it that you're out of the style.
08:52Broken wings mend in time. One day Robin will fly again. I promise.
09:00I think bringing Robin into the Bat, I don't think at the time when Joel did this, we envisaged that it would become Batman and Robin ultimately.
09:10Even though from a creative point of view, we knew that, but that wasn't the determination.
09:15Joel felt it needed a youthful energy.
09:19Well, I'd never known Batman without Robin. I mean, there was, I mean, I grew up on Batman.
09:24And there always was Batman and Robin, so it just seemed a natural.
09:27And we went way back to the early comic books. The circus story and his parents dying that way, that's all from a comic book.
09:37I came to be a part of the movie when I got a call from Joel Schumacher that he was interested in me playing the part of Robin.
09:44I asked Chris to do it right away. I had seen Chris, you know, in all his films and I thought he'd be a perfect Robin.
09:50And Chris was off in Ireland doing Circle of Friends.
09:53I had heard on, you know, TV how they're having these casting calls all over the country and meeting people.
10:00I'm like, well, I'm confused because I had a call from my agent saying, Joel wants to meet me. He wants me to play the part.
10:05Mally Finn, our casting director, did a nationwide search. And we also looked in London.
10:09The day I was in London, they were all teenagers. I met Ewan McGregor, Jude Law, Alan Cumming, Toby Stevens, and a whole bunch more that have all become stars now.
10:20It was pretty wild to be offered the part because, you know, I grew up watching, you know, the TV show religiously as a kid.
10:27And, you know, when I was like a Batman fan, you know, it was like, well, I'm gonna be Robin. Okay. You know, it was, it was just surreal.
10:35It's kind of a double-edged sword. I mean, it's, there's so much exposure that you risk people always remembering you, you know, from that role.
10:44But at the same time, that international exposure, it can be so beneficial to your career and getting films made and that sort of thing.
10:50So you kind of have to, you know, think for a second before you kind of just jump into it.
10:55This is your brain on the box. This is my brain on the box. Does anybody else feel like a fried egg?
11:02Jim Carrey had, his first picture was out, which the Ventura picture, and there was just a buzz about this guy.
11:12I had known Jim ever since he started out as a stand-up comic. I had met him very, very early in both our careers.
11:18And, um, he was just starting to emerge as a superstar.
11:25One of the fears that I had going into the project was that, okay, here now is my first huge budget, you know, kind of deal.
11:34With a lot of people, with a lot of egos, with a lot of everything. And everybody's the best at what they do.
11:40You know, and so are they gonna be open to my ideas, you know? And, of course, from the first moment we met, Joel and I, it was just, you know, me spewing and him going,
11:51That's great! I'm gonna tell everybody I thought of it!
11:54You know, there would be times in the set where, you know, scene's going okay, and, you know, you could see Joel was kind of hoping we could do something else, and Jim would just kind of come up with something different.
12:04And I know this is the case on half the movies he does, but it was so incredible, because, yeah, I think it's like a kid in a candy store for him.
12:11He's in this ridiculous costume, he's on these enormous sets, and he could just really go to town.
12:15In the same way, I think Nicholson was just so bigger than life in the first Batman, I think Jim Carrey was pretty much the same in ours.
12:23Was that over the top? I can never tell!
12:28It was very hard not to laugh when Jim was working, because he'll try anything, you know? I wish we'd done outtakes.
12:38And it's funny, because I think sometimes it kind of rubs some people the wrong way, as if he was maybe stealing the show or something, but, I mean, the guy's a genius at what he does.
12:48We had some bad press. I don't know why they did this, but they said that Jim and I weren't getting along, or that I didn't like him or something.
12:58I don't know how you can not like him. To be an alien, not to like Jim Carrey.
13:08Ha! Dark kind of day!
13:11Joel and I were sitting around, and I said, well, you know what? Tommy Lee Jones could play this role. Harvey Two-Face would be perfect for him.
13:18I called Tommy Lee and said, you know, we'd done The Fugitive and Undersiege together.
13:23I said to him, how would you like to be in a Batman movie?
13:26He said, well, send me the script. So I sent him overnight the script.
13:29He said, I don't get it. I don't get it. Why do you want me in this picture?
13:32I'd never heard of Harvey Two-Face, even though I'd read the comic books when I was a child.
13:37But my son knew who he was immediately and was very enthusiastic about the movie.
13:43In fact, he was enthusiastic about it sooner than I was, which is to say instantly.
13:48It took me a little bit longer to talk myself into it.
13:51And it was his enthusiasm that was decisive for me, really.
13:56Ordinarily, I look for certain subtleties. The comic book doesn't concern itself.
14:01So it was liberating, of course, to be a comic book villain.
14:06It was odd sitting there in the trailer with Tommy Lee Jones and half his face is melted.
14:11You know, we're talking about cattle and he's smoking a cigar.
14:14He goes, I've got a ranch, and we talk about horses or whatever, and he had a red face. That was weird.
14:22So this is me telling Tommy Lee Jones he's a genius.
14:25Both of us.
14:27But he knows that already, and so does the world now.
14:31Bruce, who is this beautiful young woman you're with?
14:34Dr. Chase Meridian.
14:36A doctor? What kind of doctor?
14:38Joel has this particular ability to, especially in the casting area, to see long-term out.
14:46He always wanted Nicole Kidman. It didn't matter.
14:49He just felt that Nicole Kidman was a major rising star and loved her elegance and sophistication that she brought to the picture.
14:57Nicole Kidman. I had met her after she did Dead Calm when she was about 19.
15:04She had just come from Australia and had always wanted to work with her.
15:09I mean, it's great to be a part of, you know, the Batman movies. It's such an American icon.
15:14And I wanted to work with Joel, and obviously it was such a great cast with Val Kilmer and Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee and Chris O'Donnell that it was pretty hard to resist.
15:24Casting a film is the most important thing on every film.
15:27So I think that one of the things you have to be careful of is there may be very big superstar names that want to be in it, but they may not be right.
15:37The cast in Batman Forever were not as famous as you think, if you look back in time.
15:51Pre-production is a long period on the Batman, between around ten months.
15:56So the design phase is an extensive phase.
16:00I mean, our art department was massive, no question about it.
16:04It's one of the most expensive things. Everything in the place is made to order.
16:09And so the design and the manufacturing stage is the biggest part of the movie.
16:13You know, it's much more difficult to build outside the realm of the real world than it is the real world,
16:21because it's something nobody's ever done before.
16:23They haven't built this before, so it's like, well, we can only try it.
16:26You know, it's a lot of experimentation, and it's far more fun than any real world, because it's, you know, you get to invent.
16:36Every single thing was of such quality, and it shows in the film.
16:41It's amazing, the craftsmanship on the technical side, and really, really inspired designers.
16:49It's just, you know, it's amazing how every single detail fits.
16:54It's big. I mean, it's like the best of every department coming together on something that is, that they don't have to take incredibly seriously.
17:04You know, that they can really be creative and fun with, and that's the exciting part for me.
17:10The pressure doesn't come from the complications in the character.
17:14It comes really from the magnitude of the movie.
17:17The sets are enormous, and some of the mechanical aspects of those sets, the moving parts, are potentially unwieldy.
17:26You know, the challenge really came from living with and maintaining this enormous scale.
17:33Every day was fun. It was just, it's crazy, but also, it's such a spectacle.
17:39Every set was amazing, just when you thought, and after, I don't know, a month or two in Gotham City figure,
17:45you've seen everything, and then there would be the circus scene or something else, and it was extraordinary.
17:50Lighting is part of the design of the movie. There are flashing and twirling lights.
17:54We photograph our own lights in the picture. I mean, it's part of the set. I mean, it's incredible.
17:59And you totally buy it. Hundreds and hundreds of shots, so you can see the lights of actually lighting the set.
18:05It was fun to go to work every day. We were creating, you know, our own world.
18:10Brilliant, imaginative, creative people around. I try to have a lot of laughs on the set.
18:18We certainly had a lot of visitors. Everybody wanted to come and visit.
18:21I really wish that my kids would have been around when we were making it.
18:25Because my nieces and nephews came to visit the set, and there was something about putting that suit on,
18:29and, you know, it just made you want to, you know, be a superhero. You know, and you really, like, you kind of bought into it.
18:34And when kids would come on the set, it was unbelievable. I mean, they would literally be speechless.
18:40I would sort of try in the first couple of weeks when I was in the Batsuit to entertain the kids when I'd go around with the cape,
18:48and the kids go into a trance in front of the Batsuit. It's amazing to watch because, particularly with the boys,
18:55they just get completely entranced by this costume. They don't need any entertainment at all.
19:02After a while, I would just stand there like I was in the last museum.
19:06When a kid meets an actor in a Batman costume, he's met Batman. It isn't an actor. That's Batman.
19:14And so that's part of the thrill of it, part of the wonder of it.
19:18Bob Kane, the man who created Batman. I wouldn't have this job if it wasn't for him.
19:24Attaboy, attaboy.
19:26Bob spent a great deal of time on the set, and he had his chair with his name on it sitting right next to Joel.
19:32So they had a very nice relationship. That was good to see.
19:36I would say he came once a week, which was great. And he was a lot of fun. He had a great sense of humor.
19:42I think I'll be your publicist, Joel.
19:44Oh, this is great. Did you sign it for me?
19:46Well, of course I signed it. Do you know how to read?
19:48I loved talking to Bob Kane. He said that he liked what I did a lot.
19:53It was nice whenever he said it. He said it a lot, so it was easy to go to work.
19:58But my head would swell inside the bat suit.
20:01We went to a comic convention in San Diego, I think it was, with him.
20:09We said, well, you want to come? He said, sure.
20:11It was like walking around with a god.
20:14Victory is inevitable. For if knowledge is power, then a god am.
20:22Long ago, when this whole thing started, Batman Year One, the Frank Miller comic, was always my favorite.
20:38And I was always hoping that I would do that one.
20:42There was no desire to do that the first time around, and there was definitely no desire to do that the second time around.
20:48Batman Forever and Batman and Robin often now get squished together, but Batman Forever is darker than Batman and Robin.
20:56It is a retelling of the origin story in a way that attempts to take a little bit closer look at the psychology of young Bruce Wayne and how he became older Bruce Wayne.
21:07There's a piece of the movie that isn't in the final cut, but which is strangely the narrative component that the story was built around.
21:14All the way throughout the movie, there are these recurring images of this book, this mysterious book.
21:19And in the movie, when the book is revealed to be Bruce's father's diary, it simply says...
21:25He'd written in it every day of my life, but now he'd never write in it again.
21:31At that moment I knew my life would never be the same.
21:36In the screenplay and in the movie that we shot, there is a very different center of the movie, where he opens up the book and the last entry is,
21:46Martha and I want to stay home tonight, but Bruce insists on going to see a movie.
21:52And so the idea was that somewhere, Bruce remembered and had repressed his fantasy that this was all his fault.
22:02That if he just hadn't made them go see a movie that night, they would never have been out and they would never have been killed.
22:09And so the whole movie was actually built around this kind of psychological reckoning, which is why the love interest is a psychologist and why in fact there was a whole section of the movie, which was actually in the commercials and the previews where Bruce then returns to the cave that he fell in running away when he was holding that book and sees that giant bat.
22:33Val sort of spread his arms and the bat spread his arms, a very sort of gothic component of the movie, quite dark.
22:39It was a much more complex, really kind of fun, but much darker version of the movie.
22:44Now that's impressive!
22:48The post-production process is extremely pressured.
22:51In fact, from the last day of photography to completion of the answer print with all the visual effects in there is ten weeks,
23:01which is in today's world is lightning time.
23:04There wasn't an enormous expectation on anyone's part because we had gone into it with being told constantly that no one wanted another Batman movie.
23:15That was sort of our, that's what we'd all been told by so many people by then that if they were banking on it being their biggest movie of the year, they certainly didn't say that.
23:26We had around 200 sponsors from the hamburger company all the way to toothpaste.
23:34I mean, it's just extraordinary.
23:36It is a large part of the Batman franchise.
23:41It assists us in getting the picture into the public's eye and maintaining it there.
23:48It was amazing. I remember when the first movie came out, for our first movie, Batman Forever, they had these posters.
23:55They had one for each character and they put them all the bus stops around L.A.
23:58And they, people were literally ripping these things open to get the posters.
24:01I did know when we were in a small town in Mississippi, I passed a McDonald's and they were giving away Batman stuff.
24:08And I went in to look at it and it was all gone.
24:11And this was about two weeks before the movie opened.
24:14McDonald's had the, these cups that were made in France and their entire order was gone in two days.
24:23Two days.
24:24I did get a sense then, being deep in the heart of Mississippi, that if the Batman merchandise was, was all out already at McDonald's, that, that there was an awareness, that there was a big awareness of the, an anticipation.
24:40Of the film.
24:41When we got our grosses back, I think it was $15 million for Friday night.
24:48Nobody had ever heard of anything like that.
24:51You know, I, what, you know, today, yeah, it's 23 on Friday.
24:56You know, but I mean, dear God, that was so much, we all thought it was a typo.
25:02I remember being in Australia on the press junket for Batman the day it opened.
25:07And I remember getting a call from Bob Daley and saying that it was going to be the biggest opening weekend of all time.
25:16And I know there were some movies that think they're going to do that, but we didn't.
25:21It was a real surprise.
25:22And then any of those toy franchises and merchandisers and people who had come in with us against their better judgment really got rewarded.
25:37Because they were in there when the movie hit and they had the merchandise to back it up.
25:45There are very few films that are, reach that many people.
25:50I don't think any, none I can think of, that don't have a really compelling story.
25:57There's something fundamentally attractive about the story.
26:00And we all want to know who we are and we all have nightmares that might, could turn into something that's healing.
26:11Or we have nightmares that are reoccurring like Bruce Wayne that need to get healed.
26:15And it's just, it's really well, well made story.
26:22Everybody was generally very happy to have a new style of the franchise.
26:28We delivered what we agreed to deliver.
26:31The success of the movie doesn't really happen to you.
26:35You just sort of get, someone tells you about it.
26:38Or you are aware of it.
26:41Your whole experience with the film is really finished when you hand it in.
26:45It's like raising someone else's child.
26:49You have to give it back after a while.
26:51The truth is, it's your movie while you're making it.
26:53But it really belongs to the movie studio.
26:55And ultimately it belongs to the public.
26:57Because that's who you really made it for.
26:59It was a great experience.
27:01And, and, an unexpected, a really unexpected success.
27:06I mean, I thought some people would go to see a Batman movie.
27:10But I didn't know we would, we would have the success we did.
27:13Hey! Hey! Go! Go!
27:19Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey
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