All language subtitles for Icons.Unearthed.S06E01.One.of.the.Gargoyles.Moved.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-BTN_track4_[eng]

Batman.

This is the story
of how an outsider...

I'm Batman.

...stepped out
from the shadows...

He is
a really tortured character.

...and went from perching

amongst the gargoyles
of Gotham City

to the world...

This was the big idea
that would change
Hollywood forever.

...creating
his own cinematic universe...

It's a whole new world,
it's a different dimension,
it's a different multiverse.

...thanks
to the filmmakers

who were never afraid
of the dark...

- Theater owners
were scared of the movie.-Action!

They told him,
"Do whatever you want."

-
- ...whether it was scary...

Boo!

Jack didn't like that.

This is a bad idea.

People did not react well.

It was going fine
until that cunt
pulled that trick.

-
- ...or scary good.

You want to know
how I got these scars?

To watch Heath Ledger
made the hair on the back
of my neck stand up.

They were willing
to do anything...

- She had to French-kiss
that cat.
- Meow.

...and risk anything...

I thought you'd blown up
a building before.

And I'm thinking,
"I'm about to die."

If you gotta go,
go with a smile.

Do you want to be
responsible for changing
Jack Nicholson's smile?

...in front of the camera...

Building a city,
can you imagine?

This stuff was not done before.

...and beyond.

How dare you not make time
to see the Catwoman?

And I got really pissed off.

We were
a little bit freaked out.

It was full panic.

Tabloids, you know,
"Death on The Dark Knight set."

Your entrance was good,
his was better.

All the big names...

He goes into overage
at midnight. "Don't think
dollars. Think real estate."

Do I look like I'm joking?

...big egos...

Chris wants to control
every image in the movie.
Thank you very much.

- ...big hair...
-

It's just like
this giant bubble.

- ...and big whip energy...
-

Michelle with the whip.

-
- I was speechless.

Life's a bitch, now so am I.

...as told
by the people who were there.

[Sean Young] And this is Jack
at 5:00 p.m.

He'd start making
squawking noises.

One of the most
amazing performances
I've ever seen in my life.

I knew this was the guy
who could make
my dream come true.

So buckle in...

Chicks dig the car.

...for a wild ride...

Does it come in black?

The Batmobile.

It was basically
a piece of shit.

...as we turn on
the Bat-Signal

to shine a light
on an ordinary guy in a cape...

[Di Novi] This is a character
who wears a mask.

His eyes are everything.

...who came
through the darkness...

What an incredible human being,
and what a tragedy, you know?

...on an unlikely journey
from the ridiculous...

The show was
completely ludicrous.

...to the sublime...

This was like, "Whoo-hoo!"

You have to remember, this was
the most expensive movie
ever made at its time.

It was huge.

...on Icons Unearthed: Batman .

- Batman.
- What are you?

The Caped Crusader.

A crime-fighting
comic book hero
unique among his peers.

He's got this darker side.

Batman. That was
my favorite superhero.

Everybody wanted to be Batman.

But who is he?

Oh, sorry, Bruce Wayne.

He's the most
relatable superhero.

[Uslan] Batman has
no superpowers. He's human.

And why is he?

The origin of Batman
is as important

as the character of Batman.

But the question
you're probably
not asking is...

How does a kid in his twenties

buy the rights to Batman
from DC Comics?

And the reason
you're not asking that
is because...

It's impossible.
It's inconceivable.

Well, here's the thing.

This gentleman did buy
the rights to Batman

and to find out how...

So what we have to do now
is go back in time

and set this story
in the context of its time.

A time
of a different superhero.

Probably Superman.

Yep, that's the one.

We're talking about 1939-ish.

Superman was selling
a lot of comic books.

Freelance cartoonist
Bob Kane saw the writing
on the wall

and wanted to add to it.

You should have
a little more gore
under the fangs, though, right?

[Robert Greenberger] Bob Kane heard how much money
Superman was making.

He immediately went home
that weekend

and whipped up what he thought
would be the next Superman.

But the Batman
we know and love

did not spring solely
from Bob Kane's imagination.

For a long time Mr. Kane
took credit, sole credit.

And as long
as we're pointing the finger...

Bob Kane, he showed it
to Bill Finger.

...the writer, that is.

Bill Finger told me,
"Originally, Bob Kane
created Birdman,

"and then he changed
the name to Batman,

"and his Batman
had real bat wings
coming out of its back."

Bill finger, he said,
"First thing, Bob,

"if he's gonna be called
the Batman,

"he should look
more like a bat.

"They should be black,
dark blue, dark gray."

Nice outfit.

[Uslan] "Well,
instead of this little mask,

"why don't you have a cowl
and pointy ears of a bat?

"And then since Superman is
a superhero with superpowers,

"why don't we go
in the opposite direction
and make this guy human,

"and instead of real bat wings,
why don't we just put
a scalloped cape?"

I think
he's a little bit of everything.

There's a little bit
of Sherlock Holmes.

There's a little bit of Zorro.

Stay where you are, gentlemen.

There's a little bit
of the Shadow.

[Nasr] Bill Finger came up
with the character,
the idea of the duality.

The driving force
of what Batman is,
the Dark Knight,

that's Bill Finger.

Bill had coded
Batman's very DNA,

right from his painful origins.

[Loeb] Bruce Wayne is walking
home from the movies
with his parents,

and they are approached
by a man in the darkness.

He witnesses the slaughter
of his parents before his eyes.

See you around, kid.

In losing his family,
Batman gained
his life's mission.

[Uslan] Young Bruce Wayne makes
a vow to get all the bad guys,

even if he has to walk
through hell
for the rest of his life

In order to honor
that commitment.

It's like, "Oh, my God,
this is powerful stuff."

From his first appearance,
Batman was a hit.

Prowling Gotham
in the Batmobile,

Batman battled the bad guys.

And there was
one particularly good,
really bad, bad guy.

Wait till they get a load of me.

[Uslan] The Joker, inarguably,
is the greatest supervillain
in the history of comics.

The Joker made
his first appearance
in Batman number 1.

[Greenberger] The inspiration
came from a couple of sources.

What's with that stupid grin?

[Greenberger] Then a young assistant
came up one day

with a sketch
of a Joker playing card.

[Uslan] And Bill Finger said,
"You know, this reminds me

"of that silent film,The Man Who Laughs."

He definitely has a Joker look.

The Joker became
very successful,

so they got inspired to do
other colorful villains.

Pretty quickly came Catwoman.

Then, there was the Penguin.

The Riddler.

[Uslan] Batman has
the greatest rogues' gallery
of supervillains

in the history of comic books.

From Alfred,
Dick Grayson / Robin,

Vicki Vale,
Commissioner Gordon,

they all found their way
into the pages
of early Batman comics.

But such a cast of characters
deserved a bigger audience,

and in 1943,
that's just what they'd get.

Hidden headquarters

of America's number one
crime-fighter, Batman.

[Nasr] Batman's first appearance
on the silver screen

- was with the old
Columbia Short Films.
- The Batman!

They were working
on next to zero budgets.

[Greenberger] You know, the Batmobile
didn't look like the Batmobile,

the Batcave isn't really there.

All the things that made
Batman Batman are missing.

And Columbia's next attempt,

six years later,
wasn't much better.

Well, that's almost impossible.

But it wasn't
just Batman and Robin.

By the beginning of the 60s,

comic book characters
were everywhere,

from network TV to Broadway...

- It's a bird!
- It's a plane!

- It's Superman!
- The musical.

Superman, he was gonna be
going on to Broadway.

There's no other way
to handle it.

Batman was among
the last to get the call up.

ABC became the first network
to send out the Bat-Signal...

The Commissioner is trying
to call Batman.

...commissioning
a series in 1966

produced
by Twentieth Century Fox.

They promoted
the hell out of it.
"Batman is coming."

You didn't know anything else
except "Batman is coming."

I was so excited that this show
was coming on the air.

To the Batpoles. On the double.

The night finally came.

I was in my downstairs den
at my house.

It opens

and it's in color.

Wow. Back then,
that was special.

The opening animation,

it kind of looked
like Bob Kane,
Jerry Robinson artwork.

The sets, the Batcave, ooh,
somebody was spending money
on this one.

This is good.

But 20 minutes in, it hits me.

Holy , this is a comedy.

It's camp. I didn't get it.

And then when my parents
started laughing at it,

I was like, "I hate this show."

But at least
they got the Batmobile right.

The Batmobile looks cool.

Batman's car was cool,

but as far as superheroes go,

he wasn't.

Your orange juice, sir.
Batman's special.

It was all Biff Bam Boom.

Kapow!

Pow!

Kapow! I actually loved it.

Well, hello, Caped Crusaders.

-
- Batman was landing
more punchlines than punches,

and comic book fans
were not laughing.

The whole world is laughing
at my Batman,

and that just killed me.

Kapow!

The show was
completely ludicrous.

I'm afraid we've struck out.

After just two years,
120 episodes, and even a movie,

ABC's Batman
saw his last outing
in March of 1968.

The show had made the man
who played Batman a star

and his character a joke.

Nobody wanted
to make that again.

Well, not nobody,

because little did a certain
14-year-old fan know...

- [Uslan] Holy...
This is a comedy.
- Pow!

[Uslan] And that just killed me.

...that his own origin story
was beginning.

[Uslan] After that TV show,
I made a vow,

and I said, "Somehow, someday,

"I'm gonna show the world
the true Batman.

"A dark creature of the night,

"stalking deeply disturbed
villains in the shadows."

And that's when the dream began.

And Michael Uslan
was soon living his dream.

Michael Uslan got hired by DC,

in, I believe, about 1972
as an assistant editor.

They gave me a job and helped me
pay my way through college.

DC gave Michael
the opportunity to delve
behind the shadows,

writing on The Shadow,

and even eventually dabbling
with the Dark Knight himself.

Comic book geek
dream come true.

Briefly leaving Michael
in Gotham to live his dream,

to tell this story,
we need to go to Metropolis
by way of Hollywood,

or more precisely, the mailroom
of Warner Bros. Studio,

with this mailman.

I started working
in the mailroom at Warner's,

and my job and my passion is
to make filmed entertainment.

Well,
not so fast, Mark,
because in the early '70s...

There was a lot of upheaval
when Jack Warner sold
his studio,

but the Kinney Corporation,
they acquired Warner Bros.

But that's not
all they acquired.

They were consolidating
and buying properties,

one of which was DC Comics.

They thought they could
eventually develop these things

into television shows or films.

And it didn't take long

for Warner Bros. executives
to start asking...

What do we have at DC
that we can make the most of?

And, well,
you guessed it,

it's no surprise
who was first to the screen.

Superman.

When people saw Superman,
the movie,

this was a film
to be taken seriously,

and it wasn't campy,
though there was comedy.

It's open. Come in.

And maybe,
just maybe,

the Man of Steel would change
the public's perception

of superheroes on screen.

[Greenberger] Once people saw
Christopher Reeve
in the costume

and then saw
the state-of-the-art
special effects,

you could believe
a man can fly,

and everyone, adults
and kids alike, bought into it.

After everyone
had seen the staggering success
of Superman,

it was time to once again
ask the question...

How does a kid in his twenties
buy the rights to Batman?

It's impossible.

But that didn't stop him

from asking the president
of DC Comics, who told him...

Batman is as dead as a dodo.

The general feeling was
that Superman was the one
and only comic book character

capable of being turned
into a blockbuster movie.

Nobody's interested
in Batman anymore.

Sensing an opportunity

and a distinct lack
of competition,

the young Michael Uslan
concocted a plan

to buy the filming rights
to Batman.

I knew that I could not
negotiate my own deal,

so I needed to find a partner.

And Michael teamed up
with one of the best lawyers
in the business.

Benjamin Melniker put together
the deals for Ben-Hur,

Doctor Zhivago,
A Space Odyssey,

They came together,
one had contacts at DC,

one had all the contacts
at Warner Bros.

So together they went in
to negotiate with DC.

They made the smartest deal
on the planet.

For a figure rumored
to be somewhere in the vicinity

of merely $50,000.

And I went out
and raised money privately

from people who didn't know
anything about Batman.

Not only did
Michael Uslan acquire
the filming rights to Batman...

Acquiring the rights
of Batman in perpetuity,

because they believed in it
so much,

and strangely
Warner Bros. did not.

Wow, what a deal that was!

And with this deal,
Michael's mind was racing.

Sequels, animation, toys, games.

This is gonna be a slam dunk.

All he had to do

was now find a movie studio
to make a Batman movie.

So, pitch number one,
Michael Uslan took Batman

to one of the big bosses
of United Artists,
Mike Medavoy.

- How hard could that be?
- ...gonna be a slam dunk.

[Medavoy] Uslan and Melniker,

they brought it to us first.

And we were off and running.

Or so we thought.

Yeah.

I didn't think that
they'd be able
to put it together.

I mean, I should have,
but I didn't.

They were unproven
and there was going to be
a lot of money,

- and studios don't like risk.
- No.

To my shock, I was turned down

by every single studio
in Hollywood.

"You can't do
serious comic movies."
"Michael, you're nuts,

"you can't do dark superheroes."

"Michael, you're
out of your mind.

"You can't make a movie
out of an old TV series."

It was a hurdle,

for a while, it didn't look like
I was ever going to climb over.

So, Ben Melniker said to me,

"Let me get Peter Guber
on the phone."

He's younger and hipper

than the guys
you've been talking to.

Guber was
the producer

behind dark
and gritty dramas like...

Midnight Express.

...and there was
no campy comedy sharks

with Guber's 1977 film
The Deep .

And so Guber was listening.

I did, like, an elevator pitch
over the phone.

He goes, "Michael,
this sounds really intriguing."

And it was like, "Okay,

"how are we gonna approach this?
We like this."

The dark
and gritty Guber
was only part of the solution.

The other part?

Well, it was a perfect part.

Jon Peters
was a big hairdresser.

Jon Peters was the hairdresser
of the stars.

One star
in particular.

♪ I believe there's a best
Of both worlds ♪

Jon Peters made a career
out of being the hairstylist

to Barbra Streisand
and then becoming her paramour.

But he was, you know,
pretty imaginative.

[Medavoy] You know,
he did have a kind
of childlike thought process.

He thought of himself
as being brilliant,

and he was, you know,
far from it.

That may be true,
but Peters and Guber
were now a team.

These were just
two different people
with different backgrounds,

but they came together
to create the Guber-Peters
production company.

And thanks to
the passion of Michael Uslan,
Guber, and Peters...

Immediately set to work
trying to get a studio
interested in a Batman movie.

And the first step
in doing that was
to hire a scriptwriter.

[Greenberger] They had gone
to Tom Mankiewicz,

who was creative consultant
on the Superman movie,

to write the first screenplay.

Tom Mankiewicz.
He also wrote a couple
of James Bond movies.

This was all beginning
to come to fruition.

And this time, really...

We were off and running.

- Um...
- Or so we thought.

[Greenberger] There was romance,
there was drama.

[Uslan] Very James Bond-ish.

- I.e. not...
- The true Batman.

The Mankiewicz version
was jettisoned,

and then it went
to other people,

and it was stuck in
what is known in the business

- as development...
- Hell.

But not all was lost,
because Jon Peters had a man

on the inside at Warner Bros.

A mailman.

I was very forward moving
and ambitious.

But Mark Canton
no longer worked
in the mailroom,

and in the years since,
he truly climbed the ladder
in Hollywood.

I went into business
with Jon Peters
and Barbra Streisand.

He had worked for Jon Peters.

And now,
as a Warner Bros. exec
himself...

Mark Canton was helpful
because he was on the inside.

[Canton] Peter and Jon made
a deal with the studio.

They were not easy to say no to.

And so,
with ally Mark Canton
and a deal with the studio,

finally things were looking up
for Batman.

I had always been
a comic book fan.

It just felt...
It was kind of organic.

And they got Warners
to put up the money.

You know, Mr. Canton.

And just like that...

I was like,
"Yeah, let's develop Batman."

Oh, my God! You know,
geek dream come true.

They believed in me.

And they put their money on me.

Michael Uslan
had fulfilled the promise
he made to himself

and to Batman
all those years before.

[Uslan] I tried to do
what my hero, Batman,
would have done.

Make a vow,
make a commitment, persevere,

even if you have to walk
through hell.

For years and years and years,
that's what you do.

Now all they had
to do was actually make
the movie.

And we were off and running,
or so we thought.

Once again,
the cruel passage of time
gripped Gotham City

and the Batman project
had stalled.

Things shift, things change.

Then they talk about
this director, that director,

the third director,
the tenth director.

Development hell.

There's no other way
to describe it.

And everything then begins
to stretch out, to languish.

But then Bill Gerber walked
in the door at Warner Bros.

Right on.

And what he saw
would change Batman's fate,

and the fate
of all superheroes forever.

My first day at Warner Bros,
which was in February 1986,

we all went down
to a screening room

to see a short
by a new young filmmaker
called Frankenweenie.

-
-

It was just dazzling.

-
- It was a Gothic tale

tinged with nostalgia
and humor.

And everybody was like,
"Wow, this guy is brilliant."

And the guy?
Well, you've heard of him now.

Tim Burton, of course.

And Warner Bros. wasted no time

enlisting the services
of the young,
talented director.

Mark Rosenberg,

who at the time was the head
of production at Warners,

signed him
to a three picture deal,

literally on the spot,
not having any idea

what he'd try to get him on
or what he'd be good for.

Well,
there was one project

languishing around Warner Bros.
that needed a director.

One that involved a man
in a tight-fitting suit.

Oh, no, not that one.

This one.

[Nasr] We're going to hire him

to make
this quirky little comedy.

The movie
was Pee-wee's Big Adventure,

- but in the hands
of Tim Burton...
-

...it would become
so much more.

I was just wowed
with his creativity,
his imagination.

Burton knocked it
out of the park

for the first picture
in his three picture deal.

- They believed in him.
- Next up,
picture two.

Well, Batman, of course.

There was just one problem.

Burton, not a fan
of comics or Batman.

Michael Uslan
wasted no time educating
the potential director

in the dark art of the bat.

I gave him Detective Comics
27 through 38.

Batman comics number one.
Issues from the 1970s
of Batman.

But the most important
inspiration of them all,

the smash hit
Dark Knight series.

[Greenberger] Burton looked
at The Dark Knight Returns

and said, "All right,
I now can envision
what this is."

Tim said,
"If we are going to make

"the first dark and serious
comic book superhero movie,

"this movie cannot be
about Batman."

And then he said,
"This movie must be
about Bruce Wayne."

And Tim Burton went
all in on this idea

and was happy to part
with the established backstory
of Bruce Wayne.

In his mind,
Batman and the Joker
had both been orphans

and at the same orphanage,

and Bruce Wayne had been
adopted by a rich family

and the Joker
had never been adopted.

So money was a major element.

He was thinking
that Chris Walken should be
Bruce Wayne.

I'm just a poor schmo.
Got lucky.

And John Malkovich should be
the Joker.

It's beyond my control.

[Weber] And when Guber-Peters
heard that, they said,

"That's not the movie
we're talking about making.

"And if that's the one
you're going to make,

"that's not going to work.
We can't do that."

It was
an early sign of possible
creative differences

between Burton and Jon Peters.

But still everyone was on board
for a dark, gritty Batman.

And Tim Burton
was determined to explore
Bruce Wayne's origins.

They had Sam Hamm come in
and write a script.

Sam Hamm was a lot younger
and hipper,

and that's who Tim wanted.

The Dark Knight version
of Batman.

That was what
Tim and Sam were referring to

when they were developing
the script.

The narrative was formed,
the characterizations
were formed.

The characterizations
we know and love.

Alfred, Vicki Vale, The Joker,
Bruce Wayne, Batman, and...

Robin?

[Victoria Bennett] In the script, Dick Grayson's
Robin was actually introduced.

His family is part
of a traveling circus

that gets caught
in the crossfires

between Batman and Joker.

His parents get killed,
and he becomes heavily involved

in the finale at the bell tower.

There was also gonna be
a horseback scene

where Vicki was riding around
with Bruce.

Robin wouldn't make
the final script.

However,
the horse-riding scene would.

Bruce Wayne and Vicki Vale
riding back to the manor.

And although
Burton wouldn't get
his adoption backstory,

he was still able to make
a significant change
to Batman's origins.

[Greenberger] One of the biggest changes
is making Jack Napier...

AKA The Joker.

...the man who killed
Martha and Thomas Wayne,

because in the comics,
it was just a criminal.

I was very concerned
about having the Joker

killing Batman's parents
at the time.

- You killed my parents.
- What?

[Greenberger] By making it Jack Napier,

it stayed focused
on these two characters.

But what about
the two characters

who invented Batman
and his backstory
In the first place?

[Uslan] I actually went back
to Bob Kane,

Bill Finger was gone by now,

and I said to Bob,
"What do you think about this?"

and Bob said,
"This makes perfect sense.

"Michael, I'm fine with this.
I'm good with it,"

and then I felt okay.

And soon
there was a script that
everyone felt very okay with.

[Gerber] When the script came in
that kind of reinvented Batman,

everybody was like,
"Wow, this thing is great,"
you know?

But despite the optimism,
don't worry,

this was no green light.

Batman was still
merely in development.

Development hell.

And as the months ticked by,

the bat-team kept
themselves busy

working on other
non-bat-based things.

[Bennett] Because they had
a deal with Warner Bros.,

Guber and Peters ended up
making a ton of stuff for them,

like, legitimate hits.

The Color Purple, Innerspace,

and, more importantly,
Witches of Eastwick .

And Tim Burton
was keeping himself busy
on other projects as well.

The second movie he made
for Warner Bros. wasn't Batman.

It was 1988's...

- Betelgeuse!
- [Greenberger] Beetlejuice.

I'm the ghost
with the most, babe.

Burton had brought
all this really interesting
visual design to it.

He makes you feel like
you're in our world,

but everything is
just slightly skewed.

Made on a $15,000,000 budget,

Beetlejuice would go on
to squeeze over $70,000,000
from the box office

and prove
there was a real thirst

for dark, gritty movies
in the hands of Tim Burton.

But the studio execs
didn't know that yet.

I was at Warner's
with executives

walking out of a screening,
so it was a test.

- Betelgeuse.
- It's showtime.

And it went very well.

And Warner's said,
"This is what we need
to bring Gotham City to life."

[Gerber] I actually heard
an executive say to Tim,

"Go make Batman."

Finally,
Warner Bros. were convinced,

and they green-lit Batman.

Everyone was in all the way.

Leaving just one question.

Who's going to be the Batman?

In casting Batman,
the producing pair

of Guber and Peters had
a guilty secret.

Guber and Peters were fans
of this TV series.

Better let us handle this.

To give you an idea
where their head was at,

I once asked,
"Who did you want to cast?"

and the response was, "Well,
probably either Chevy Chase

- or Bill Murray.
- I'm sorry,
this isn't your lucky day.

What Burton
was making was no comedy,

but the actor he had in mind

definitely had one
semi-decomposing foot
in that camp.

What are your qualifications?

Ah. Well, I attended Juilliard.

I'm a graduate
of the Harvard Business School.

[Greenberger] Tim Burton saw
that Michael Keaton
had the range to do

what he imagined Batman to be.

Naturally there was
near total consensus...

They announced
that Michael Keaton
would play Batman.

- ...that Keaton
was not the right guy.
- Hi.

[Edlitz] People did not react
well to that.

We got a lot of blowback
at the time

from the Wall Street JournalI remember.

Especially as this joker
seemed better suited

to that Joker.

He was known
primarily for comedies.

Where does mommy keep
the extra diapers?

Mr. Mom is playing Batman?

Great, you know,
I've been in this now
seven and a half years

to do a dark and serious Batman.

Let's have a comedian do it.

Can we count on you?

Is a frog's ass watertight?

Had there been social media,

there is no way
Michael Keaton plays Batman.

[Busch] No one wanted
Michael Keaton.

He's not Batman. He's silly.

[Gerber] I mean,
there was literally people
calling their congressperson

saying, "This is a bad idea."

- Come on. Go on.
- He certainly
wasn't, like,

Mr. Tall Good Looking.

You didn't have to,
but you picked me.
It makes me want to kiss you.

[Uslan] And remember, Tim said

this movie had to be
about Bruce Wayne.

And Michael Keaton
was the guy who could
make audiences believe

this was the driven,
obsessed guy

who would get dressed up
as a bat.

This is a character
who wears a mask,

so his eyes are everything.

[Dixon] Keaton had
this subtle thing
where you could see

behind his eyes.

He's just observing.
He's always watching.

There's an intensity
and a little bit of craziness
in there.

Lights out!
Now you wanna get nuts?

Come on! Let's get nuts.

[Canton] Michael bridged the gap

between the complexity
of Bruce Wayne

and the superhero aspect
of Batman.

It was a breakthrough.
It was genius.

[Canton] And then we had
to decide, of course,

who was going to be
the great villain.

The movie is only as good
as the bad guy.

[Nasr] Every comedian
or serious actor was considered
for the Joker.

But should a joker
play the Joker?

There was a lot of talk
that Robin Williams was going
to play the Joker.

Or someone more serious?

But I knew, Warner,
they're gonna want a big star.

- In other words...
-

...someone who needs
no introduction.

Here's Johnny!

Of course,
it seems obvious now.

As I turn the page in the post,

I see this picture
of Jack Nicholson,

and I took Wite-Out
and I whited out Jack's face.

I took a red pen
and I did his lips.

- Boo!
- Jack Nicholson could play
the Joker.

[Greenberger] And after some
of Jack Nicholson's
performances in the 1970s...

...he had
that dangerous undercurrent
you want for your antagonist.

But Michael didn't
know Jack, so to speak.

But Peters and Guber did.

They were the ones that went
and got Jack Nicholson.

Getting Jack
on the phone was easy.

They just made a movie with him,The Witches of Eastwick.

But getting him
to sign on...

We seduced Jack
and he seduced us.

It was a perfect combo.

Well, seducing is
one way of putting it.

Nicholson was like,
"You guys can pay me $6,000,000,

"but then I get a cut
of the franchise.

"Not just the one film I'm in,
the entire franchise.

"And any merchandise
that has my likeness to it,

"I also get a cut of that."

[Gerber] Jack had
a very strong deal,

and he made a lot of money.

He made a lot, a lot of money.

Life's been good to me.

But Jack wasn't just thinking
about the money.

[Wuhl] I asked him
why he did the movie,

and he said, "Well, you get
to a certain point in time

"and you don't want to pass
on the really good ones."

And he knew. And he trusted Tim.

[Uslan] When Jack Nicholson was hired,

that was the greatest day
of my career up to that point.

[Canton echoes] We seduced Jack
and he seduced us.

Beautiful.

For Vicki Vale,

an actress who had often found
the limelight in the shadows.

I was in a handful of movies
in the 80s

that were quite popular.

You think I'm a replicant,
don't you?

And I was 20 years old
when I made Blade Runner.

That's when I started
smoking cigarettes
to sort of lower my voice

and also to try not to be
as innocent and young, you know?

I met with Tim Burton
and we talked
for, like, an hour.

He was very humble, you know?

And that was it.
I never did audition.

[Canton] She was great.

She was a very talented actress.

To play
roving reporter
for the Gotham Globe,

character actor,
stand-up comedian,

and narrator
of this very series
myself,

Robert Wuhl was cast.

They say he can't be killed.

They say he drinks blood.

[Wuhl] I went and read
for Tim Burton,

and then there was
an early screening
of Bull Durham,

and I invited Tim to come.

- And he did.
- Okay, let's get to it.
Off you go.

After he saw the movie, I said,
"So do I got the part?"

You know?

And he said yes.

Also a yes
was this man.

I'm a man of few words,
but those words will count.

I don't audition for anything.

I'm very bad at it.

Well,
what if Billy got two roles
for the price of one?

Jon Peters, I guess
he wanted me to play Two-Face.

[Greenberger] It's a wink
and a nod
that he will become Two-Face

should there be
a franchise of films.

As the cast
jetted away to set...

"I will be taking the Concorde
to London."

...the experience
of putting Batman

back on screen
with an epic cast
and a visionary director

just had to be recorded
for posterity.

This was my Batman journal.

"Tomorrow I leave for London
to make Batman.

"My fondest thoughts are
for Jack Nicholson.

"I can't wait to work with him."

In October of 1988,

some of Batman's cast were
better prepared than others.

When I went to London,

I remember going on the plane
and Jack,

he had somebody come
the day before
with all his suitcases

and unpack it
before he even arrived,

and I said,
"I want an assistant,"

and he said,
"It's good to have goals."

Michael Uslan
had a goal,

and it was about to be achieved

as a decade of development hell
finally ended.

Ten years of rejection.

Ten years
of everyone telling you,
"You suck.

"Your idea stinks."

Now it was
"Welcome to production hell,"

or a place called
Pinewood Studios.

There were tax incentives
to shoot in England.

And plus we own
the studio there.

Crews rushed to build
Batman's world from scratch,

and it really was from scratch.

The script, there is, like,
one line Sam Hamm writes
describing Gotham City.

Production designer
Anton Furst had little
to work from.

[Uslan] It says, you know,
"Gotham City,

"as if hell has erupted
from underneath the earth."

Anton said to Tim,
"What does this mean?"

and he said, "Tim said to me,

"'I think it means New York City
had there never been
planning and zoning,'"

and Anton said,
"Now that I understand."

[Greenberger] Anton Furst gave it
that Gothic look and feel

that called for shadows,

that had grime built
into the brickwork.

Building a city,
can you imagine?

[Julian Caldow] Anton and Tim,

they were pretty simpatico
about how things should look.

They both liked that idea
of this sort of dark underbelly.

And Julian Caldow here

would be part of the team
building that underbelly

and an entire city to match.

My first task on Batman
was cutting out photocopies

of New York facades
and I very soon realized

that I didn't really know
how scale worked

and none of the doors
were the right size,

so I was taken off of that
pretty quickly.

But instead
of showing Julian the door,

misshapen or otherwise,
they asked him a question.

"Do you fancy a crack
at the Batmobile?"

I was like,
"Well, you don't need
to ask me twice to do that."

And so,
thanks to his inability
to grasp a sense of scale...

None of the doors
were the right size.

...Julian would be undertaking
the gargantuanly large

and culturally important duty

of redesigning
one of the most famous cars
in the world.

- To the Batmobile.
- [Greenberger] Burton was
looking for a muscle car

that looked like a Batmobile

but didn't look like
the George Barris Batmobile.

Hey, that old job of yours
is starting to look
a little bit tacky.

Based on a 1955 Lincoln Futura,

but the new Batmobile
wouldn't have to worry
about being road legal.

[Caldow] I was drawing,
like, a Lamborghini
or a Corvette Stingray,

adding some bat fins
on the back,

and Anton said,

"You really need
to sort of think about it

"in a more sort of brutal way."

I thought,
"Well, if we're going brutal,

"let's just go
for the ultimate power cars,

"60s land speed record cars,"

and there was one called
Green Monster.

It's got this enormous rocket
down the middle.

So I thought,
"Well, let's stick this jet
down the middle of this vehicle

"and put these booms
on either side

"and have a cockpit
either side."

That was
certainly brutal,

but not exactly practical
on a date.

- [Batman] Get in the car.
- Which one?

The feedback I got was, "Well,

"Vicki Vale and Batman
have got a dialogue in the car,

"so if they're
in separate cockpits,

"probably not a great idea."

Making the concept car
into a practical vehicle

for the regular bat commute
was proving tricky.

[Caldow] And then somebody said,
"How do you actually get
into this thing?"

The only thing worse
than wrong sized doors...

[Caldow echoes] None of the doors
were the right size.

I hadn't even thought
about doors.

...are no doors at all.

And I sort of swallowed
and thought, "Maybe we have...

"DeLorean gullwing doors."

Watch your head.

"Maybe we have
a cantilevering cockpit,

"like on an F-16 fighter."

Both ideas felt a little clunky.

It was actually
the art director, Nigel Phelps,

who came up
with the rather elegant idea

of actually having
the whole cockpit shift
down the bonnet.

Julian had vanquished
the scale demons of his past.

This time,
everything was just right.

Oh, actually, no,
the ears don't fit.

I hadn't considered how big
the ears on his costume were.

So if you actually look
in the film
when he's inside the car,

he's actually got
much smaller ears.

That's actually
quite emasculating for a bat.

- Nonetheless...
- [Caldow] The Batmobile.

It's a statement
about who Batman was.

Julian's design
wouldn't require road testing,

but it did need
to pass the giggle test.

[Caldow] It was really
about putting something
under Tim's nose

and knowing that he liked it
when he giggled.

You suddenly started thinking,
"Okay, this is working."

But would it actually work?

With no time for testing,
they'd have to wait

until shooting began
to find out.

But in the meantime,
working hard on her journal
was Sean Young.

I even had little notes
when people would go out
to dinner.

I'd have, like,
who was sitting where
and what was happening.

When you were sitting at a table
with Jack Nicholson

and Michael Keaton,

it's not a bad idea
to take notes.

Well,
Sean and I were actually
taking more than notes.

Every day after work,
I'd go over to his hotel room

and we would smoke a joint.

Somebody told me
how to smuggle it in

and for legal reasons, I can't,
you know, say who it was,

but he said to me,

"What you do, Bobby,

"is you mail a fan letter
to yourself saying,

"'You don't know me,
but here's a little something
to keep you going.'

"That way, if they stop, you go,

"'I don't know
who the fuck this guy is.'"

For legal reasons.

Robert was a lot of fun.

He was my little
joint smoker buddy.

Sean had
plenty of reasons
to be anxious.

After all, she was usually
the only woman in the room.

"This should be
a very macho production.

"I'm feeling very macho
as I approach my new character."

Myself, Sean, Guber and Peters,
Tim, Michael, Jack,

the head of the studio,
Mark Canton,

and we go
through the read-through

and it's pretty damn good.

But Sean Young
had noticed something
no one else had,

and it came up
at the next table read.

[Wuhl] This time, there's
a lot more people in that room,

the parent heads
of Warner Bros.,

all the different
department heads,

and we start
the read-through again,
and it's going really well.

but, I had to say
about halfway through,

Sean Young says,

"I feel like I'm disappearing
from the pages."

Then for the rest
of the read-through,

she reads everything
in a monotone,

and you can feel the energy
go like the balloon,

the air coming out
of the balloon like this.

It wasn't good.

In London,
table reads continued
for Batman,

and everyone liked the script.

Well, I thought it was a...
It was a good script.

Except for one person.

[Wuhl] "I feel like
I'm disappearing
from the pages."

So Sean started disappearing
from the table read.

Every line reading is like this,

in a monotone.

I remember going
to the men's room afterwards,

standing next to Mark,

and I say, "How do you think
it went?" and he goes,

"It was going fine
until that cunt
pulled that trick."

I got nothing bad
to say about her.

An even bigger problem
than her reading

was what Sean was writing
in her journal.

"I have the feeling that Jack
is more vulnerable and shy

"than we generally perceive him
to be as an audience."

Sean's observations
were beginning to get
under her castmate's skin,

which was another thing
she was taking notes on.

"Jack's face seems more red."

When he would drink,
his face would always get red.

He was always asking questions.

"How long are we gonna
be doing this?"

and, "How much time
am I gonna have

"to go and do this
before I have to do that?"

So much to do
and so little time.

He was very strict
about his 12-hour turnaround.

Jack is Jack.

And Jack was right in his prime.

We mustn't compare ourselves
to regular people.

And Sean was
determined to keep a record
of Jack in his prime.

This is hilarious.

So that's Jack, right?
Early in the morning, right?

And this is Jack at 5:00 p.m.

Then I kind of found out
that Jack didn't like that.

- He didn't like
any pictures taken of him.
- Made him nervous.

So I stopped.

Jack wasn't
the only one struggling
with Sean's attentions.

You're a real nice girl
and I like you a lot.

I don't think
Michael really ended up
liking me very much.

He was not
particularly friendly.

This was a serious undertaking,
and Michael is a serious guy.

He might be funny as hell,
but he's serious,

and he wasn't there
to mess around.

This was not
the first time

Sean had experienced problems
with co-stars on set.

A lot of times it happens
between the leading man

and whatever woman
is in the show.

Those aren't your memories.
They're somebody else's.

They don't want
to give you the edge,
you know,

they don't want to make you
feel too comfortable,

and I was really young,

so I kept expecting
to be treated like
one of the guys,

and that was
an unrealistic expectation
on my part.

But on this
red-blooded production...

"This should be
a very macho production.

...Sean had
bigger problems on set,

including one
particularly macho activity
she was just not ready for.

Based on an early draft
of the script,

there was going to be
horseback scenes

including Vicki on a horse.

I'm terrified of horses.

And unfortunately for Sean,
her character wasn't.

It was supposed to be
Bruce Wayne and Vicki Vale
riding back to the manor.

Sean was willing
to mount the challenge.

I wanted to be
the good little soldier.

I wanted everybody
to like me and everything.

What I should have said was,
"No, I'm sorry.

"I don't feel comfortable
riding horses."

Nonetheless,
she got on board with the idea

and got on board her horse
for rehearsals.

We had been told
to bring our horses
to the center of the ring,

and Michael just kept on
riding his horse out the gate,

and my horse saw his horse
and chased after it.

It was running really fast

and I fell off.

And as Sean Young
began her free fall...

And I'm thinking,
"I'm about to die."

...the question was...

What happens
if she can't continue?

Pow!

Would producers
change horses midstream?

It was complicated.

Would Michael Uslan truly get
the dark and gritty Batman

he'd always wanted?

There are crisis moments
that you have to face.

Would the hairline cracks
between Tim Burton

and Jon Peters peter out?

He and Jon Peters, you know,
butted heads quite a few times.

Would the untested
Batmobile work?

Now I've got to go
explain to the producers

I just screwed up
their fucking car, you know?

All will be revealed
when Icons Unearthed:
Batman returns.