Wine and...Movies: BATMAN RETURNS (1992) with Richard Fairgray, Part 1

SPOOKTOBER begins here at Wine and…! We’re kicking things off in style with a discussion on the best, most fascinating, most feminist, most empathetic, most Gothic and Goth Batman movie ever made, BATMAN RETURNS!!!

We’re joined by comic book creator Richard Fairgray. Richard is currently working on the 4-part series The Ex-Wives of Frankenstein.

It should also be noted: Richard has a lifelong crush on Danny Devito as The Penguin in BATMAN BEGINS, so our talk does turn spicy and even outright explicit at times. Be forewarned!

Follow Richard online:
https://www.kickrichard.com
https://www.instagram.com/richardfairgrayauthor
https://twitter.com/richardfairgray
https://www.facebook.com/richardfairgray

TIM BURTON'S HANSEL AND GRETEL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXeEzpPgCjw

Daniel Waters' unproduced CATWOMAN script:
https://www.scifiscripts.com/scripts/catwoman.txt

Chapters

• 1:59 Sir Richard Fairgray, Comic Book Artist Extraordinaire
• 10:02 Richard Wants to F*** Danny Devito as The Penguin
• 16:55 Dallas and Dave's History with the Movie
• 32:19 Tim Burton, The Man The Myth The Legend
• 41:47 Scriptwriter Daniel Waters
• 54:31 Marlon Wayans as Robin

Transcript

0:28

He's Dave and I'm Dallas and we have opinions on just about everything. Sometimes they're on point and sometimes they go down better with a glass of wine. Join us. This is the Wine and Podcast. Welcome back everybody to another episode of Wine and the show where we pair wine with entertainment. We deep dive into the work of art in question and then we will tell you what piece of liquid art you should drink while consuming. So what you should consume while consuming while being a consumer. It's all about consumption folks. Most of the time we discuss things we love. Sometimes we dissect something that we hate, but whatever it is you love, whatever it is you hate, there is a wine that pairs with that. Please make sure to hit that follow button and subscribe. It does help this podcast grow and reach new listeners. Please leave us a rating and or review as well. At least do so if you love us and leave a five star review. And if you don't love us, send us a peevish email to wine the letter N P O D at gmail.com wine and pod at gmail.com. You can also interact with us over at our home base on sub stack wine and dot sub stack.com where you will be the first to know when new episodes drop. Get in-depth show notes, sometimes uncut versions of these episodes, bonus pairings, articles, chats, pairing directories. That is wineann.substack.com. Be one of the coolest kids, drink some of the coolest aid, and come join us on Substack. All right, folks. Today we have with us a very special guest, Sir Richard Fairgrae, comic book creator extraordinaire. Now he's not actually a sir because New Zealand doesn't actually night people, I don't think, but New Zealand, get on that. do! How are you not a sir? How have they not knighted you? I dated a sir for a while and he actually, he once said to me, I said, I didn't know you were a sir. And he said, yeah, and I keep the medal for it in a drawer with my cassette Walkman and other useless things. Beautiful. folks, Richard, Richard was one of the most actually he was the most frequent guest on our legacy wine and comics show because this is his first time on the new wine and show though. Richard is such a comic book creator extraordinaire. He has done the comics Blastosaurus, Black Sand Beach, Four Color Heroes and under his creator owned banner, Richard sucks. That's S-U-X, Richard S-U-X. He's released his memoir, Octopus. three volumes of his dirtbag soap opera Haunted Hill, the four part series, The Ex-Wives of Frankenstein. We're gonna get back to that in just a little bit here. The atmospheric horrors, Wet Cement and The Lights That Guide You Home, as well as a range of anthologies and short comics and strips. Richard writes and draws comics quicker than you can read them, guaranteed, in spite of his being legally blind with 3 % vision in one eye and none in the other. Richard, this is actually something I didn't don't think we I realized all the times you were on our previous show. I don't think it ever entirely came up. I think you mentioned things about vision issues, but it wasn't until I met our mutual friend, Charlie Stickney in person for the first time and you came up and he was like, yeah. And can you believe he does this legally blind? And I was like, yeah, no, wait, what? Yeah, what are we talking about? He actually has mentioned it a couple of times on the podcast, but I don't think he's gone in depth. yeah, not gone in depth. the three percent in one eye and none in the other. And folks, he is not a comic writer. He does all the art as well. So and the arts kind of amazing. You have to go see him to believe him. And you can find you can always find Richard's latest comic book being crowdfunded on Kickstarter by going to kick Richard dot com. spelled exactly like it sounds kick Richard.com. When this episode drops, he should be funding the ex wives of Frankenstein number four, the final issue in a series about Frankenstein. No, no, no, it's gonna be Frankenstein. The ex wives of Frankenstein number four. I know I'm a big fan of the movie as well of the Mel Brooks movie, but that is going to be the final issue in a series about the ex wives of both Victor Frankenstein and his monster. navigating life after their husbands, even though said husbands are announced to still be alive, but in a relationship together between the two of them. So now the lives have to be like, how do we feel about that? Yeah. How do we feel about that? What are we doing with our lives after this? And we're going to talk a little bit. I'm going to tie this back to the movie we're going to be talking about today in just a little bit, because I feel like the way the movie we're going to be talking about the second Tim Burton Batman movie Batman Returns. And the way that movie treats Batman is kind of similar to how the ex-wives of Frankenstein treat Frankenstein, the Victor Frankenstein. he's there in Richard's is an extreme case. He's not never present. He's always the presence that is felt and affecting everything, but not there. And in Batman, it's almost that Batman is rarely there, which is one of the great criticisms people had of Batman Returns back in the day. But first off, Richard, welcome. to wine and for the very first time. And how you doing today? And yeah, how do you do all that art? I'm almost legally blind. With your third eye, I take it. That's just the theme. have. So I have the reason for the blindness is I have a chemical imbalance. There's a really common condition that a lot of people have when they're a fetus where they get these cracks in the back of their eyeballs. And when your brain goes into a normal sleep pattern, it releases some chemical that heals them. I'm not a doctor, Dr. Craig. And my brain doesn't go into sleep patterns like a normal brain should. So the cracks just kind of grew and grew. And when the optic nerve came out to attach to the eyeball, there was like nothing to grab onto at the back. So I'm lucky I have any vision at all. But it means that my chemical imbalance basically puts me constantly in fight or flight mode. So I don't go into deep sleep as such. When I wake up, I don't have any kind of grogginess or anything. It's like I'm just instantly awake and ready to go. And I sleep between three and four hours a night. Okay, just a sidebar here. That is my exact pattern. Everything you just said with the exception of the actual ailment. yeah, it's a good way to live. You know, I feel alive all of the time. I'm just I'm always ready to work. But I just I just work long hours. If people want to know more about my experience of being blind, though, I have finally done a comic about it. It is called Legally Blind. It is an eight-page story memoir piece in the Unseen Unheard anthology from Anas Abdulik and C.K. Carpenter. And think that'll still be on Kickstarter right now as well. So people should check that out. And folks, go watch our episodes with Anas Abdulik on the Carly Rae Jepsen album. no, dedicated. It's a two part episode and we talked about the Unseen Unheard Anthology on those episodes as well. So go take a look. is not, the Unseen Unheard Anthology is still upcoming. It has not been released. I believe it's going to be crowdfunded when the time comes, but at the time we recorded with the NAS, he was taking in stories and obviously Richard is one of them. he's now going to be- At the time of this record, they're on the second day of their campaign. second day. So- There you go. It'll probably be near the end by the time this drops. This should drop about two weeks after we record it. So it should be close. All right. I could also say on the topic of Anas's episode. Yes. You all are very wrong about Carly Rae Jepsen. She has recorded one absolute masterpiece. It is the song Cut to the Feeling. I am heartbroken you didn't talk about it. Nothing else you've ever done will go up to that song. We talk about Cut to the Feeling on the Was it the Mark Palermo one? We talk about cut to the feeling, believe, the emotion. Yeah. Correct. listen to the two part emotion coverage. in part two, we play a clip of cut to the feeling and we do let it because it closes out. was originally meant to close out emotion side B, EP. And then it got removed and put onto the French animation movie instead. But we play a clip and we talk about it and how good it is. We do. But at the same time it's not my all-time favorite Carly Rae Jepsen song. I think she has even better So I'm sorry, but we're not wrong. That is an excellent song. That's okay It's okay for opinions to be wrong, but it does It is a song that perfectly encapsulates the idea of not having enough time Why would we bother going through the actual things when we can just get to the feeling of it? It's about living life and montage and that is powerful It is the it's the song I listen to on my walk to work on repeat every morning Agreed. Agreed. I do think it is one of the most pumping, thumping anthem motherfucking songs. And Mark on our episode with him basically said he's like, yeah, alive. This song kills. It's like every time she's she like she usually closes out concerts with this song because it's such a powerful closer. And I'm like, yeah, I can see that. So let's start talking about Batman Returns. This is what we're here to talk about. This was Richard's pick. Richard has a fascinating reason for loving Batman Returns and wanting to talk about it. Richard, please tell our listeners, why did you choose Batman Returns and what is your history with this movie? Well, I chose Batman Returns because I'm deeply in love with Daniel DeVito as the Penguin. I'm going to go really far back here, okay? The year is 1992. I am still at this point six years old, about to turn seven. I'm just about to publish my first ever comic and I have started seeing commercials on television for this film, Batman Returns. I am unaware that there is a film called Batman. I am just like, I guess Batman went somewhere and now he's coming back. And this film looks incredible. I am so excited for this film. I start cutting pictures out in newspapers and magazines. I get posters, I get the Happy Meal toys, which by the way were all released in New Zealand. They never canceled it. And I was just like, I was so amped for this for this movie. And then my mother says to me, Hey, Richard, the first Batman movie is playing on TV tonight. You can stay up late and watch it if you want. You know, since she was being kind. And I sat there and I watched Batman and I was so bored, like just aggressively. I started getting angry each commercial break. I went into my room and would like and maybe it wasn't quite as dramatic as this, but how I remember it was that I was like I would walk into my room and tear down one more Batman poster and then come back and watch another segment and go and do it again. I hated Batman. And so I never saw the film. And then I saw Batman forever when it came out. And I was like, this is what Batman should be. It's fun and cool and exciting. And then I saw Batman and Robin like six times in theaters. the soup, just because the soups are really hot, right? Honestly, just for the Smashing Pumpkin song. That song is so good. And like I was a huge Clueless fan and I had like a bit of a crush on Michael Goff. So like this film did everything for me and I have maintained for many years that those two films are great and people don't understand them. And when we were in that beautiful era where everyone accepted that Batman was a shitty movie that sucks and is boring, I felt like fully exonerated. The temperature on Batman has changed. People now talk about it as if it's good. They are wrong. But Enough people were talking about it. so last year I decided I would watch Batman again and see if it was any good. It still sucks. But I thought I'll just, you I'll go on and watch this film Batman Returns. I loved it. have it's it's everything. Here's the thing. Batman Forever and Batman and Robin are big dumb, silly movies. They are bad. I rewatched them this week for the first time since I was a child to see just, you know, for for research for this. They suck. They're awful. They're basically unwatchable. Anyone who's looking for an extended cut or director's cut of those films is a moron because the core content is still there. Batman Returns is everything I wanted it to be. It was taking the Batman stuff, adding in the fun campy stuff, but without pushing it too far and still having like human heart and emotion behind every single thing. Michael Keaton is terrific. Michelle Pfeiffer is terrific. And of course, Danny DeVito is absolutely perfect. as kind of the best performance in the entire DC Batman kind of universe, cinematic at least. It just is a phenomenal performance, it just is. I will not disagree. I was running through it in my head and there's no one who's better. I think that, I don't know how much you want me to go into the other stuff, but I have now watched it 36 times since that initial viewing a year ago. Okay, you might have a problem. Are you still planning to make your art book slash comic book about Danny DeVito as the Penguin? And please, yeah, go into it. Tell everyone what your plan is. Okay, so the first time I watch Batman Returns, there's the scene where Max Shrek, the second sexiest character in the film, comes and lures the penguin away with a fish and takes him downstairs to show him that he's gonna like run him from there. And the penguin is in his like soiled Victorian one piece. he's eating this fish with his bare hands and he's got this orange stuff coming out of his mouth for the first time, it's usually black bile, but now he's got orange raw fish pouring from him and he can't figure out what to do. And he's so scared and broken and you're seeing all of the artifice fall away and you realize that he is just a damaged man who could be taken care of. I got rock hard. And I don't know what to do with that. So I started trying to think about it and I've been working on a book called I'm Only Drawing DeVito. By the way, folks, tell it. Richard Faragray. I'm doing a book called I'm Only Drawing Danny DeVito as the Penguin until I stop wanting to fuck him and in-depth review of Batman Returns. I'm currently close to 200 portraits in. I'm journaling about it as I rewatch and as I think about it and try and unpack what it is about the penguin in that moment that makes me think I could fix him with my cool dick. And speaking as like a fairly exclusive bottom, this is, it's, there's a lot for me to do. No, I like, here's the thing. I want to top the penguin. It's such a specific feeling I have and I need to figure it out. don't I want to I won't give away. You want to take care him. You can't be passive. You're going to be actively taking care of somebody. I need to hold him and put some of me into him and like make him know that he's loved forever. And I keep trying to like find what is wrong with me that is making me feel this way. And that's that will be my 300th book, the official. The official sort of announcement of the launch will be, I mean, a lot of people know about this book at this point, but the official, like, this book is starting now, is my birthday, my 40th birthday next year, April 19th, and I will be spending a year kind of really pushing all of the Danny DeVito portraits and just working my hardest to, like, unpack. And hopefully by the end of it, I won't want to fuck the Penguin anymore, because I would really like to get to that point. fantastic. Comic-making therapy. Absolutely. Which Richard knows well. All right. So Dallas, what's your history with this movie? Well. How long had it been before you watched it in preparation for today? You know what's crazy? The first time I saw the original, I too thought, okay, this is shiny. It is aesthetically a new statement. It is interesting. But I thought it was a bad movie. In retrospect, in hindsight, I think it is a great sort of launch pad for what comes after. in terms of what they were trying to do with this IP, yeah, it makes sense. They spent a lot of time focused on the aesthetics. That is the great sort of achievement for the first film. think their use of scale and of texture and sort of that mood, visual mood. But overall, thought was in, the first film was just okay. But I watched Batman Returns when it actually came out and immediately thought, this is kind of the superior Batman. Mostly because of the performances of these four characters. You know, like you said, when did you first see it? Do you remember? in theaters. in theaters? The first movie too? Yeah, both. OK. And this one, Batman Returns, is one of those films I sort of wrote off initially. I remember watching it and enjoying it, but I kind of just wrote off and I even forgot that I saw it until a couple of weeks ago. Honestly, I forgot that I saw it. I honestly forgot that I saw it. I like, I've seen this. That's right. seen this a couple of times. But I've watched it a few times and it's the superior Batman of those first four for sure. I the work that Danny DeVito is doing is just, I'm gonna keep harping on this. It's just, he should have been nominated for everything in this film. The layers, the dynamic, the commitment. Richard, you referenced that scene of him getting the fish in the basement. And if. I challenge anyone to go back and look at what Danny DeVito is doing in about a 20 second frame without a single line of dialogue. It is all in his face, all of it, everything. is just phenomenal work. Anyway, and it's just sexy and the characters are so dynamic. You've got This is one of the first times I've seen a B, a C, a D character all have dynamic stories that are all fully realized outside of your primary, your protagonist. that allows... There's a reason for that. We're going to get there. It's just delicious. It's a delicious little film. So, I remember I first I re-remembered seeing this in theaters and enjoying it and loving it. And I may have even said when we discussed this previously that I hadn't seen it. And yeah, no, I've definitely seen it. And again, yeah, loved Danny DeVito. know, don't want to bang him, but you know. Not quite going there. So I'm going to be the outlier between the three of us where I did see the first Batman in the theater and loved it. The first one. I mean, that movie's made for you though, Dave. Come on. It was. Especially at the time. I was not looking. I was not a rebel, I was not a counterculture, I was not a fuck the mainstream. I don't like, I loved the mainstream man. I ate it right the fuck up, I was all about it. you know, Tim Burton was never happy with the first Batman. We're gonna talk about why he came back for Batman Returns and what it took to get him to come back for Batman Returns because the studio was very hands on with the first one. They did not. trust him to just make a movie like this from a whole cloth. So a lot of the decisions that were made were very studio executive made. I again ate it right the fuck up. Now there are a few things that I feel like I was a dumb ass for not realizing at the time. Well, you were only five or six at the time, Dave. sure, sure, I was was old enough maybe to know better, but at the same time, I wasn't that like this would have been I was like 10 or 11 at this point. So it was Richard knows math. Now Richard knows. So I was first off, I think one of the reasons I loved it, this was like the first superhero movie to hit theaters. that I think the only other movie that I got to see in theaters as a superhero movie was Superman IV, The Quest for Peace. So I was, my bar was low on what made a good superhero movie. I had not experienced many. You know, there was the Incredible Hulk TV show and shit like that, but like superheroes outside of the comics themselves were few and far between. There wasn't much out there. What was out there was not. Most of it was not particularly well done outside of like the first maybe two Richard Donner Superman. So it was like slim pickings. And here comes Tim Burton's Batman. And I didn't know who Tim Burton was. I knew nothing about any of these people. I did not know the celebrities. I did not really know Jack Nicholson, Michael Keaton. Like this was nothing. All I knew is it was a Batman movie. It was a great theatrical experience. I saw it opening weekend. I think that's opening night. It was the theater sold standing. tickets for people to just stand in the aisles? at the I think maybe, but I don't remember. I feel like I was visiting relatives and we all went, so I think it was Michigan. And this was a different era, folks. I'm pretty sure this was a fire hazard and violation, but they sold and I stood the whole movie. And the response to this fucking movie, like the first time Batman appears on the rooftop, that first five minutes. the whole theater erupted. I mean, it was one of those experiences that I think especially as a kid, that's what you live for. You're like, I'm with this theme park ride. Fuck yeah. And like everyone's involved in it. It pulled me along. And it was very classically pulp adventure oriented story wise, because Burton did not get to do his own thing story wise. And there were some stupid things like looking back. I did not rewatch the first movie in preparation for this. I feel like that might get its own episode someday. So I'm going to revisit that on another podcast maybe in the future. just read it. I just jumped right into Batman Returns for this one. But I do remember things from the first movie. Like there's a moment when Jack Nicholson grabs Kim Basinger's Vicki Vale character and just like starts running up the staircase on a tower. And it's one of those things that everyone looking back is like. Why is he running up a tower? Like this makes no sense. has no motivation to do this. And Tim Burton is on record as saying like, yeah, some executives like he's got to go to the top of a building. Yeah. Cause that's how you end a great pulp superhero adventure. And Burton was like, but, and even Nicholson's character when they were shooting it kept being like, why am I doing this? And he kept asking it. it's like, right. were a lot of dumb executive decisions in that regard. So the first movie is you have to squint at it to truly enjoy it. I get that. I have not revisited it in a long time. So one day I will. But I will say, and also I sucked. was not a rock star back then. I was not counterculture. I watched Batman Returns. And I was right with most of the populace where it was fine, but I didn't get it. I did not get it. I didn't understand how this was a sequel to the first movie. It was too weird. It was too out there. It was too long. There was not enough superheroics going on, which was the point of so much of this movie that I appreciate through and through. I definitely think that this is if not, you know, this is neck and neck with the Dark Knight for like the best attempt of Batman on screen. I think that has been done. Now I have not seen The Batman, the Matt Reeves movie, so I can't comment on that one. But you know, I do think it's super interesting that the two movies that I do think were a bit of lightning in a bottle, that they're weird in how they're lightning in a bottle. Batman Returns and The Dark Knight. Now The Dark Knight was popular, unlike Batman Returns. It actually won mainstream audiences over, whereas Batman Returns really did not. It was a bit too off kilter, a bit too outside the norm. But it is interesting that Batman is in those two movies the least. It really is about the villains. And Batman is a side character in his own movie. And both of those are the two that make Batman work the best, I think, of everyone who's attempted. I want to push back on a couple of things you just said. Again, your opinion is wrong. This was my childhood opinion. Don't know. I just want to say that what the executive who said they have to go up a tower, his name will come up throughout this as the villain of the story is John. Yeah, this sounds even. And the Batman returns. has the biggest opening weekend of all time up to that point. And it's like 145 million and it goes on to make 400 million. So even though there is a pretty sizable drop off from weekend one to weekend two, that thing is still like a a three times multiplier. Like that's it's incredibly successful film. The film was divisive, but it was still incredibly popular by standards at the time. And it's sort of been remembered as being a failure because it didn't make the 500 million that Batman made. Well, I will say that I would I would quibble with the word popular just because it performed decently because of the coming off of the first one. Like it is that sequel where like Batman versus Superman. It actually made a shit ton of money. just underperformed. It's still easy to say that Batman versus Superman is not a popular movie. And I do think Batman Returns, though Batman Returns, I think has become a cult classic in the way that Batman versus Superman is only a cult classic to Snyder Bros. Whereas Batman Returns is a cult classic to a much more widespread, much more mixed. group of people that simply appreciate all the many things it's doing versus a super single niche group, which is to Batman Returns credit. But I do think popular is maybe pushing it for the time. Do you think that the Batman V Superman Dawn of Justice is less of a cult classic because of the invention of 40X, the format most of us saw it in? And it's very hard to recreate that wet, stinky experience at home of being punched in the actual back by your chair. guess maybe. I don't know. I didn't see it that way. I just saw it at home because I avoided it like the plague when it was in theaters. then I finally... I agree with that, Richard. I think that any time a movie is that bad, you kind of have to see it in the most physically unpleasant way you can. But at least it's memorable. But also because Batman Returns is a Christmas movie, it gets the rewatchability and the tradition to it. That's true. It's yeah. I think Batman Returns, the reason it is so critically acclaimed in hindsight is because it does offer the other perspective of the Batman IP, which is the focus on the villains, as he was saying. And I think what that first audience from the first film was primed for what they were looking for in the sequel was more of the Batman being the swinging hero who had a single case. He was on the hunt on the on the scent. And in reality, what Batman Returns does is it forces us to kind of get into the program that this is really just about the villains. It's always been just about the villains. So here are three. Although You know, the Schumacher movies really kind of kept with that. They did make it more about the villains as well, but to a much different effect. So it's like it's not a magic bullet just making it about the villains. You still got to do it in an interest, a properly interesting and they did. They did. They absolutely did. work. Yes. mean, is like you watch Batman and Robin and Poison Ivy is just trying to like Uma Thurman is trying to do a Michelle Pfeiffer impression throughout. Yeah, she is. She's trying to do the sexy voice. She's failing at it because the script is bad. And an honors Schwarzenegger who I mean, think arguably he and Danny DeVito could be twins. But, sorry. Very nice. apologize. That's the cut of the episode there. It seems like somebody cobbled the... This is a total aside. The bad film seems like somebody cobbled together three different fucking films. It really does. It is a nightmare to watch, but still really entertaining when you're taking a little of the devil's weed like I did last week and I watched it. I'm sure. I'm sure. The Schumacher films have their charms in their way, but it's like it is like the first film where the charms are slapdash and surface level, more superficial, more on the note. And there's not a lot deeper to dig in. It actually is like it seems like a realized version of the original. series of the original series. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they were were definitely getting back to that. Okay, so let's actually talk. go ahead. Sorry, just one thing about the villain thing. The like the Catwoman and Penguin dynamic is so interesting, because obviously, obviously, like this is a new take on the Penguin and a fairly different take on Catwoman. She has never been an immortal cat lady before. But like they find this common ground and then you see their their alliance fall apart, right? What Schumacher tries to do is get these characters that haven't been changed at all from their original versions, their original campy versions and say, what if they teamed up? And so both films have this dynamic of we are absolutely at odds with each other, but we're just gonna keep saying we're working together because like the Riddler and Two-Face, there's no reason for them to work together on anything they're doing. The Riddler's looking for funding. And Two-Face is... And to kill Ruth Lane and Two-Faces working to kill Batman, the things are unrelated. Poison Ivy wants to bring about an age of plants and Mr. Freeze wants to freeze the entire city thus killing all plants. But they still just pretend like it works. So folks, think we're at the time now where let's actually talk about the backstory of how this film got made and all the fun tidbits that come with this movie because holy shit, there's a lot of them. Richard has some. He's going to contribute as well. I'm to go through all of mine. Richard, I'm going to take pauses now and again. Feel free to jump in as you as you think is wise and give us more of yours as we go. But let's start off. think we have to start with the man, the myth, the legend in his own mind, Tim Burton. So, Goffmeister Burton, you he grew up in sun-drenched Burbank, California, because of course he did. He was not a stellar student academically, but he did win a scholarship to CalArts due to his talents in the visual arts. And CalArts, so it was co-founded by Disney, and Burton attended a program that was directly funded by Disney, which was a program to find, to fund and find the next generation of animators. So most of their animators were aging out of the profession at the time and Disney was facing a crisis in terms of replacing old talent with new before the older generation was gone for good and unable to apprentice the new blood. So sure enough, in 1981, Burton was offered an animator apprenticeship in Disney's animation division. He worked on concept art for the Fox and the Hound, the original Tron. and the Black Cauldron, though none of his concept art actually made it into the final films of any of those, but he got paid to work on them. And while at Disney in 1982, made his first short film, Vincent, a six minute black and white stop motion film based on a poem written by Burton, which depicts a young boy who fantasizes that he is his hero, Vincent Price, with Price himself providing narration. And Burton was a Vincent Price. fanboy like from from long ago. This was one of his gods of cinema. So this was kind of, you know, checking off something on the bucket list by making this short film. This was followed by Burton's first live action production Hansel and Gretel. Hansel and Gretel is a Japanese themed adaptation of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale for the Disney Channel, which climaxes in a kung fu fight between Hansel and Gretel and the witch. Having aired once in 1983 at 10.30 p.m. on Halloween and it was promptly shelled. Prints of the film are extremely difficult to locate, fueling rumors for a long, long time that the project did not in fact exist. The short would though finally go on public display in 2009 at the Museum of Modern Art and again in 2011 as part of the Tim Burton Art Exhibit at LACMA. And a somewhat remastered version from a VHS copy is available on YouTube today. I will have that link. down below in the description of this podcast episode, because it is something else, folks. If you have not seen this, it's roughly, it's just under 40 minutes long. it is, you can see so much of Burton's DNA, like where he's going to go with his career. But this thing is wackadoodle. It is fascinating watching Burton on essentially a non-existent budget, making something. I cannot believe this was on the Disney Channel. We are scarred children, folks, from our generation for a fucking reason. It's wild. Does anyone remember Legend? The horse died. yeah. The horse. Yeah, everyone remembers that for sure. I'm talking about TV. Like Legend at least was a movie movie. You had to go out of your way to see. This was like a fucking program like Nickelodeon back in the day was so weird. It was so fucking weird. All the programming anyway. Burton's next live action short was Frankenweenie, which is now very famous. Most people have seen Frankenweenie. This was a short released in 1984. It tells the story of a young boy who tries to revive his dog after it is run over by a car. After Frankenweenie was completed, Disney fired Burton promptly under the pretext of him spending the company's resources on a film that would be too dark and scary for children to see. This is the story of Burton's career, at least maybe up to the midpoint of his career, at which point he went much more mainstream and much less scary, but this was his struggle and would be his struggle in the Batman movies as well. So now Paul Rubens, the actor Peewee, Peewee himself from Peewee's Playhouse, saw Frankenweenie and chose Burton to direct the cinematic spin-off of his popular character Peewee Herman in Peewee's Big Adventure. This proved to be a moderate box office success and Burton immediately after began developing Batman and The Nightmare Before Christmas. However, these would both require more money than anyone was willing to give Burton to direct. They were giving him, he was able to work on the scripts and able to work on concept art and design, but he was not the man to direct either of those movies yet. His next project instead was Beetlejuice. This was a script, and we're gonna talk about the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice only dropped a couple weeks ago, so this is very timely to talk a little bit about Beetlejuice. This was a script. that few others could fully understand. But Burton had learned to love the loose improvisational approach that he took on Pee-wee's Big Adventure because all the actors there were basically comedians that did a lot of improvisation. And Burton fell in love with that approach to things where he's like, yeah, the script's just kind of a loose map and we don't have to do things line for line. We don't even have to do the story the way the script says. So he saw the potential. in a script that was as weird and disjointed as Beetlejuice on paper apparently was. There is a story about one of the co-writers who was also a producer when he took Beetlejuice to one of the studios originally. The studio guys called him in for a meeting. They got the script, they read it, they called him in for a meeting. The guy was really excited. And they're like, look, you're shaping up to be a very good executive material. Why do you want to waste your career on this piece of shit? And undeterred, he left that meeting and still went forward with the script. It was hard to get Beetlejuice off the ground though, but Burton was one of the rare directors that read that script and was like, this, this I can do something with. And fun fact, this was essentially, so Beetlejuice is essentially the movie that cemented what we now think of as a Tim Burton movie. His style, his aesthetic, his tone. We kind of take it for granted, but that didn't exist until Beetlejuice dropped. And a fun fact, so. Danny Elfman was Tim Burton's composer. was his composer on the two Batman movies. He was his composer pretty much through most of his career, if not all of his career. I've never checked IMDB to see if Burton ever snuck something through without Elfman. But at the time, Elfman was the front man of the rock band Oingo Boingo. He had never done a film score. Yep. He had never done a film score. And Burton had gone to concerts in LA because they were an LA band and loved him, asked him to do a score. Elfman was like, okay. Elfman had no formal music training, so he had to get his guitarist to actually write the sheet music, because he didn't know how to write sheet music. And he would just hum everything onto a tape recorder. And it wasn't until many, many years later that Elfman taught himself how to write sheet music and be a composer properly. But at the time, Elfman is, this is also something we take for granted now, a Danny Elfman score. So fun fact about Beetlejuice, when they screened it for audiences with placeholder music, It bombed horribly. Nobody liked it. Nobody understood it. No one got what it was supposed to be. The moment they put Danny Elfman's score in it, the test screenings clicked. it got like 100 % scores. I don't know if it's 100%, but it got top, top, scores from audiences. It just clicked as soon as they put the music in there. It's like people understood what the fuck they were seeing. the moment you put that score. I do think this is again, something we take for granted. Danny Elfman score is what a Tim Burton movie sounds like. And it's almost necessitates that, especially these early ones. after Beetlejuice, Burton entered his most prolific period, making almost one movie per year between 1988 to 1996, jumping straight from Beetlejuice into Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood and Mars Attacks, seven movies. in nine years. So Batman Returns was the first movie that he actually skipped a year to work on because it took that long to put together and make. He had made Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, bam bam bam, one year, one year, one year. Then it took two years from 1990 to 1992 for Batman Returns to drop. So after the success of the original Batman, Burton had little interest in returning for the sequel. That was not what he thought he wanted to do. And he only did so on the conditions that the film not be a direct sequel to the first and that he would have full creative control this time. The studio had been very, as we've already mentioned, the studio was very hands on on that first Batman. Burton was never happy with the final result. And shockingly, the studio agreed to his conditions to have him come back and do a sequel. don't know how happy they are about that decision, but having once that movie was Batman Returns was actually released. but they agreed to it because that was Burton's power at that time. Now, the studio had already hired Sam Ham, one of the key screenwriters of the original Batman, to complete a direct sequel script. Ham's script was, for the most part, unceremoniously tossed with Burton's new demands, and instead, Burton was able to bring on whoever he wanted, and he brought on Daniel Waters, the writer of Heathers and Hudson Hawk. Now, Waters had met Burton because he had pitched a Beetlejuice sequel to him, prior to this time, he had pitched an idea of Beetlejuice in the White House, which Burton was very amused by and didn't do anything with, obviously didn't do anything with a Beetlejuice sequel until 2024. and Burton had his own ideas of taking Beetlejuice to Hawaii. I don't pretend to really understand all the ideas they had for Beetlejuice sequels back in the day, but the Beetlejuice in the White House, Burton had remembered that pitch. He had been amused by it. He had liked. Waters style and so he brought him in for Batman Returns. So Waters is on record as saying about Sam Ham's quote, his script was fine and better than his Batman one script. It's a meat and potatoes mystery with clues, statues of owls and so on. It read like a Hardy Boys story. It was a good yarn. That version would have needed an old time director from down in the commissary to direct it. It's not the kind of story that will get you. That's fantastic. It's not the kind of story that will get you the way to Tim, aka Tim Brown. When I came on board, I said, who even needs this plot stuff? Let's get Tim interested in this. Sam Ham got story credit merely for the fact that it had Catwoman and Penguin in the script. Side note, fun fact about Catwoman and the Penguin, for some reason, I could find no direct information about why this was. The studio The one demand that Burton did go with the studio, because this was a part of the sequel from the get-go, they were like, it's Catwoman and it's Penguin. The end. No ifs, ands, or buts. I could not find any reason why this was, why they chose these two and why this was non-negotiable in any way, shape, or form. But for whatever reason, the studio was like, Catwoman, Penguin, from here, we'll do whatever, but it has to be Catwoman and Penguin. I'm gonna take a stab at this from an exec's perspective. It's all. You gotta have the sexy character, right? You gotta have the sexy character. The women want to be And then the non-sexy, the literal non-sexy. Don't ask Richard. Don't ask Richard. What you have with Penguin is a wonderfully accessible character for all the unattractive and average men in the world who, if they can't be superheroes, then they'd like to be a supervillain. So I'm gonna say the nerds in the potential audience, not that you need to target nerds with a Batman IP, but At the time I think yeah, I think I could see them going with that. Yeah, I I think there's there's a couple of things one They had Danny DeVito as the penguin signed on before Burton signed on It wasn't just that it had to be the penguin. It was that it had to be him as though interesting really but people don't really remember this but like like DeVito was on this movie star run back then right he was He is so good in everything he does. like you look at him now and you're like, maybe not a traditional movie star, but you look at the films he was in, he was kind of playing these romantic just by default of his charisma. yeah. And so like, I think that when you look at the, the Adam West Batman series, you have, who are the, who are the iconic villains from it? It is, it's, it's, it's Catwoman, Penguin and Joker. No one else really pops. I mean, like, guess, the Riddler, but I mean, he's just fine. So I think it was that they they they had decided they needed those Just to jump back a little bit. Burton made those demands when they wanted him to do Batman 2 and They said no to him He went away and did Edward Scissorhands and it was such a hit that basically he was able to come back and say now you have to meet my demands Right if you want me back Yeah, and and I mean they they were they were desperate. I actually I shared this with Dave earlier, but I have read the Sam Ham script. It is so terrible that the director from the commissary line is perfect for it. spent the whole time reading it. It all hinges on this. The only things that are in Batman Returns from it are that they are trying to frame Batman for something, although that in the Ham script that never pays off or makes any sense. Batman is killing billionaires in this script and leaving notes with a bat symbol on them. And there is a of there's a secret treasure hidden somewhere in Gotham. And to find the map, you have to put together all of these statues of ravens that the old the the old guard of Gotham had put it like. think Sam Ham's script is the reason that we now have to suffer with court of owls. I was just going to say it sounded so much like court of owls. It is. And court of owls like is the most boring thing in Batman to date. Every time that like, and like the original version of it in the comics is sort of fine. It's a monthly Batman comic. It's does well. And then they're like, but what if we put this in everything? What if we took really interesting Batman stuff and just like ram jam some Sam Ham in that bad jam some Sam Ham. Ladies and gentlemen, that happened on the fly. very careful. That's why I had to point it out. could sense that. was like, deserves a little credit for that. It is a really bad script. then you get like this, like Burton comes back and the one of the big conditions that he demanded was that John Peters was not permitted on set. is in Burton's contract that the executive John Peters who then who was a producer on the first and is bumped down to executive producer is bumped down to something else credit on the second one. But he is forbidden from being on set. Which I think is that like that's some really good power to have. And like that that's all I want. No, sorry, this person isn't even allowed to be at the same conventions. Right. Absolutely. So where did you find the script, Richard? I must read it. actually have to. it's on it's just Google it. it's up there. They're all. You can find the Sam Ham script, the Daniel Waters script, and the Daniel Waters with revisions are about to get there. Because there's yet there is yet another writer that will step in after Waters. But there's well, the the the thing about I think I think what you're going to get to and I just want to like foreshadow it is that people talk about how in the Batman Returns film, the Penguin doesn't really have a plan. His first plan falls through and then he's like, I don't know, steal babies, I guess. But It's there from the beginning. It's there the whole way through. My argument is actually that the the what if the Penguin ran from there as he did in the original series is the thing that is jammed in there instead. Interesting. Technically not, but we'll get there. It is the reverse in terms of what Waters had written and then what the third writer does. But first off, regarding Catwoman, Waters is on record as saying, quote, Tim really liked my take on Catwoman. My take had nothing to do with the comics. To this day, when people tell me I went away from the comics, I tell them fuck the comics. My version is better. A lot of men make the mistake that when they try to write a strong female role, they just have her kicking ass and being a badass saying wicked things the way a man would. I definitely wanted a catwoman who is a woman with her own psychology. she's hurting people and doing crazy stuff that is emanating from the things that are going through her mind psychologically instead of just for the sake of having some action in the film. When Waters was contractually done with the movie, another writer, Wesley Strick, was brought in by Warners. Two, producer Denise D'Novi's words, quote unquote, normalize the movie a little bit. Because that's that's where they were with Daniel Waters' script. They were like, OK, OK. He was also tasked to Richard's point with giving the Penguin more of an actual master plan. Strict was inspired by the Moses riff of Waters opening with the baby cobble pot and suggested the very biblical idea of wanting to murder the firstborn, every firstborn across every male firstborn across the city. Burton was impressed with the idea, and it was quickly added to the final script. No, I will say to Richard's point, it's there from the beginning because they were smart by when he's in the records room trying to search for his parentage. He's in there for an awfully long time writing down a lot of shit. And that is him already chronicling all the firstborn sons from the birth records because he was looking up his own birth record, but they just left him in there for a long, time. And he's like his quill pen is just going on going at it for like hours and hours. And it's like. God, that scene is so good. It's so good. It's so good. And he's gleeful. He's having a joy. But then it doesn't come back until the very end because the mayor thing comes in. And that was Waters's part of the script. And once that's done, I think the problem was they didn't really have a great showdown because it's like, you foiled his mayor plan. Why are they having a showdown? It was foiled like it's done. So what is the plan that now has to be done? What is the threat outside of? Penguin possibly becoming mayor. And that's, I believe reading between the lines, that's what was missing. Now, to Strick's credit, has said, quote, after I went on and did other movies, I came to realize that for another writer coming in, Wesley Strick protected so much of my stuff. He did, however, bring in a lot of pop culture references that I had tried to keep out of the movie. So apparently, Strick is responsible for the pop culture references, but Waters is like, look, he... He apparently tried hard not to change, to change as little as possible from the original script. So it is really cool that another writer came in, read Waters' take on all this stuff and was like, no, this is actually really cool. Like I want to see most of this stuff done. So even though I'm adding a few things, let's keep the interesting bits to this movie and let's not just write over. Now, Strick does not have a credit on the movie, meaning he was essentially a script doctor. that the studios brought in. not getting credit, you're not getting residuals, you're just getting a handsome sum to make changes the studio wants you to make. So Strick could have done whatever he wanted under the studio guidelines and he apparently was very careful and picked and choose. One last element about development. Originally the studio did want Pilly D Williams to be Two-Face and introduce Robin in Batman Returns. So Waters has said, quote, I had one scene with Billy Dee Williams getting injured and then getting a coin, but we didn't do anything with it. We actually cast Marlon Wayans as Robin. We had Batman pull into a garage to get the Batmobile fixed. And you'll remember from Batman Returns after that whole thing of the Penguin taking over the Batmobile, Keaton and Alfred Michael Gooch. I always forget his... They have a quick conversation about like, how do we repair the Batmobile? And I think that's where this part, this scene might've come in where they took it to the special garage where the Robin, was, there was this kid with an R on his uniform at this garage. We never went beyond that. Tim even thought the R on the uniform was too much. Can't we just have this kid and just bring them back in later? is what he said. Daniel Waters says, wasn't that interested in Robin. Even with the Penguin, I was just like, can it just be Catwoman? Because we had Catwoman and Penguin, I had to create Chris Walken's character, Mac Shrek, just to triangulate everything. The script wasn't working with just Penguin and Catwoman. I needed someone to bring everyone together. All very interesting tidbits. Did. It is interesting that Waters was not as interested in the Penguin because the script really does some great stuff with the Penguin in the ultimate end, even though he says he was nowhere near as interested in that as he was in Catwoman. Now, fun fact about Marlon Wayans as Robin, he was indeed cast as Robin. He even got paid in full for the role, regardless of the fact that his character was cut. He even, get this, still gets residuals for the movie to this day. day. Even though his character was... Actually, was recently there's this Shannon Sharp, a very famous football player for those geeks of you who have no idea what football is. He is a very famous, very popular football player, but he has... Sorry, American football or The only football that matters, American football. and Look at Richard rolling his eyes referring to soccer is unamerican please An American anyhow until we start winning until we start winning then it becomes American football over But Shannon Sharp has the second life as this like truly one of the most popular sort of talk shows podcast interview one-on-one things in the last it's popped up at the last two years and it is it's kind of all over the place sometimes, but the celebrities come on and they really do dish some deep secrets from their contract life and professional life in past. But Marlon Ray and Wayans recently did one and he went in depth on this Batman series of events and it seems like it wasn't a very good experience for him, but. It's been a very good experience for him. So, yeah, that actually happened this week, coincidentally. I am excited to watch that. So while we're on the way to William and Dolls. Yes, yes, yes. Right before you show your prop, Richard, because Richard has props and we will make sure to put a little social media clips so people can see the prop in some way, or form. But I will say as one more side note about the Robin thing, DC Comics artist Norm Brayfogle and Neil Adams were both tasked to redesign the Robin costume. Actually about 12 artists were asked to redesign the Robin costume, but these were the main two whose designs were actually used. The final costume ended up mostly being designed by Adams. However, the new Robin R symbol and the bow staff were influenced by Bray Fogel's presentation. Kenner Toys even produced a corresponding action figure. But the filmmakers decided not to go ahead with the introduction of the character. However, Kenner released the toy anyway, as the character was thus newly rendered in the comic books as the Tim Drake or Robin 3 after Dick Grayson and Jason Todd. He was named Tim after Tim Burton, which Richard just revealed to me before we started recording today. I actually did not even know that. And Richard, what do you have for the listeners or hopefully for the social media video for the viewers today? Well, I think it's so important to talk about why this Robin toy exists. Okay. Because like the Marlin Wayans saga happened so late in production. That is one of my favorite moments in the film is when he says, what are we going to do? Just bring mechanics into the Batcave. like Alfred says that and he says, well, you just let Vicky Vail walk in. it's this moment of the Alfred fuck you. You were so confident that was going to last and obviously where the fuck is the key bit. So it was so late in production that Marlon Wayans is gone that they had already produced the action figure. And so basically they took a Marlon Wayans action figure, a Robin with a high top fade and repainted it. So here we have white face Robin painted in the colors of the Tim Drake from the animated series. So that's where that costume ends up. It is like. I mean, it's 1992 action figure technology. like if you I'll take a photo of it, I guess, but you can you can kind of tell it's meant to be Marlon Wayans, which is really kind of wild. Because Billy D. Williams is established as Harvey Dent in the first one, right? And he's meant to be in the second one. And he is meant to be in the role of Max Shrek. The studio said we will not have a black two face. And so Max Shrek is a new character created, Whole Cloth, who has later been adopted into the comics and then animated and stuff. And he is, the intention is still for him to become Two-Face. His, the final scene where he is, you know, tased by Catwoman is meant to be the creation of Two-Face. That was going to be part of the next film going forward. But of course that. didn't happen and neither did the Catwoman film, which I haven't read the script for. If you have that script sent in my way, because I've heard it's fantastic. Turns out the Catwoman script was hiding in plain sight online all this time. So you will find a link for it down below in the description of this episode. Hope you enjoy it. That concludes part one of our coverage of Batman Returns. Tune in tomorrow for part two, where we talk more Tim Burton. More Michael Keaton, more Michelle Pfeiffer, more about Richard wanting to fuck Danny DeVito. Please join us then and we will get to the wine pairings for What You Should Drink When You Watch Batman Returns. Thanks so much everybody. Check ya tomorrow. you