A few years ago I picked up this old audio reel labelled "Batman Forever" and recently I got it converted.
It's a fun little piece of the movie's marketing that I don't think has been heard before. I assume it was done as audio and sent over to radio stations to promote the movie. If anyone knows any more, please let me know.
It contains some clips from the film, interviews with four cast members and the director followed by a short excerpt of Elliot Goldenthal's score.
In this video, I give a few thoughts and then play the whole thing.
Again, if you think I've missed anything important, let me know in the comments. I wasn't sure if the film clips were slightly different from the finished film and didn't have a chance to compare them.
If you'd rather, you can download the mp3 to listen to yourself here.
Or if you want to read it, I've done a transcription of the interviews below.
Beware though, there are no interviewer questions so it can seem at times that the interviewee is rambling a little. I kind of enjoyed how laid back and unpolished it is though.
VAL KILMER ON BRUCE WAYNE: He has an office, a desk, a secretary. He doesn't stay there very long. He shows up every now and again, kind of like Howard Hughes. Hughes actually didn't have an office. He would just show up. He would know everything. It's sort of that style. It's very specific and it's really grand. Everything is big. It's so big. We shot at Universal as well as Warner Brothers and down in Long Beach. There's not enough space in Warner Brothers, so we rented some more. It's a big world, Gotham.
One of the main themes is identity. Harvey Two-Face is the easiest example because he split right down the middle. But Bruce Wayne's dilemma has to do with himself and his past, but the result of how he reacted to his parents being murdered by a psychopath was to become Batman. And is it a good thing and why should he continue and can he have a life without being Batman? And his personal story is mirrored in Dick Grayson's story, his parents' die and he's consumed with revenge. He can't think about anything else and he has his own personal journey about being split, about what he knows is really right and what he feels he needs to do about getting revenge.
VAL KILMER ON CHOOSING THE ROLE: It really, truly was everything about it. It's extremely captivating, obviously. It almost feels odd talking about the things, about the entity of the story about Batman because everybody knows it. This 50 years has maintained this interest.
There's something really elemental that Bob Kane created. He was around quite a bit, which I was really happy about, because what he created was really extraordinary. He was just a kid when he started. I think he was 19 or 20, right before the Second World War. And what he did in the comic books, which is maintained and started many different styles, of storytelling really that he created or encapsulated quite radical corrupt politicians and he was dealing with current events at the time in this highly stylized way and all quite serious if you want to look at it that way. And why it's so successful is it also hits readers, audiences in all of its manifestations in a vivid and entertaining way obviously. We like the stuff.
It was kind of almost disappointing sometimes when kids would be on the set because I would want to do my voice and do a cape routine or something and they weren't interested. The image of it, their minds go off. You get this highly concentrated, glazed look. And I knew there was nothing I could do. The soup sort of took care of it all.
TOMMY LEE JONES ON CHOOSING THE ROLE: It was just a great deal of fun. to be a comic book character. I mean, ordinarily I look for certain subtleties that a comic book doesn't concern itself with. So it was liberating, of course, to be a comic book villain.
Yes, I mean, I'd never heard of Harvey Two-Face, even though I'd read the comic books when I was a child. If I had heard of Harvey, I had only a vague memory of it. But my son knew who he was immediately and was very enthusiastic about the movie. In fact, he was enthusiastic about it sooner than I was, which is to say instantly. It took me a little bit longer to talk myself into it. And it was his enthusiasm that was decisive for me, really.
Two Face is, just, he believes in brute force. I mean, his plan is to kill Batman. It's that simple. One of his plans, usually what he tries to do is set a trap for Batman. He'll wreck havoc and wait until the bat comes to restore order and try to ambush him. He does that on several occasions. That's his modus operandi.
Well, at first he's insisted that anyone could break into his high hideout. But when the Riddler suggests that he may have a way to learn Batman's identity and then render him helpless and then hurt him and then kill him, Harvey is very pleased to enter into a partnership with the Riddler. Of course the Riddler's character changes all the time. Harvey's character does not. They're more consistent.
JIM CARREY PLAYING THE RIDDLER: I thought about that. I thought about who I might be, and I think the Riddler is pretty much perfect. It would have been the Riddler or the Joker, you know, one of the two. I think he hated Bruce Wayne to begin with. He hated him because he had everything that he wanted. And I think that's how that starts. It really isn't about really loving somebody. It's about not loving yourself and seeing somebody who is the guy that you'd love to be and resenting him for it. And that's how it basically snowballs.
It's just a great character because it's, I mean, he starts out pretty much bonkers to begin with, but it just takes on different forms and he gets so full of you know, just energy and evil power. You just can't help but love playing that. It's the ultimate juice master. Basically it saps the IQ from whoever watches the television that it's hooked up to and redirects the brain waves into Edward Nygma's skull. And so he's sucking Gotham's brain waves. He's devouring people's IQ and so he just you know becomes a mega intellect although he's mad you know so I mean intellect with madness is kind of a fun combination you know I just I love the character because you know it's basically he realizes that you know it's not who has the answers it's who knows the questions?
I thought I looked a lot like Michelle Pfeiffer, actually. He's not a very physical guy, except for he's very flamboyant. He's very, he's very, he's got a little touch of Fred Astaire, a panache – a joie de vivre. But, you know, but he's not going to hurt anybody with his fists, but he'll pick up a rock. That's where you have to be careful.
CHRIS O’DONNELL ON ROBIN: Robin's story is pretty close to the story of Robin in the comic books. He comes from the Flying Graysons, which, you know, he's from the circus. And he's lived on the circus all his life, which has kind of toughened him up a little bit. He's a little bit of a gypsy lifestyle. And, you know, he's a pretty cocky young guy until he has this, you know, traumatic experience. And he wants to be a part of the team as soon as he finds a Batcave. He sees everything down there, and he figures that's a way he can get back and avenge his parents' death, but Batman doesn't want him to be a part of him. At first he doesn't like Bruce Wayne and doesn't like Batman. Then Batman wants to protect him and doesn't want him to be a part of it. But after they kind of help each other out and save each other, they finally become a team.
Well, yeah, I mean, they both saw their parents die before their eyes. And I think that is why Bruce Wayne offers to take in Dick Grayson - offer him a place to stay because he sympathizes for him. Dick Grayson, he kind of resents Bruce Wayne, some rich guy, who is Dick Dick Grayson thinks he's just kind of, of himself as being kind of a tough guy, you know, been living on the road and wants nothing to do with it. But he is out to, you know, get two-faced and anything that can help him, he's going to take. So when he finds out that he's Batman and that he's got the Batcave and all that, he wants to be a part of it. And Batman, who realizes what it means to become a part of this, wants to protect him and saying he doesn't want him to be a part of it. But, they go through a course of events where they both end up saving each other and a partnership is formed.
CHRIS O'DONNELL ON FILMING: I mean, there was a lot of fight scenes and I didn't have a problem with them as far as when they were choreographing these fight scenes. I picked up on them pretty quickly. And I think that was mainly because of the Three Musketeers, which I had worked on, with these really long sword fights, which took weeks to choreograph. These really intricate moves. I mean, a couple punches and a kick here or there, it was like, wasn't that bad.
But there were other things in this movie that you had to deal with that were tough. I mean, these suits are kind of constricting. They give you perfect posture, actually. Well, Robin is after Two-Face in particular, because Two-Face is responsible for the death of his family. So he really is out to get them and avenge their deaths. I figure out a way to get down to the Batcave and I find the Batmobile. And Dick Grayson decides it would be fun to take the old Batmobile for a spin, probably do pretty well with the ladies out in the city cruising around the Batmobile. And in the course of cruising around Gotham City, I find a young lady in distress who's being chased by a gang of hoodlums. So I come to the rescue. When they see the Batmobile, everyone thinks it's the Batman himself, but it's just me. Batmobile is pretty cool.
Batmobile is very cool. I'd like to take it home, but I don't think that's going to happen. I think you'll probably get from here to Chicago in about - very quickly. I don't know when Robin's going to get his own toys, though, you know. It's about time. What about Robin? You know, I got a motorcycle. Can't they spruce it up and give me the Robin, Mo-cycle or mobile?
JOEL SCHUMACHER MAKING THE FILM: It was the most fun I've ever had in my life making a movie. And I've really enjoyed myself on all my movies. But this was the most fun. The cast was so much fun. And the crew was so much fun. But making, I wanted to make a living comic book. And you know, when you're doing a comic book, the reality police aren't hanging over your shoulder all the time. So you have the license to really use all the imaginative and creative people around you. And the cast was wonderful. They all had a lot of great ideas. And even though it's the third of the Warner Brothers Batman movies, it was our first. So for us, it was the first time and it was, and the cast the first time. So it was really exciting.
It was exciting to go to work every day. Comic books. Batman's been around since 1939 and so the first thing I did was call DC Comics and I got as many comics as I could get my hands on from 1939 right up till now where there are extraordinary artists and storytellers working on them because there's so many different kinds of Batman comic books now. I just read hundreds of comic books for a long time, and it was great. I could read them on planes and in the doctor's office and wherever I was, because it was my job. But I'm sure everybody thought, what's this old hippie doing reading comic books? And I just immersed myself in the folklore, the legends, and the comic books. The wonderful use of color, the wonderful use of imagination, the stretch of imagination, the fun of scaling buildings with Batman.
JOEL SCHUMACHER ON THE BATMAN CHARACTER: You know, I just got immersed in Batman's world and that was the real, the essence of the starting point. I think the one unique thing that separates him from a lot of superheroes is that he's a man. He's not a superman. He's a man with extraordinary power, I mean extraordinary human powers. He's a man whose parents were killed in front of him and who has become a vigilante by putting on this black bat suit. and going out at night and trying to right wrongs and he has all the vulnerabilities and all of the flaws and all of the human drama that any human being has.
He's not perfect and he's not impenetrable. I've tried to structure a very strong story about duality because Batman is also Bruce Wayne. So there is a struggle for Bruce Wayne to find his identity insofar as why he ever became Batman. To think, to look back in his past as a child and the events that happened to him and why he became Batman. So there is a mythic quality to the revelation of that story, how he became Batman and he has a choice as a man now whether to continue to be Batman or not. And so the story is about duality and therefore everything that was created around that was to serve it.
JOEL SCHUMACHER ON THE NEW CHARACTERS: Dick Grayson, I brought in Dick Grayson who becomes Robin because his family has also been killed by a criminal. And he's a mirror of what happened to Bruce Wayne when he was younger. So he gets to relive that through another person.
Nicole Kidman not only plays a criminologist who deals with dual personalities, she is in love with Batman and Bruce Wayne is in love with her. So she's having a triangle with the same two men. And then there's no greater character to show duality than Harvey Two-Face because you have Tommy Lee Jones as a man who is literally split in two. One side with the vestige of whatever rational judicious thinking he had as a district attorney and the other side a crazed maniac killer. And then Jim Carrey's Riddler, the sign of the Riddler is a huge question mark. And so Jim is there as the Riddler to question Val's total identity. The Riddler questions Bruce Wayne and Batman's whole identity. And so the piece Hopefully you'll feel that the movie is somewhat about that, with lots of fun and games on top of this, of course.
The Riddler in real Gotham life is Edward Nygma. And Edward Nygma in this particular version of Batman starts out as a techno nerd genius with egomaniacal plans to be a bigger and greater electronics genius than Bruce Wayne because Bruce Wayne, we've also introduced Wayne Enterprises into this Batman, which has classically always been the business, the industry that Bruce Wayne runs. And there's an electronics division. And he works for Bruce Wayne as one of the many people in white lab coats doing experiments and creating new ideas. But he actually wants to be bigger than Bruce Wayne. And so that begins a story of revenge and jealousy and competition that drive him over the edge. And he becomes the Riddler and a criminal and a psychotic and quite a foe to be dealt with.
JOEL SCHUMACHER ON THE NEW GADGETS, VEHICLE AND SUITS: Well, the Batmobile is the mother of all gadgets, right? there are fabulous new bat bolos and batarangs and special batarangs, a great one that Val uses at the end of the movie. I don't want to tell you how. There's a brand new bat suit besides the one we created for the movie that Val wears most of the time. At the very end of the movie, he wears a brand new bat suit never seen before with much different looking and with extraordinary extra gadgets and powers and things that it does. And there's a gun. There's a gun that shoots out a blue ray that stuns people, that stuns bad guys. That's pretty exciting. There's a lot of winches and gadgets.
And the Batmobile does a spectacular gadget trick during a car chase with Two-Face and Batman that I like A lot. And because Wayne Enterprises is partly an electronics empire, there are a lot of electronics, computers, technology, and Jim Carrey's invention in the movie is a holographic three-dimensional device that enhances your television set, but it also has a very insidious side effect that feeds his criminal mind. And so there's a lot of, it's kind of like the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and the year 2000 all smashed together in one city. Kind of like now, you know, kind of like LA.
