CAN 'BATMAN' REACH THE POT OF GOLD?

By Jay Carr

From The Boston Globe, 06.18.1989

Fellini had Marcello Mastroianni, Kurosawa had Toshiro Mifune, Hitchcock had Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart. And now Tim Burton has his surrogate, Michael Keaton. It may be premature to mention Burton in the same paragraph as those great directors, but it isn't preposterous. On the strength of his first two films, Pee-wee's Big Adventure and Beetlejuice, Burton is known as an image-maker of striking inventiveness and potency. If he and his Beetlejuice star, Keaton, can bring off the $35 million Batman, opening Friday in Boston and suburban theaters, they'll ride a big gamble to a big payoff.

"We both like to push it," says Keaton, speaking of himself and Burton as they sat on a sofa in a North Hollywood hotel. Their take on Batman is a dark one, befitting an age that looks upon heroes as flawed, or dubious, or both. "My tone fell somewhere between the TV series and the new dark comics," says Burton. "I grew up with the TV series, and I love the new comics because they blow apart the conventions of comics. It's an oppressive story, a dark story with operatic images, set in a sort of fantastical caricature of New York. We wanted the sets to be graceful and simple and strong. I did try to lighten up the dark vigilante aspects of Batman." He describes the Joker, played by Jack Nicholson, as "a Phantom of the Opera clown," he says.

"It was a bit of a no-win situation going with it, because Batman has a history that goes all over the place," says Burton. "It started out as a detective story, with this guy seeking revenge on the killers of his parents. It turned into something more gadget oriented, then into a campy TV series, then to something very dark and psychological in the new comic books." The DC Comics fundamentalists, says Burton, "think the TV series was a blemish on the history of Batman. The people who remember the TV series don't know the comic book. But who is this rich, powerful guy who has to get dressed up in a batsuit? As I see it, he's a hero who's kind of screwed up."

"If you're looking for a huge man, I'm a shock," says Keaton. "The thing about Batman is that he doesn't have superpowers. He can be killed. What makes it doubly interesting is that he's kind of psychotic. At first, I wasn't willing to take it that far, but Tim was more than willing to take it that far. I read the script thinking, 'This guy's really angry and depressed and dark, not 100 percent of every day, but a lot of his life.' Beetlejuice I brought to him. This time I said, 'You show me.' There's a thing I do when I step out from behind this girder and belt a guy. I said, 'Tim, I want to do this bit.' And he didn't look at me like I was crazy. He looked at me like I was stupid and said, 'No, that isn't it.' I just knew from the way he said it that he knew more than I do. I knew I'm just going to have to pay attention here. That was a telling point."

Casting Keaton as Batman was producer John Peters' idea, Burton says. "I was shocked at first, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made to me. I started out with the classic square-jawed hulk guys. But then I just couldn't visualize them in a batsuit. And how do you cast the secondary parts? Do you cast Hulk Hogan as a bank teller? And I thought with Bruce Wayne," the rich playboy who becomes Batman, "if he's so handsome, rich and strong, why is he putting on a batsuit?

"With Michael, I can see him putting on a batsuit, and Michael, well, he does have a little too much going on a lot of the time, like Bruce Wayne. And there's an explosive side to his humor. A lot of people don't realize the people who come from comedy--you know, there's a lot of anger. There's a wildness in his eyes that comes from all of that." Adds Keaton, "Tim said, 'Look, you look like a guy who'd put on a batsuit and go out and do damage.' Once he said that, I knew how to act accordingly."

Another wrinkle is that the Joker--played in over-the-top fashion by Nicholson with green hair and bone-white makeup--is more than Batman's rival; he's a sort of dark mirror image, a doppelganger. Burton had to woo Nicholson. "I did go horseback riding with him in Aspen, which was a big deal for me. And I did go to see Cocktail with Jack, which is a very big deal for me," Burton says of the critically-despised Tom Cruise hit. "Michael and Jack both have similar eyebrows. They both have a kind of spark, energy, spontaneity, surprise, like someone releasing a chemical in your brain. Wow! There you go! Boom!" Adds Keaton, "To out-outrageous Jack is impossible. About halfway through, he said to me, 'Ya just gotta let the wardrobe do the acting, kid.' "

Keaton's Batman costume--it looks more like Robocop's armor than Batman's traditional gray cloth--was one of several challenges during the arduous four-month shoot in London's Pinewood Studios last winter. Keaton had to be bolted into it for hours at a time. "You want me to be honest with you?" Keaton asks. "I'm usually a lot of fun to work with. I wasn't totally a lot of fun to work with in this movie. I was pretty burnt. The suit was difficult, but not like working on a farm, or digging coal. So it was difficult, but not that difficult."

Burton, who lost leading lady Sean Young when she fell from a horse (she was replaced by Kim Basinger), admits feeling pressured by the complex megabucks shoot. A native of Burbank, Calif., who worked as a Disney animator until tedium drove him away, he still looks like a tousle-haired version of the younger self he drew in Vincent, his first animation, in which he paid tribute to and obtained the voice of Vincent Price. "Vincent Price helped me get through childhood," Burton says. "I loved horror movies as a child. It was just sort of natural escapism. It encompassed everything--humor, psychology, darkness, emotion. They tapped into the way I feel about life.

"I don't approach film making in an analytical way. I prefer more of a subconscious approach, a naive approach. I just do it. I don't know what things like postmodern mean. I want to keep a spontaneous approach. I don't like it when I see things that are too preplanned. I'm actually quite a shy person, a reserved person. I've just been married a few months. I met my wife, Lena--she's a painter--at a party. That always sounds so sleazy! I'm sure she's having second thoughts. The thing I find most abstract is story conferences with executives. You talk about what's going to make it good, and the fact is you don't know. People try to make film making a science. It's not a science at all."