Christopher Walken as Batman and John Malkovich as The Joker

[johnnygobbs]

Here's an interesting interview with Billy Weber, the second-unit director on Batman Returns.  I've posted it on the Batman (1989) page because of one particularly interesting titbit about Burton's ideal casting for the first Batman film:

How did you get involved with directing the second unit footage on Batman Returns? Also, just a personal tidbit, Batman Returns remains one of my favourite cinematic depictions of the caped crusader, and I love the tone of that movie – it's so bonkers!

It really was Tim Burton unleashed with the character in a way that he wasn't able to do on the first one, but after the first one was such a big success, the studio left us alone, even though they were very worried about the footage and the overall tone of the movie. The story is so much darker than the first one – the actual plot is really disturbing – and again, the first one had been a huge moneymaker, so Tim was given his freedom.

Yeah, I always felt that Batman Returns seemed like the proper vision for what Burton wanted to do with the character.

Oh, absolutely. And here's one fun thing about Burton's original Batman – he wanted Christopher Walken for Bruce Wayne/Batman, and John Malkovich for The Joker. But Jon Peters and Peter Guber said absolutely not, and threatened to take him off the picture if he was set in stone about those casting ideas. So when he finally got the chance to make Batman Returns, that's why the vibe is so of the wall – it was the Batman movie that Tim had wanted to make all along, and because of the success of the first one, nobody bothered him during production, and we were pretty much left alone to make the film we all wanted to make. And he got to cast Walken as one of the bad guys.

So you had no previous directing experience, and here you are, doing second unit direction on a massively budgeted sequel to one of the biggest and most influential blockbusters of all time – that's so crazy to really think about!

Yes, and it was so much fun, I had a great time doing it.  I had worked with Tim on Pee-wee, and at the time, he knew I was interested in directing. I was developing a few projects and was reading scripts, and I really thought I wanted to go into directing. So, Tim called me and asked if I wanted to do Second Unit on Batman Returns, and so I obviously said yes, that I would be honored to do it. The Second Unit shot for 50 days, with a crew of between 50-60 people. Whatever Tim didn't get that day through the main unit, the Second Unit would get the following day, provided there was no major talent involved. And then on top of it, I handled a lot of the action sequences, the car chase stuff, tons of extras, and all of the penguin footage, which was really extraordinary. The opening prologue with Paul Reubens and Diane Salinger, playing the Penguin's parents, where they send him off into the sewer – that was also done by the Second Unit.

Wow, I would never have expected that stuff to have been Second Unit!

Yeah, at the time, Batman Returns was the biggest production that Warner Brothers had done on the stages in Los Angeles, and that entire movie, except for one shot of Michelle Pfeiffer in her car driving, was done on the lot at Warner Brothers. It was a massive production. And the penguins, they were amazing to work with. The little ones were easy and a pleasure, but the big guys, the Emperors, they are big, about four and a half feet tall, and they have very specific health requirements. They need a constant 35 degree or under environment, so the studio rented massive AC units to keep the sets extremely cold, and they had their own trailer with a pool attached to it. They are big, intelligent creatures, and they'd been raised by a guy from the UK, who had gotten them as babies from the Falkland Islands, and he flew them over from London to Los Angeles for the filming of the movie. But you had to be very careful with them otherwise they could get very sick.

So those penguins were very well taken care of on the set it would seem?

Oh yes, they were very well looked after, and they did a great job in terms of what they added to those sequences in the film. And overall, it was just a massive production. I had two cinematographers on the Second Unit, Paul Ryan and Don Burgess, and Don as I'm sure you know went on to become Robert Zemeckis' cameraman for a long time. I gave Don his first solo DOP job on Josh and S.A.M.

The full interview with veteran film editor and second-unit director, Billy Worth, who has worked on some pretty big films, is at the following site:

http://wearecult.rocks/the-billy-weber-interview-part-two

[Silver Nemesis]

Having watched both The Deer Hunter and The Dead Zone in the past fortnight, I've been reminded of what a gifted actor Walken is. However I'm not sure I can see him playing Batman. Malkovich might have worked as the Joker though.