Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, DC Comics | Tagged: Batman, michael uslan, the batman

An Extract From Michael Uslan Batman's Batman, Published Today

Michael Uslan has been an executive producer on all the Batman movies and TV shows since the Tim Burton movie, after being the man who secured the rights and then hawked Batman round studio after studio until he got the deal made. And in his new book, Batman's Batman, Michael E. Uslan offers an insider's look at Hollywood and how movies and television shows are made.

Continuing the tale of his adventures in medialand that he began in The Boy Who Loved Batman, Uslan draws on both his successful and less successful attempts to bring ideas to the screen. From passion to promotion, from the initial pitch to selecting the best partners and packaging, Uslan reveals what he sees as the thirteen qualities essential to would-be producers through what he calls "the Land of Bilk and Money." And Michael Uslan has provided Bleeding Cool with an extract, just for you.

WELCOME TO HOLLYWOOD! What is a producer? I describe my role as boss, father, mother, general contractor, camp counselor, and shrink. What does a producer do? Try this on for size . . .

In 1984, we produced a truly fabulous miniseries for PBS American Playhouse, Three Sovereigns for Sarah, the true story of the Salem witch trials of 1692. We all agreed going in that our production of Three Sovereigns for Sarah would be 100 percent historically accurate. We were going to shoot on any locations intact from 1692 and duplicate ones that no longer existed. Our miniseries would focus on three sisters who really lived then. One of them, Rebecca Nurse, was accused as a witch and sentenced to hanging. Rebecca's home and farm were extant and would become a primary location for us. We were given a tour of the place. Her bedroom was pristine from the night they came in and took her away. In her bedroom were her bed, spinning wheel, and dresser, with her glasses still atop that dresser. The guide demonstrated how her bed worked. Like most beds then, the frame had holes in it to allow ropes to pass through to hold up the mattress. Wooden knobs on the end of the ropes held them in place. The mattress was stuffed with hay from the barn. A pillow and blanket were on the bed. Every night's sleep caused the ropes to sag by morning, so every evening, Rebecca had to tighten each rope by twisting the knobs until the ropes be- came taut and able to support the mattress well. This is where the expression "sleep tight" comes from. When I asked our guide about the rest of that expression, "and don't let the bed bugs bite," he said the mattress was stuffed with straw, the straw came from the barn, and bugs were in the hay. Aha! A historical epiphany!

Although we had the Rebecca Nurse estate, the Salem Village meeting hall no longer existed, and that was where the witch trials took place. What to do? In the basement of the Peabody Museum, our historians unearthed the original plans from 1672 for that meeting house, and we rebuilt it, offering to sell it to the town for $1 when we were done filming so it could be used as a tourist attraction. We received lots of media attention when it became known we would be doing the first oak post beam construction in the United States in some 170 years. It was only a few short weeks later that my phone rang at seven o'clock one morning. We had a crisis at the construction site. Our construction crew was working night and day to finish the set before shooting began, and a local official ordered workers to cease work on the basis that our reproduction of the 1672 meeting hall wasn't "up to code." We pointed out this was a movie set on private property that was being donated to the town at the end of production. We had immovable resistance that reminded me of the days on his home-building jobs when Grandpa Uslan would start swinging his two-by- fours at deserving city bureaucrats. One of the wonderful young actors in our production was John Dukakis, son of the governor of Massachusetts (and later, candidate for presi- dent of the United States). I spoke to John and told him what had happened and that we faced the possibility of having to shut down and move to another state. He called his dad. Forty-five minutes later, we were no longer being stopped from proceeding with our work.

As a bonus, the good governor wound up attending and emceeing our wrap party and was kind enough to provide this Yankees fan with his tickets for a Yankees / Red Sox series at historic Fenway Park. I'd shoot in Massachusetts anytime!

As one of the coolest things to happen to this history major, my production office wound up on the second floor of the House of Seven Gables! We hired the two leading historians on the subject to be our historical advisers and gave them the power to halt a scene from being shot if there was any actor's costuming, jewelry, or other such details that were not correct. Our famed director from British cinema, Phillip Leacock, was thrilled with the cast we had put together, led by Vanessa Redgrave, Kim Hunter, Phyllis Thaxter, and Patrick McGoohan. Patrick had not been our first choice. We were trying to entice James Mason out of retirement to play the chief magistrate. His agent was helpful and had me call James at his house in Switzerland to discuss the role directly. I had a thrilling con- versation with one of my favorite actors that day (his Alfred Hitchcock movie North by Northwest remains one of my all-time favorites), but it was unlikely he'd schlep across the world to do this role. The next day, I was listening to the car radio when they announced that James Mason had died the previous night. It dawned on me that I might have been the last person to whom he ever spoke.

I was thrilled to be working with Patrick, as a fan of his British TV series Secret Agent and in the belief that his TV series The Prisoner was (along with The Twilight Zone and The Adventures of Superman) the best TV series in history. The first day we met on set, I made Patrick an offer. I'd take him to dinner at the best restaurant on the north shore if he would agree to listen to me tell him what every detail in the symbolism-laden The Prisoner really meant or stood for. He agreed, and that night I regaled Patrick with such pronouncements as my fact that the Prisoner, who was never addressed by his name but only by his number, Number Six, was actually John Drake, Patrick McGoohan's famous spy character from his previous TV series. To prove it, I quoted from Johnny Rivers's theme song to the Secret Agent TV show . . . "Secret Agent Man, they've given you a number, and taken away your name." Patrick listened to my entire diatribe and then said, "That was fascinating, Michael! But totally wrong!" I was crushed. And then he turned my world upside down. "Why are you so sure the Prisoner had been a secret agent? Why couldn't he have been a scientist with the secrets they were trying to wrest from him being scientific ones?" asked a cunning Mr. McGoohan. I was blown away! The thought of him having been a scientist never occurred to me. As soon as I got home, I pulled out my VHS tape collection of the original seventeen episodes of The Prisoner and rewatched all of them in order from the perspective of Number Six being a scientist. And that's when I realized it made no sense. Patrick was just screwing with my head! And he did such a good job! This joke was on me.

Working with the Academy Award–winning actress Vanessa Redgrave was a privilege. She is truly one of the great actresses of a generation. Her performance in Three Sovereigns for Sarah was magnificent, and she, like the entire crew and cast, was so passionate that this production remain totally accurate at all costs . . . albeit on a diminutive PBS production budget. How totally accurate? One of our historians approached me on set one day and asked if I was really serious about our being accurate about everything? I assured him I was. Well, he informed me that in next week's shoot when Vanessa walks her cow through a field of cattle, the cattle in 1692 did not look like cattle does today. I wanted to know if we had to have the script rewritten or if there was any alternative. That's when he told me about Plimoth Plantation out by Cape Cod. It was a recreation of an authentic village from that era, populated by actors who never break character when questioned by visitors or when tourists try to interact with them. Plimoth Plantation had been crossbreeding cattle, and theirs did, indeed, look the same way cattle did in 1692. I jumped into my car and drove there. I explained to the officials what we were doing and that it was for PBS American Playhouse and assured them of our commitment to accuracy. The deal was made, and we wound up having a cattle drive up Route 1 through Saugus en route to Salem, Peabody, and Danvers. Just a typical atypical day in the life of a producer.

And if you think that was a strange producer's day, how about the time we were filming in a certain state and our production manager was unexpectedly visited on location in this beautiful right-to-work state by two burly men who "suggested" we hire their men instead of the people we had already started working with. They even offered us a bargain rate of twice as much as we were paying our dedicated current crew. Our unit production manager (UPM) thanked them kindly but refused their offer. They suggested we all think it over before our sets accidentally caught fire and people got hurt. They would come back the next day for our final response.

What to do? How should a producer deal with a so-called problem like this, where there didn't initially appear to be an option of considering multiple creative solutions? Luckily (?), I had already witnessed a similar situation as a boy growing up on the Jersey shore.

Batman's Batman by Michael Uslan is published today from Red Lightning Books.

Michael E. Uslan is Originator and Executive Producer of the Batman movie franchise, spanning from 1989's Batman to 2022's The Batman including The Joker, the Dark Knight trilogy, the Justice League series and more. His work has been awarded with Oscar, Emmy, People's Choice and Annie Awards and he was the first instructor to teach an accredited course on comic book folklore at any university and continues to teach as a Professor of Practice at Indiana University Media School. He is also the author of The Boy Who Loved Batman (IUP, 2019), which will become a Broadway play in the autumn with the Nederlander Organization. For Genius Brands, Michael also oversees The Stan Lee Universe and legacy of characters created by Stan post-Marvel. He was appointed to Joe Biden's task force of entertainment industry executives regarding gun violence and movies/television, and has served as a judge for the Asian Film Awards. He has also served on boards for Discovery Channel Global Education Partnership; the Association of Film Commissioners International; Wild Brain Animation Studio; Center for Excellence in Education; Youth Grants Panel, National Endowment for the Humanities; New Jersey Film Commission; Thomas Edison/Black Maria Film Festival; and Asbury Park Music & Film Festival.  A lifelong comics collector, he was born in Bayonne, NJ and now lives in both New Jersey and Los Angeles with his wife, Nancy.

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