Interview with Daniel Waters

[johnnygobbs]

For all of my fellow Batman Returns fans, I'd really recommend the following interview with Daniel Waters, focusing solely on this specific writing credit, conducted a few days ago:

https://diaboliquemagazine.com/episode-13-a-conversation-with-daniel-waters/

During the interview, Waters discusses his approach to writing a Batman script, his positive working relationship with Tim Burton (and his practically non-existent one with fellow Batman Returns screenwriter, Wesley Strick), his preference for writing for Catwoman and The Penguin over Batman, the function of Max Shreck's character, the thinking behind The Ice Princess character, his relative lack of interest in Commissioner Gordon, the positive response to the screenplay provided by Michelle Pfeiffer (as well as that of Annette Bening, who was originally set to play Catwoman), the notes Danny DeVito provided on his character, his negative feelings towards Batman '89, his displeasure at the way David Goyer and Christopher Nolan have, in his opinion, talked down Batman Returns, and his and Burton's differing approaches to devising the Pfeiffer-led Catwoman spinoff that never was.  He also debunks the myth that Harvey Dent was ever supposed to have any type of significant role in this movie (it seems pretty clear that, contrary to popular rumour, Dent was never a forerunner to Max Shreck).

Anyway, this is definitely worth checking out for anyone curious about the genesis of Batman Returns, and it's a pleasure to listen to the enthusiasm that the interviewer, Lee Gambin, evidently has for this wonderful and truly unique Batman film.

[Silver Nemesis]

Thanks for posting this, gobbs. I listened to the whole thing, and while it's mostly stuff I've heard Waters say before, there are nevertheless some interesting quotes.

At one point he recounts Michelle Pfeiffer saying:

"I was ready to do a Batman movie playing Catwoman, but you didn't tell me it was a Catwoman movie and Batman happens to be in it."

This reflects my own take on the movie these days, which is that it's more successful as a Catwoman film than a Batman movie. Waters also says:

"Michelle Pfeiffer used to like me. Now, since the Catwoman movie never happened, I'm like Lee Harvey Oswald that f***ed that up. So she hates me now. But whatever [...] Michelle Pfeiffer badgered me at a public event. Like, what's taking you so long? Why haven't you coughed up this goldmine character?"

Referring to the Catwoman spinoff movie, he says:

"I was gung-ho on making a big Batman movie without the problem of Batman."

It's revealing that he refers to Batman as a "problem" since he clearly struggled to engage with the character in his Batman Returns script.

On the 1989 film:

"God love Anton Furst, but I am not a fan of the first film, just from a story point [...] It's a turgid unhumorous--even the Prince songs aren't that good. I'm not a fan of the script. I know he got a lot of sh*t just from having Vicki Vale show up in the Batcave and not even make a dramatic thing about it [...] It's not my favourite Jack Nicholson performance either."

On whether he thinks Batman Returns influenced Batman: The Animated Series:

"Outside of the [Penguin's] flippers, I really don't [...] I didn't see all of the episodes. They're very well done, but I think they are much more left brain than me and Tim Burton's right brain kind of movies [...] They managed to work out our crazy kinks. They're much more good yarns, solidly done, than our kind of crazy bat-sh*t movies."

On the sixties TV show, and in particular the similarities between the mayor plot in Batman Returns and the 'Hizzonner the Penguin/Dizzoner the Penguin' episodes in the second season:

"Jeez, I didn't even know there was an episode like that. Didn't even know I'm a plagiarist [...] I did watch every episode of the TV show, I was a fan, but I wasn't like oh please lord let me one day do a Batman movie."

On the comics:

"David Goyer and Christopher Nolan can probably expose me even more that I was not a huge fan of the early comic books. I think Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns is one of the great pieces of pop culture of the last fifty years, and that really got me in a good mindset. But the early comics, I was not a voracious fan of those."

On Batman killing:

"I didn't like the cavalier way that--that was not in my script--the cavalier way he blows up a clown and puts a bomb on him and throws him down a vent. I had some respect [...] I don't remember if I did have him kill anybody, but I was not against it. Like, I was a big proponent of you can't have Batman wrap people in a mat and drop them off at the police station anymore. We don't live in that world anymore. It doesn't make sense. Like, I had no problem with Batman killing somebody. But I didn't do it that cavalierly, I remember that. I have a good friend, Josh Olson, who's also a screenwriter and wrote A History of Violence. But he's a big Batman purist. [...] He gave the greatest proclamation about Batman Returns. It holds true, as harsh as it is. That Batman Returns is a great movie for people who don't like Batman [...] Christopher Nolan has Joker hanging by a wire at the end of Dark Knight, and the Joker's already proven he can escape out of any prison. Like, we're supposed to think that's a satisfying ending? I want some deaths. I don't even forgive James Bond movies where they kill the villain off screen. I want to see the villain die."

He confirms that Catwoman's nine lives are not supernatural:

"We definitely rode that line. We didn't want to go completely supernatural [...] Maybe she hit the snow and she was just unconscious and just a bunch of alley cats wake her up. It doesn't have to be an Egyptian resurrection ceremony [...] She gets shot three times at the end and, like, she counts each one as a life. But you can get shot three times. So we played both ends of the stick [...] a liminal state we call it, the betwixt and the between, where the world is kind of so messed up that there's always kind of an element of like, well, wait, is this reality or is it supernatural? But you keep it vague and you keep it confusing, because that's the way it is in real life [...] If you read books about charisma too, that charisma is something that's supernatural. You just don't credit it as supernatural."

Tim Burton also confirms that Selina was not resurrected by the cats on his DVD commentary:

"...you see the creation with the cats coming around her. It's not supernatural. But we feed into the sort of mythology a little bit; of cats and nine lives and all that sort of thing [...] It's not supernatural, but you don't really know."

[BatmanFurst]

I just listened to this interview for the first time, it's a great listen for people who are at all interested in Returns. The most intriguing thing to me is that it sounds like Waters was less interested in a plot driven film and was more into essentially doing a character study. I think Returns still has that feel to it. There a little bits of plot in there but they mainly serve as a way to get these characters together.

[BatmanFurst]

Thanks for posting this, gobbs. I listened to the whole thing, and while it's mostly stuff I've heard Waters say before, there are nevertheless some interesting quotes.

At one point he recounts Michelle Pfeiffer saying:

"I was ready to do a Batman movie playing Catwoman, but you didn't tell me it was a Catwoman movie and Batman happens to be in it."

This reflects my own take on the movie these days, which is that it's more successful as a Catwoman film than a Batman movie. Waters also says:

"Michelle Pfeiffer used to like me. Now, since the Catwoman movie never happened, I'm like Lee Harvey Oswald that f***ed that up. So she hates me now. But whatever [...] Michelle Pfeiffer badgered me at a public event. Like, what's taking you so long? Why haven't you coughed up this goldmine character?"

Referring to the Catwoman spinoff movie, he says:

"I was gung-ho on making a big Batman movie without the problem of Batman."

It's revealing that he refers to Batman as a "problem" since he clearly struggled to engage with the character in his Batman Returns script.

On the 1989 film:

"God love Anton Furst, but I am not a fan of the first film, just from a story point [...] It's a turgid unhumorous--even the Prince songs aren't that good. I'm not a fan of the script. I know he got a lot of sh*t just from having Vicki Vale show up in the Batcave and not even make a dramatic thing about it [...] It's not my favourite Jack Nicholson performance either."

On whether he thinks Batman Returns influenced Batman: The Animated Series:

"Outside of the [Penguin's] flippers, I really don't [...] I didn't see all of the episodes. They're very well done, but I think they are much more left brain than me and Tim Burton's right brain kind of movies [...] They managed to work out our crazy kinks. They're much more good yarns, solidly done, than our kind of crazy bat-sh*t movies."

On the sixties TV show, and in particular the similarities between the mayor plot in Batman Returns and the 'Hizzonner the Penguin/Dizzoner the Penguin' episodes in the second season:

"Jeez, I didn't even know there was an episode like that. Didn't even know I'm a plagiarist [...] I did watch every episode of the TV show, I was a fan, but I wasn't like oh please lord let me one day do a Batman movie."

On the comics:

"David Goyer and Christopher Nolan can probably expose me even more that I was not a huge fan of the early comic books. I think Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns is one of the great pieces of pop culture of the last fifty years, and that really got me in a good mindset. But the early comics, I was not a voracious fan of those."

On Batman killing:

"I didn't like the cavalier way that--that was not in my script--the cavalier way he blows up a clown and puts a bomb on him and throws him down a vent. I had some respect [...] I don't remember if I did have him kill anybody, but I was not against it. Like, I was a big proponent of you can't have Batman wrap people in a mat and drop them off at the police station anymore. We don't live in that world anymore. It doesn't make sense. Like, I had no problem with Batman killing somebody. But I didn't do it that cavalierly, I remember that. I have a good friend, Josh Olson, who's also a screenwriter and wrote A History of Violence. But he's a big Batman purist. [...] He gave the greatest proclamation about Batman Returns. It holds true, as harsh as it is. That Batman Returns is a great movie for people who don't like Batman [...] Christopher Nolan has Joker hanging by a wire at the end of Dark Knight, and the Joker's already proven he can escape out of any prison. Like, we're supposed to think that's a satisfying ending? I want some deaths. I don't even forgive James Bond movies where they kill the villain off screen. I want to see the villain die."

He confirms that Catwoman's nine lives are not supernatural:

"We definitely rode that line. We didn't want to go completely supernatural [...] Maybe she hit the snow and she was just unconscious and just a bunch of alley cats wake her up. It doesn't have to be an Egyptian resurrection ceremony [...] She gets shot three times at the end and, like, she counts each one as a life. But you can get shot three times. So we played both ends of the stick [...] a liminal state we call it, the betwixt and the between, where the world is kind of so messed up that there's always kind of an element of like, well, wait, is this reality or is it supernatural? But you keep it vague and you keep it confusing, because that's the way it is in real life [...] If you read books about charisma too, that charisma is something that's supernatural. You just don't credit it as supernatural."

Tim Burton also confirms that Selina was not resurrected by the cats on his DVD commentary:

"...you see the creation with the cats coming around her. It's not supernatural. But we feed into the sort of mythology a little bit; of cats and nine lives and all that sort of thing [...] It's not supernatural, but you don't really know."

It's interesting that the actors were well aware that the villains were essentially the main characters of the film before filming began. I guess that's why I prefer 89 over Returns. Regardless of what some people say, I do very much think the 89 film is a Batman movie. Batman is the character that I leave the movie loving the most. Whereas with Returns Pfeiffer's Catwoman is the thing that I remember the most.

[Andrew]

It's cool that Waters and Burton developed such interest and sympathy for Catwoman and the Penguin, while still making the latter a definite villain, too bad they, or at least Waters, didn't get more for Batman.

I think Waters and the interviewer had an unacknowledged disagreement about Vicki Vale, Waters considering her kind of boring and obligatory (I agree) and the interviewer thinking it was unfair and maybe sexist to consider the B89 love interest/story boring.

I don't think Nolan has attacked BR and OTOH it seems harsh for Waters to consider him more like Max than like Bruce.

I thought with both Nicholson in B89 and Warren Beatty in Dick Tracy they were notably too old playing their characters.

[eledoremassis02]

Nice to see a definitive issue on the Dent issue. Though it's a shame because this would have been an interesting arc for Dent and I could definitely see Billy Dee Williams saying some of Max's memorable lines.

I guess he was cut really early on, still a missed opportunity as I really like his Dent.

Edit: Watching Returns now and it's interesting how Salina lives with almost TV sitcom life "Honey I'm home" because it (I'd assume unintentionally) links her closer to Bruce Wayne, whose idea of a normal life is/was very much based on TV. "You know how you come down, eat breakfast, kiss someone goodbye..."

[zDBZ]

Wish the interviewer would've asked more about the writing process for Batman himself; in previous interviews, Waters has implied that Burton was of a mind with Keaton about the angry Batman monologues not "being the character."