Bat Rambling

1989's summer movie season was an historic bloodbath. In about a month, the record for having the biggest opening weekend was broken three times. First by Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, then Ghostbusters II, and then finally by Tim Burton's Batman, which opened 25 years ago today. I was 12 going on 13 when it opened, and I was the target audience. I had started reading Batman comics a few months earlier, just after the "A Death in the Family" storyline.

Cover art for "A Death in the Family" graphic novel.

But I didn't get to see it on June 23. Or the 22nd, when it opened early. Or the 24 or 25. I didn't get to see Batman until Monday, June 26. That was tough for 12 year old me to handle. I don't want to blame my mom for this, but it was her fault (sorry mom). My Bar Mitzvah was on June 24 and she wouldn't let me be out at night, thinking I needed my rest for the big day. I don't think she understood the desire to see this movie. On June 24, my cousins came over to go to the synagogue with us. Guess what? They went to the advance showing on the 22 and decided to re-enact many of the highlights of the film for me. To this day, when I see the Joker dancing and shooting Grissom, I'm reminded of my cousin Alan's recreation. The line, "Bob, gun" also sticks in my head from this early spoiler.

As mentioned above, I did get to see Batman opening week. My mom took me to the AMC Marlton 8 in the evening. I won't go into too many details, I'll just say I left the screening less than impressed. In fact, it was the only time I've seen that movie in the theater. I never had any desire to revisit it on the big screen. I've seen it a few times on home video, and I still don't like it. It was an odd feeling. Summer 1989 belonged to Batman. You couldn't go anywhere without seeing a Bat-symbol advertising the movie. It was the movie everyone was talking about. I kept reading the comics, too. But for some reason this movie has never connected with me and I'm still baffled by its popularity.

Thankfully there was one thing that came out of the movie that I did enjoy, and that was Danny Elfman's score. It wasn't released until later in the summer. Instead, the big Batman soundtrack that was in all of the stores was an album of Prince songs, only some of which were in the movie. The Elfman score was released though, and I remember finding it and buying it immediately. I found it on cassette first, so that's what I listened to. A short time later I found it on CD, and I bought that, too. It became one of those albums imprinted onto my brain. Which was fortunate!

The original CD album cover.

A few years ago, I found out that La-La Land Records was working on an expanded release of the original CD. I called them and asked if I could work on it, since I was familiar with this score. I was told they had a producer, but if they had any problems they'd get in touch with me. It turns out, there were some issues with the materials they had and things were missing. I was asked to see if I could locate some of these missing cues. I made some calls, we brought in some more elements, and we were able to piece together the score. The CD was completed on time and they debuted it at Comic-Con in 2010, where it was a big success. At that convention, Danny Elfman was interviewed by Jeff Bond (who wrote the notes for the La-La Land album) and while this panel was meant to plug another project, our CD got mentioned!

Danny Elfman and Jeff Bond at Comic-Con in 2010.

Since then I've had the opportunity to work on the sequel scores, "Batman Returns" and "Batman Forever" and remain hopeful that someday we'll get to complete the series with "Batman & Robin", which never had a score release.

Here I am with Danny Elfman.

Later, he signed the CD I co-produced!

Presentation is Key

In my last post, I talked about all of the screenings in LA. It's true, we get a lot of great movies here. But are they always shown properly? Seeing a movie presented properly can sometimes be a challenge. One of the theaters I wrote about was the New Beverly. They try to show 35mm film whenever possible. I only just saw my first digital showing there, but as it was a new movie that may not have had a 35mm print made, this was acceptable.

It was a double feature of "Jodorowsky's Dune" and "ALIEN" in honor of Swiss surrealist, H.R. Giger who recently passed away. "ALIEN" was shown on film, the New Beverly's preferred format. For a theater that loves to show film, one would think they'd be better at it.

35mm prints come on reels, each about 20 minutes long. The previous generation of multiplexes put these reels together to make one long continuous print. If the person assembling those reels did the job properly, you should never be aware of the changeover between reels. The New Beverly doesn't use this system. Instead they use two projectors.

This is the way things were done before multiplexes and "platters", and it's a skill for sure. The timing has to be perfect, and back when there were actual projectionists, a good changeover was the sign of a competent projectionist. The New Beverly rarely has seamless changeovers and I can't figure out why. "ALIEN" started out of frame. That means the top of the screen was actually the bottom of the image and vice versa. Reel 2 started out of focus. And reel 7 had an issue with a plate inside the projector so an extraneous part of the film, one never meant to be projected, was showing up on the scrim to the left of the image. That means there was a distraction during the climax of the movie. This was not the sign of a good presentation. The digital showing of "Jodorowsky's Dune" was perfect.

This would seem to indicate that digital must be superior to film. I won't get into that debate here. Both have their advantages, but I'm more inclined to see a movie if I learn that a print is being shown. And I've seen bad digital presentations. In fact, I experienced one last week in an unexpected place! We went to one of the tiny screening rooms on the Sony lot. I've been to these screens numerous times and they are top-notch. They have spectacular sound and usually look great. However, for this showing of "Neighbors" I sensed something was wrong with the presentation. After the movie was over I found the projectionist and I mentioned to him that the image seemed a little dim in the theater. He went on to tell me that they were having a 3D show the next day and the special attachment for that was still in place. So instead of a good looking bright image, we were treated to a muddy dim mess. I will admit it was refreshing to get an honest answer from the projectionist. Usually, when you have a complaint about something technical, people look at you like you're crazy.

I once saw "Superman II" with Ilya Salkind, the producer, in attendance and the left speaker and center speaker wires were crossed. This meant for the entire show, the dialogue came out of the left speaker, instead of the center channel, as it's supposed to. I may have been the only one to notice this. I spoke with the projectionist about it afterwards but I don't know if anything was done to fix it and I'm not sure I was believed. I suspect that when it comes to movie sound, people are not as observant as they are with the picture. If you've never thought about where the sound comes from, you're not going to notice when it's wrong. But everyone can see when a movie is out of focus or improperly framed. And some of us can tell when it's too dim!

My hope is that the presentation and showmanship improves at all of these theaters. We're not just watching images flicker away on a white sheet with multiple speakers blasting around us. A well shown movie will transport the audience and make the movie come alive. It can be a magical experience and that's why I love going to the movies.