Happy Sad Confused - Matt Reeves, Vol. III (The Batman spoiler special!)

Episode Date: March 7, 2022

Are you ready for a spoiler-soaked conversation about THE movie of the moment, THE BATMAN? You've been warned! Director Matt Reeves returns to the podcast to chat about every aspect of his impressive new take on the Dark Knight. Tickets are now on sale for another(!) Happy Sad Confused LIVE event with Samuel L. Jackson! March 10th is the date! 7pm ET. If you can't be with us in person, virtual tickets are also available. You can purchase tickets here! Don't forget to check out the Happy Sad Confused patreon here! We've got exclusive episodes of GAME NIGHT, video versions of the podcast, and more! For all of your media headlines remember to subscribe to The Wakeup newsletter here! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Happy, Sad, Confused begins now. Today on Happy, Sad, Confused, it's a Batman spoiler special with director Matt Reeves. Hey guys, I'm Josh Horowitz. Welcome to another edition of Happy, Sad Confused. And yes, this is a deep dive with the filmmaker behind the movie that everyone is talking about. the Batman is in theaters and if you're listening to this and you have not seen the Batman

this might not be the podcast for you come back when you've seen it because for the next 45 minutes it's going to be me and Matt Reeves and I'm going to be asking the questions that I wanted to ask as I was watching the movie the ones that have been percolating in my mind

ever since I first saw the movie I got the chance to see it pretty early on actually at least over a month ago, and then I got a chance to see it again just a couple days ago. And there was a lot of outstanding issues I wanted to bring up with Matt, and he was kind enough to go wherever I wanted. And there's some really fascinating stuff in here. Now, I've given you the spoiler warning, right? So now we're cool, right?

For me to talk spoilers? Okay, that was it. You got your spoiler warning. Leave now. Okay, we're talking spoilers. So yes, in this podcast, among other things, we do talk about what's already been reported elsewhere, but I don't think in the kind of detail that Matt went in with me on this, of the appearance of the character that turns into the Joker in this mythology, in this creation of Matt's, this interpretation, I should say. The character played by Barry Keogan talks very much at length about the scene that was deleted from the first.

film, about the makeup, about his function in the story. That is fascinating. There's some really cool stuff towards the end of this conversation about the spinoffs that Matt has been contemplating, including one that seems to be off the table. But he goes into detail about what it would have been. He talks about, I bring up Robin. Could Robin appear in Matt Reeves? very dark, um, interpretation of the bat verse, as he likes to call it. Um, that and more in this spoiler special. Plus, there's just like really cool deep dive, like thematic, uh, conversation here. Matt is a deep thinker, a smart, smart filmmaker who I've been on the bandwagon for for so, so long. Um, I met him first, uh, when he was promoting let me in, right? Of course,

seen Cloverfield. But, uh, let me. me in was the first time we started chatting. And ever since then, I've covered all of his films, the two apes films, and now this Batman film. And he has got a lot to say. Some of the answers are very long, but that's great. I mean, he just goes into such detail with such passion, knows filmmaking inside and out. And I'm so thrilled that we get another brilliant filmmaker to take a crack at Batman. This is one of those characters. that can withstand different interpretations, whether it's Tim Burton or Joel Schumach or Zach Snyder or Christopher Nolan,

now Matt Reeves has his turn to take on The Dark Night. And he finds some new ways in, as you've seen by now. This is a full-on detective story. It's more Chinatown than a comic book movie. And I really enjoyed it. I was really, really excited by what I saw. excited for what the future could be for future Batman films, future spin-off movies or TV shows. There's a lot of interesting territory to mine, and I hope Matt sticks with it.

It certainly seems like he wants to, and as I tape this, the early box office numbers seem to indicate he may very well get a chance to return to his bat verse. So that is very cool. Okay, before we get to the main event, just a couple housekeeping things. I do want to mention, if you're listening to this before March 10th or even on the date of March 10th, we have a new happy, sad, confused live event that is taping in New York City the evening of March 10th. 7 p.m. We're going to have a screening of the last days of Tommy Gray, which is the new Apple TV Plus series starring Samuel L. Jackson, followed by a live one-hour conversation I'll be having with the legend that is Samuel L. Jackson at the 9th.

90 Second Street Y. So you can buy tickets right now. If you're in New York City, if you're close by, come on out, see a screening and early screening of the show and then enjoy me and Sam mixing it up for an hour. We're going to take audience questions. It's going to be a blast. He's one of the best interviews out there. Super candid and just the coolest man on the planet. If you can't get there in person, there are virtual tickets available. You can watch it live from the safety and comfort of your own. home. I'll put the link, of course, in the show notes. But, you know, we had so much fun the other day with Sam Hewann. This one's going to be a different kind of vibe, but just as cool and exciting. Sam Jackson and me, March 10th, New York City. You're not going to find a better, a better evenings entertainment than that, guys. Come on. If you're not sick of Batman talk, I had a conversation with Robert Haddinson and Zoe Kravitz. That is on MTV News's YouTube. page. Look up, I put it out of my social media on Instagram and Twitter. There's a ton of outlander stuff I've been doing guys, whether it's the Sam Hugh and 92nd Street Y event, whether

it's me surprising Sam in London, a Katrina Balf interview. That's all up on the Patreon page. Give it a try. As always, tons of extras on Patreon, video versions of the podcast whenever possible, and that's very often possible, go to patreon.com slash happy, sad, confused. You will not be disappointed. Okay. This is it. This is what I've been, I've been so excited to have this conversation with Matt. Ever since he was announced five years ago, like five years ago, it's crazy that it took this long, but we got here. The Batman is out. You've seen it by now. Now it's time to get into spoilers. Me and Matt Reeves. Please enjoy it. Matt Reeves is on, back on, I should say, the happy, set confused podcast.

He's a regular, Matt. Congratulations, man. You know I'm a long time admirer of your work. And this is just all my interests coming together. I hope you're feeling proud of what you've achieved here, man. Well, thanks, man. It's good to talk to you again. Yeah, it's a weird moment.

You know, it took a long time to get here. And it's finally out in the world. It's very surreal. I mean, you know, just to have some perspective on the thing. I mean, we've talked about, I've been talking to you. since let me in the apes films i mean like take me back to matt reeves as a kid think about it like you have been at the helm of two apes films like one of the quintessential monster movies and now have the keys to this maybe the most beloved comic character of all time uh it's got to feel

nice to sit in your in your seat right now it's it's very surreal i don't know that i ever would have thought that that would be uh you know the path that i would be on even just just just It's just kind of incredible. It was very, I have to say that I'm very fortunate that the two, well, I guess if you count Cloverfield, the three sort of, you know, franchises that kind of came my way, but certainly with Apes and Batman, that they really are for me the ones that I think I'm most suited to do. You know what I mean?

Because I think there are a lot of franchises. I mean, obviously right now, the way that everything's gone, and obviously it's even more extreme with the pandemic. But the movies that, that, you know, make it on the big screen is a very narrow bunch. Yeah. And I don't think that I would be, I don't think I would be right for most of them. And so it's really incredibly fortunate that two that really means something to me, not only since I was a kid, but also just that provide the opportunity for kind of interesting exploration. I mean, both the Apes story and the Batman story, they're, they're pretty great. So it's, I feel really, really lucky. Well, I mean, I was saying this to your stars the

other day. It's, it is, you know, I've loved all manner of Batman films. And the greatest compliment I can give you is that you found your own unique personal path into it. And it's, it's a really special piece of work. Man, I saw it for a second time last night. And it is both epic and intimate. It is a true, a full on detective story. And you've been kind enough to say you're willing to go into some spoiler territory. This is your spoiler warning for everybody here. Hopefully you have seen the film by now. First, take me back to the beginnings of this project. Because when you signed on, as I understand it, Ben Affleck was still potentially still involved. So I'm curious, if this story, did you imagine this story at one time

with an older Batman, with someone of Ben's age? Did you have the framework and would it have worked and how would it have been different with that kind of Batman? Well, I imagined the seeds of this story, but it was not, you know, when I was first approached, I was still pretty early in post on War for the Planet of the Apes.

And the post on those movies is the most intensive post that you can imagine because you've made the movie once And then you have to make it again with the animators and make sure that you're getting all of the performances that you got with your actors, but seeing them on these photoreal apes. So that's a very involved process. And they kept trying to, Warner Brothers, kept trying to set a meeting. And I was like, do they understand what I'm doing? It's a very busy time. So my understanding was that it was a general meeting.

And I kept turning them down and saying, you know, I'm sure I'm very flattered, but let's. let's get together after I'm finished with post, and that'll be a good time, which will be, unfortunately, months away. And my agent called me up after I think I turned them down two or three times. And he said, you know, that general meeting? I said, yeah, yeah, it's not really not good timing. And he said, yeah, and it's also not a general meeting. It's about Batman. And I was like, oh, okay. And I said, so, all right, you know, as I said, the Apes franchise meant something to me since I was a kid, and that's absolutely true for Batman, which actually even predates it because Batman 66 started the year I was born. And so Adam West was my Batman. And yeah, I've just,

you know, I'm a lifelong Batman fan, and I certainly have such respect and admiration for the movies that have been done. I mean, I think that those are some of the best comic book movies ever made. I think that the, so it's kind of like, okay, well, then I'm not going to just turn that down out of hand, even though I'm busy. So I'll make time for the meeting. They sent me a script. And it was a script that, you know, it made total sense that this is the way that they would want to do. It was very much kind of like an action gauntlet.

It was almost like a, right. On some way, it was kind of almost like a James Bondian kind of thing, but it was like that kind of thing. But the thing about it is, and it was very deeply connected at that point because, of course, it was ban. and it was the, you know, it was connected to the DCEU, so it started with scenes that involved the characters from, you know, other movies and all of that. And I totally saw why they were doing that movie. And I was like, oh, okay, yeah, I totally see that movie, but it's not a movie that I would make because I don't know, you know, the thing about the way I approach everything is that I have to feel like I have a personal way in because that's what attunes my compass

so that I know that the decisions I'm making are rooted in something, you know, tells me where the camera goes and how to sort of pitch the emotional tenor of a scene or what the stakes are and all of that. So I have to have that way in. And this, somebody would have made a great movie out of that. And initially, that was what Ben wanted to do. But then he was stepping down. And it just wasn't for me.

So I actually thought the meeting was going to be pretty short. And I thought it was going to be me seeing, which is interesting, exact same situation. on the first apes movie for me it was like look a franchise i love a world i love characters i love but this approach is not necessarily for me and if you want me then it's not going to work to do it this way i'd have to do it another way and this one had the added complication of because i was in the middle of post i couldn't really tell them what my approach would be right so i sort of said look i think you probably don't want me um because i can tell you that this is not the script that i wouldn't know how to direct. I'm not the right person for this. So you should, you know,

you should go on and find somebody else if this is really what you want to do. And that makes total sense. And they said, well, no, no, we would least like to know what you would do. And I said, well, to me, I think the things that were, that came to my mind from the beginning was that I knew that I wanted to take Batman as a character and allow that character and his story to be at the center of the narrative in such a way that he had room to evolve, so that he had the arc. Yes. You know, because a lot of times what happens is at a certain point, after you have the origin tale, you've got, you know, Bruce Masters himself, and he goes to this terrible trauma, and, you know,

they've been great versions of that story done. But this, obviously, given that it was Ben and where it was, there was no way that's what they were doing. And I wouldn't have wanted to do that. And I certainly, even after Ben left, didn't want to do an origin tale. But I wanted to do a story in which Batman had, was not static. I wanted to do something that the story would challenge him at a psychological level and would force him to confront himself and be engaged in some kind of internal struggle

that would make the story not just an external struggle between him and some iconic Rokes Gallery character, but that would be a story of revelation for him because I was interested in making the story about him. And I also felt that it could be very emotional. And I did think that the world's greatest detective part of the story was one area that hadn't been really done in the movies. And so I said, you know, I think that's about what I can tell you. And I said, and if you like that, which would be really exciting,

I could probably tell you more about what I want to do in about six months from now. And so we left the meeting and it was, you know, everybody was very nice. I have no idea whether or not that was going to sit with them. I figured they needed to think about that because they had a movie that they were ready to go forward with. And I got a call the next day saying, yeah, they want, they want to wait for you. And I was like, oh, wow. And so, and then I just put my head down and finish war for the planet of the ape.

So it was a very strange thing. So then during that time, Ben started reevaluating, his whole life what he wanted to do whether or not he wanted to be playing this character in this way whether he wanted to do this movie and by the time I had finished apes there was a transition where I had the opportunity to do something different

and then I still those were still things I wanted to do my first instincts are almost always the thing that is the seed of something that I feel is a path you know like when an idea comes to you and it feels like something to follow you kind of try to follow it and so I then

thought well gee and that's when i pressed upon them i said obviously now if ben is not wanting to do this i would love to do one that isn't connected at all oh that was i'm sorry there was one other caveat i said i said the other thing is is that a batman movie i think a standalone batman movie given the history of batman and the batman movies is a high enough bar that i also was adamant that if i were to come on that though it would be part of the dc e u i didn't want to service any of that the movie. I didn't want any of the other characters to appear. I didn't want references to them. I just figured it was enough to do Batman and Gotham. And that world was tough enough and rich enough to be able to try and it just felt like, okay, like, I don't, there's so much to do

the idea that I could serve more than just that idea. That's also something I didn't feel I could do. Right. And so anyway, when they said the next day that I was, that they would wait for me. I knew that they were okay with that idea. But then when Ben departed, I knew there was a chance to do something that was literally not connected to the DCU. And then I said to them, look, here's what I'd like to do. And obviously, since, you know, it's not going to be banned, now we have to recast and because we're going to recast, my feeling is I'd love to, in the search of trying to find that arc for Batman,

I still don't, wouldn't do an origin story, which obviously we wouldn't have done. But I do think that there's something about the idea of an early years, Batman, and the idea of that character not being fully cognizant of all of the motivations that are driving him. He's compelled and sort of addicted to this thing. So he's not, he wouldn't have been the disillusioned Batman that I think that Ben would have played for sure.

He would be a character lacking in kind of self-knowledge, a younger Batman. And they said, okay. And so I went off and started, I said, you know, and it's gonna be like a detective story. It's gonna be, I'm gonna give you the Batmobile chase. I'm gonna give you all that stuff. Right.

It's gonna be, I'm gonna, it's gonna be like China I'm going to try and figure out to do that kind of thing. And, you know, there's so many times throughout the course of making this film all the way back to the script stage where I kept thinking, is this suicide? Is this crazy? And yet part of me was like, but this is the thing, you can't come to a Batman movie and not feel like you have, first of all, not, you have to have your own personal way in because otherwise you're not going to have a compass. but also you have to feel like you're doing something different because there's been so many great, so what justifies, especially if you're going to do a new stand-alone,

what justifies restarting this character with new actors, new versions of all this, a new Gotham? And for me, it really was the opportunity to do this kind of detective story, but I wanted a detective story that was also character-oriented. So in that way, Chinatown was a good model because Jake Giddy's has this backstory that you never see, but you know that something happened to him in Chinatown. And it really made him the person he is today,

which is that he's kind of tried to, he's sort of, he's like an ambulance chaser now. He's so tried to, he's trying to convince himself that he's just this slick, callow, you know, opportunist. But under it all, there's some pull there that something happened. And over the course of that movie, you see all of that bubbling back up. And so the story, without ever going back to the origins directly,

becomes quite personal for him and then by the end it becomes this big sort of you know personally um tragic story really and so i was like well that's what i want is i want to make sure that we're not just doing a detective story he's following the clues and solving it and want him to do that part of it but i wanted it to be one where the journey itself was going to become unexpectedly personal yes and that to me was really important what's the what's the first scene that you wrote and does it remain in, does it remain in the film? Well, I always do everything chronologically. So the first thing I wrote was the opening.

Yeah, it's exactly, and I wrote that exactly as it is. I wrote, you know, one of the things I do when I'm writing is I try to write, I often write a very large number of the shots that you see in the film. They're written on the page because what I'm trying to do is find the movie. And so I start trying to, from the beginning, search for things that make it feel like I'm making the movie on paper, and then we make the movie in prep, and then we make the movie, and then we remake the movie again in post.

And so, you know, a lot of the scenes that have very specific camera ideas, those ideas started in the script, and that's because part of, I'm not fast, I'm super slow, and part of why I'm slow is I'm trying to find that thing I'm connecting to, and I've said this, like, a bunch of times when people ask me about the writing process, and the creative process. For me, I feel like when you start with the blank page, it's kind of like being in a totally dark room on your hands and knees, and you're just crawling around until you get your hands on something. And so when this idea of starting in the Riddler's point of view came to me, I thought, oh, this is interesting. I also thought there was something,

which I have to admit, appealed to me slightly perverse about it because I thought, wow, every other superhero movie is going to begin with an action sequence. That's just what it's going to be. So I thought, so to play out this long shot through the binoculars and have the big title, I mean, that was in the script too. It was like it said, you know, big red letters full of screen the Batman. And then you go in on the binoculars and I thought, oh, so the message of that subliminally is, is this the Batman's point of view? Who's breathing? What are we doing? And then that would call, that was one of those early ideas where I thought, oh, there's a dialogue between what the Ridler's doing and what Batman's doing. And there's a

comparison being made. And so that beginning scene was really the birth of that. And then the Ave Maria, which was always in the script, that idea didn't come to me until we were in editing. And then I was like, hey, I knew that Paul had done this beautiful moment where he's singing the song. That was script. Oh, I see. So this, you added it after he ended up. I added it because I was like, there were many places where Ave Maria was scripted and we did do it. It was like at the marriage memorial and we had that but then I just felt like to me it was really important that when he sang it that it felt absolutely inevitable that it felt like from the very beginning of this movie it was all leading to this moment where he was going to start taunting Batman by

singing Ave Maria and so somewhere in there the original music that was tempted in there was all kind of suspense music and it was some Michael stuff and that kind of stuff and I was like, I don't know why, but what if we just start this? I mean, I did know why. It was because of the idea. But it was just like this thing where we just tried it. And we were like, oh, that's unexpected. So it continued to actually fulfill this idea of slight perversity, which was to take a scene that would never, ever start. The idea that a big title just pops on, we don't have, we don't have a big title sequence. We don't have anything. We just have the logos. I had to go to them. I said, listen, can we do a thing and not have the DC big sort of logo? Can I not have

the water tower, can we just have logo, logo, black, the Batman, and then Ave Maria plays, and the audience are probably going like, what are you doing? And so it was like, you know, half the audience is probably like, you're out of your mind and I'm out. Well, it throws you into the head of the Ridler just as, I mean, later there's a kind of a voyeuristic scene of Batman watching. It almost reminded me of a little De Palma-esque, creepy watching these people. which all comes from, by the way, of course. Hishka. Yeah, of course.

So, I mean, that's what I think of your films over the years. It's all about perspective. And it's one of the things I think you do really, really well, which is put us, I mean, you think about Cloverfield. I mean, the reason that movie works is the unique perspective. You think about Let Me In, and we're kind of in these dueling perspectives of a child and in a killer, like this, like monster.

And in this film, I think what, for me, what really jumped out from the beginning, is while we've had Batman stories, and some of them have, yes, as you said, you get kind of enamored with the villains maybe too much, you're really more in the head of Batman than you've ever been. And that's literally being, taking his POV at times. It's also some narration in the beginning. You know, the Gotham Project, his diaries. Was that ever, I mean, by and large, it's the beginning 30 minutes. We hear more of that. And then it comes back at the end. And was there a temptation to weave that through the entire film at any point, or was it always

setting it up in the coming back? That was something at the writing stage that I think when I first started, I thought maybe, you know, I think there was part of me that was thinking, you know, I was, there were kind of two things that inspired that in weird paths that I arrived at them at. But one of them was the idea, because I was very interested in the idea of what it meant psychologically to be Batman and the idea of the idea of putting on this mask night after night. night. It made me think of Jekyll and Hyde and the idea of the way Dr. Jekyll keeps this book is in the form of this sort of charting of the experiment of that he's, you know, that he's that he's doing on himself and the effects of it. And I thought, oh, that'd be interesting if we had this kind of diary. And then it also made me think of Travis Bickle and how Travis Bickle is trying to kind find his way in a way that obviously is much even even in sort of lost in the

mystery of even less self-knowledge I would say than than Bruce is but all of that kind of that came from year one in in looking at year one I did a deep dive in the comics and you know it's interesting because a lot of the comics have narration in them right I mean that's kind of how how you do it and so that idea of trying to feel like it's true to the comics and specifically this idea of the kind of Travis Pickle thing came to me because of the year one you're in Gordon's uh narration and you're in Batman's narration which is pretty cool I mean I'm so I really love I just oh this is all really really interesting to get into their heads in this way and I feel it like it's almost like

a diary almost journalistic I just love that and then there's a actually a moment in the comic where Bruce, before he's Batman, goes to the east end, and he puts a scar in his face, and he needs another disguise because he's not Batman yet, and he also, though, can't go as Bruce Wayne because people will recognize Bruce Wayne. So he puts on what looks like a kind of army jacket that looks like it could be Travis Bickles. And I had the commemorative edition, and I was going through the drawings, and then I was going through the stuff at the end, and there's a bunch of notes where when Frank Miller was writing his notes to Masichelli for what to draw, he said,

in this panel, it looks like Bruce has won the Travis Bickle lookalike contest. And so I was like, oh, yeah, okay. So this, I don't know. I mean, here's the thing. The Martin Scorsese's movies made me want to be a director, you know? And so I just connected to that idea that, oh, we could make this like a Gothic noir

that's like taxi driver in a way or, but also like French connection. Like there was a kind of, I guess there was something in the vibe of, year one that connected to me to a vibe of filmmaking that seemed like a really great way to approach the filmmaking of a of a neo-noir Batman. And so in it, there was all that narration. So when I started, anyway, this is the longest answer ever. I don't know. It's all great. Yeah. When I was writing, I think initially I did think,

oh, yeah, and maybe this narration follows us through the whole movie. And then I realized that there's a point at which, as I was writing, it was important to get into his to understand where we were and to understand what his mindset is. And it was really important to check in again at the end so that you could track this evolution. That was super important. But I realized at a certain point, and it's funny, even I went back and looked at taxi driver again, and there is definitely much more narration than there is in our film. However, even taxi driver doesn't keep it up the whole time.

There's a distancing effect, I think, if you do it too much. And so once he gets involved in the narrative, narrative, I kind of felt like, oh, yeah, and I kind of stripped. I think there might have been a point somewhere in there where I might have had one other line or one other section, and I just, at the script stage, took it out. It just was never, so there was never a temptation to keep it going through the cut because it was one of these things that had sort of been excised even in the kind of planning stages during the script.

Is there, for something like this, you know, you talk about kind of falling in love, I mean, you know, as a kid falling in love with Batman and seeing cognizant when you kind of take this on of like how much real estate there is in this world and how every nook and cranny of Gotham is fascinating. Do you create like a Bible in a way like when you like, I mean, do you create like the backstory of your particular Alfred and and Oz, et cetera? Like are there documents that kind of flesh out the rest of this world that are useful for you? There is, but I would say that it's closer to Bruce's journal, which is that I write in an online sketchbook. And I just keep writing ideas. If you were to, if you were to take that and literally

transcribe it, it would be a, it would look like I was insane because it doesn't, it doesn't hold together as a narrative. It's just a collection. It's kind of like, it's like the place where you put stuff as you're on your hands and knees. And what I often find, or not often find, it is the process for me, is that I come up with an idea. I have to have my notebook and the pens, you know, stuck in the binding and rip it out and you write it down as if, oh, this is, I got to keep track of this idea. You know, the ideas are, there's a, I was a book I remember I read in the pandemic from David Lynch,

where we talked about the creative process and it's like fishing, you know, fishing for ideas and things, but there is something to that, right? You kind of, you use your conscious mind to establish the search. The subconscious, these ideas sort of emerge, and they're the things that are kind of emerged that means something to you. So you're searching for meaning, right? So I have an idea and I'll write it down and I keep thinking, oh, okay, that's an important one.

And then what I do is at a certain point after I've been doing this for a while, I'll go back and I'll look and I'll see that something that I've written down as if it was the first time, I've written down like five, six times. And then important idea. Something there, yeah. Yeah. And so then it starts forming that way, but this notebook just keeps getting filled in. And I will, you know, I have ideas will come about people's backstories. and, you know, I was doing a lot of reading of comics and things that would appeal to me in the comics. I'd kind of just write a piece of that idea down as an inspiration for something that could be taken and sort of turned and transformed.

And so in a weird kind of sprawling way, and this one in particular, because the story is the story of the history of Gotham, which, you know, at many points, I thought, why did I do that? But I know why I did it. I mean, it's sort of like, well, if you're going to do a story that isn't an origin tale, you want to be defined. definitive right anyway so I want this is a good entry point that these crimes are describing a history of corruption in a place like that's a great sort of noir kind of concede if you can land it yeah and yet it meant that so much of what was happening that there was violence happening in the presence that needed to be stopped but it was referring to corruption that had been ongoing in the past and so

there was a tremendous amount of backstory that had to be worked out and then figuring out how to do that it just was it was uh it's one of those things where i you know if i if i knew how hard it was going to be from the beginning i don't think i would have done it exactly that way again but that's what you always do you know do any of the ideas because i know there's obviously a bunch of other ideas and and you know you need this we want this movie to to succeed and but there are plans for this gotham p.d show and i know you've talked about an arkham show et cetera and the penguin um do are there any that involved that history of gotham are there any that would go backwards oh yeah well you know, I mean, one thing that we're not doing that I was going to do. So there's the Gotham

police show, which where it's, that one actually is put on hold. We're not really doing that. We're doing a story about, um, my idea for, that gave birth to the Penguin series is I was talking about the show that we were doing with HBO Max with, with the executives at HBO Max. And I said, you know, they said, you know, we really want to, we want to dig deeply into areas that maybe wouldn't traditionally have been in the streaming space off of the idea that you're also trying to do something in the theatrical world that is, you know, sort of serving this, you're trying to do a trilogy or whatever it is, who knows, whatever it is. And so I said, well, and they said, we don't want you to take the characters that are precious to you and save them for just the movies.

There has to be, you know, we really encourage you to, and I was like, well, I said, I did, you know, the whole idea for me because Oz, the penguin in the story, is he's a little bit of a red herring. He starts in one way and then you realize that he's, and the reason that I chose him for that is because I thought, oh, that's a big enough name that if you're looking for who the informant is, it would make sense that it would be somebody who's that iconic. Maybe this is that version of this character. And so that's kind of how that was calibrated. And then I thought, well, to me, the fun of that conception is that he is not fully formed yet and that he's not yet become the kingpin

and that I thought that there was a story in the wake of what happens at the end of this story where there's a power vacuum and you've got all of these and that's why right now you see Oz at the end of the movie looking out over the city standing in Falcone's office and thinking okay

because the idea there was that he has been underestimated by everyone but he knows and so I said you know I kind of see like an American dream Scarface Gotham story. Like a guy who nobody, like Tony Montana, no one thinks this guy could be anything.

And he has a brutal desire to prove everyone wrong. Like if it's like Fredo meets Tony Soprano or something, you know? And I said, you know, and I just think that there's a way to see that character and see all of, again, get into, in a novelistic

way, which is to me what's exciting about long form is, you know, when you're telling a movie story, you're trying to come up with the story within the framework of the film that refers to the past and it implies a future, but this is the current part of it, or not the current part of it, but the critical part of it, to see, to understand what that story means, right? That's the whole thing. When you're trying to do long form, what you're trying to do is chapter one of a very long story with the idea being that each of these chapters, you're revisiting things about this character. And, you know, in total,

in the aggregate of all of it, it's the epic story of this character, but it's very novelistic. There are so many stories to tell. And each of those stories tells this larger story, whereas when you're trying to tell a movie, you're trying to tell the one larger story. So what excited me about doing a penguin story, especially since the idea was that here was this guy who was so underestimated and had all of these sort of desires to sort of make up for the wounds of his life, that I thought, wow, and especially the way Colin played him. I just thought that was really exciting. So they got very excited and said, we'll do that show, like on that phone call. I said, oh, great. This would all be so easy. Yeah, exactly. They said, we're doing that show. I was like, okay. Because we were talking about, the GCPD show and they were saying like, look, this isn't squarely into the characters that we think that we know, you know, because I had this whole idea

that was kind of like a sort of like Prince of the City and I wanted Oh yeah, Sydney Lomette kind of thing. Yeah, it was a Siddler Lemaat thing and what I wanted to do was I wanted to do, the series was going to be kind of like Prince of the City where it was going to be year one. Because

the movie is year two and I wanted it to be the first appearance, but it wasn't going to be a Batman story. It was going to be about this corrupt cop. And it was going to be about how the worst gang in Gotham were the GCPD. And he was going to come across paths. He would have touched paths, you know, with Gordon who would have been, you know, he would have been someone to measure him against. But it would be a battle for his soul, right? And the idea is that the appearance of this character. Now, I love this idea. I love what you're talking about. It's super cool to me. And they

didn't not like the idea they just wanted it to be they wanted to center a show on a character who was more i get it you know i get it yeah something and so i was like okay so maybe that someday we'll do that show but in any case this show became that show and there's another show that we're talking about off of the movie too but so the arkham thing is that we're trying yeah in order to in order to come up with all of the character's stories there's a tremendous amount of backstory that you have to get into and then obviously the idea is that this story look I never wanted to tell a story certainly not a movie story that was meant to be chapter one right because you never know if you're going to get a chance to do another one so you have to swing for the fences and say this is

this is my chance this might be it this is the one so if this is it I'm going to land on the table so warts and all it may work it may not but this was my attempt to do this story and the only thing about a Batman story, though, is no matter where it ends, it doesn't really end with Batman's story being over because that means that the world doesn't need Batman, and of course the world needs Batman, because, and that's to me what was exciting about this story as well, is that Gotham is such a lens on our world. And there's never a time when crime and corruption is out of vogue, sadly. And there are the ebbs and flows and there's times when crime is at an all-time low, but it isn't gone. And it's always swinging back because that's

human nature. And that is one of the, you know, that's our struggle to live with each other, to live in this world. And unfortunately, I would say even over the course of just making this movie, given that I started in 2017, and here we are, it's coming out five years later, things sort of bubbled up in the world that in many ways are closer to the vision of Gotham than I ever intended and in certain moments

while we're making the movie after the pandemic kid and we found a way to go back there were moments where we kind of looked at each other as we're making the movie going oh my God like the whole point was to sort of show a heightened level of corruption

and yet there are moments now where you look at the world around us and you go is is the world worse than Gotham and so um yeah giving a run for its money i'll put it that way yeah yeah it's kidding it's so anyway so the point is is that that story again they always knew you know because especially because of where it was leaving him with selina you couldn't look at that story and go like yeah yeah go ahead go with her it's fine that's the story no no no no his story is just beginning though it feels yes there is there's a distinct the distinct arc from from vengeance to hope, as is illuminated by seeing it twice. Talk to me a little bit about that. And that was the

actually, once I got into the story, that was, that was the early concept. That was one of the hands and knees idea. Because I, because in looking at all of the vengeance stuff, you know, I, I knew I didn't want to say I'm Batman. That had been done really well. And, and looking at the comics and the animated series and the Conroy thing, you know, or, you know, I'm vengeance. I am the night. And I was like, oh, I'm vengeance. That's cool. And then that just sparked this idea. because of trying to see him sort of being consumed by his shadow side and not yet having incorporated that enough to understand how much of what is driving him is personal and that that and is that even the right path you know is being a vigilante the right path taking the law

into your right hand into your own hands and and the idea of vengeance is that being your prime motivator that's that's a that's a that's a really dark question is that really the right path And so I felt like that idea of trying to find him in the early days of being on an arc from being squarely rooted in vengeance to the beginnings of understanding he has to be more and he has to represent hope to people so that they don't feel desperate in this place. That was that was one of the very early ideas. Matt, we can't do a spoiler talk without talking about the Joker. So, you know, well, there's this guy named Barry Keogan, a very talented actor. that shows up at the very end of this film. We get enough of a glimpse of him.

We hear a bit of a laugh. When did that idea emerge that Barry was your guy and that you wanted to plant the seeds of this larger world and this other iconic character? You know, it's not what people think based on the way that it's currently represented in the movie because the way that that character, once I knew that I wasn't doing an origin story,

but I wanted to do an early years, Batman, and in all the comics, and when you read it, there's a lot of Rokes Gallery Genesis stories that come in response to the fact that there is a mass vigilante declaring himself or being called the Batman in Gotham. And so they're kind of a response. And so I thought, oh, well, actually,

given how early this is, that we're entering the second year of the Gotham project, that it would mean that their stories are their origins. And so I thought it would be interesting. I like the idea of having a Gotham that felt like it already pre-existed. And this guy was going down the streets. And if you turned down the wrong alley, you would meet somebody in their sort of genesis stages of that. And somewhere along the way, once it became this serial killer story about the riddler leaving messages to Batman with the idea that Batman's only power is in being anonymous and being this kind of

apparition that he's trying to create this phantom. And so when somebody starts shining the light on him by writing to him, it's very unnerving. Like, don't call me Batman. I call myself Batman. We call myself vengeance, right? And so I thought, well, he would be so unsettled by that and unsettled by the crimes and would feel that he would need to get into that mindset, that psychological mindset so that he would try to profile the character. And so there was a scene, which we shot, which is actually very cool, which I'm sure we'll release as a, it's one of the, it's not a short film, so this is one of the few deleted scenes. But in the overall, it wasn't necessary. And in fact, it was important to keep the story going. And there wasn't anything in this scene that narratively

and thematically wasn't happening in the overall, because it was all about how he went to Arkham and there was this character whose face was out of focus the whole time. You're focused on that glass and you're seeing, and Mike Marino did this incredible makeup where I told him, okay, so you've got the boca, the out of focus boca of these lenses to sketch in Conrad Veit. You have the man who laughs, like the idea of doing that kind of thing. And the idea is that he's going to this guy who somehow he says to him at the beginning of the scene, he says it's almost your anniversary, isn't it? And you realize, oh, Batman has something to do with this guy being in jail. And he's obviously a killer as well. And the idea is that he is the character you're referring to, but has not yet declared himself

that. It's the early days of this. And they already have this kind of connection. And he is, he has an insidious understanding of psychology. And so Batman is resisting. He's like going, well, what, what are you afraid that this guy makes you look weak? I mean, you're so similar. or you're, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you think he makes you look soft. And he's like, I'm, I'm not here to talk about me. And it's so, it's this whole thing where there's a kind of, um, psychological battle of wills as if he can get any clues as to why this guy's writing to him and what he might do next. And, um, the, the joker actually ends up being completely right about the journey of the movie is interesting. So probably another reason why we ended up not needing it in the movie. And the movie. And, He's your lector. He's your Hannibal Lecter expert. He goes to a little bit. He's very lector.

Like I read, I read Mine Hunter and that whole idea of getting into that thing. So that's what that was. And then the final scene of the movie was a kind of payoff to that scene. So the idea is that the Ridler, it was that final scene in that movie is really to track Paul's sort of where he ends up in the movie where he's devastated. And Paul is so delightful in that scene with Barry. and Barry's great with him. And Barry, by the way, I'm really excited to share the scene because Barry, who's a wonderful actor,

what he and Rob did in that scene that we cut is really interesting and cool. It's creepy and eerie and psychological. And the makeup that Mike did is very, very cool. We talked about that. I said, you know, I wanted an origin tale that went back to the Conrad Vite idea, which meant I didn't want, you know,

Nolan had done this really fantastic thing with the scars and what is the origin of the scars and the unreliable answers he's giving? And you're just, oh, my God, this is just, which was amazing. And of course, you'd had other iterations. You have the classic ones where, you know, he falls into the vat of chemicals. You have the Nicholson thing. So you have all these things that have been in the comics. And I thought, well, I'd love to do something that's like the man who laughs,

which is not a horror film, but it's kind of like Phantom of the Opera, which is where the original Bob Kane, Bill Finger version of the character comes from, which is this guy has a kind of congenital disease where he can't stop smiling and how horrifying that would be. And so I thought, oh, well, here's an interesting origin. What if this guy has, what if he's essentially like the elephant man in that he's born with a degenerative disease that has disfigured him so terribly? And instead of becoming like John Merrick, or at least John Merrick, as we know from the beautiful film by David Lynch, who has this beautiful soul within this exterior that is so horrifying, if instead he felt that the fates had played a kind of

nihilistic joke on him by making him a freak from birth, and that that would make him a tune to, like, basically being able to get into the minds of people who looked at him with terror because they, from childhood, he's used to that look. And so he has this look at humanity, which is very dark and informed by this disease, that he had no control over. and so he was marked from the beginning to become what he becomes and he had not yet declared himself the joker that he'd do that in this thing so that's what mike and i talked about and mike was like mike is a genius and he was like he loved the idea of elephant man and suddenly started sculpting and started doing all of this incredible Mike did the stuff for Colin for Penguin and he's an incredible prosthetics makeup artist and he does he's a wonderful sculptor and he so he did all of that and so that scene was really fun to do and then at the end of the movie I did briefly try taking it out and I noticed that when I took that scene out that the stakes of the final scene between Selena and Batman changed entirely because the whole idea of that scene is that he's saying she's saying you know this places is never going to change. And then he's saying, like, I have to try. And if you don't feel the menace of what's coming, not necessarily in another movie, but just in the power vacuum,

then it kind of feels cerebral and not emotional. And so you know that Batman is faded. He's sort of his personal scars make him perfectly suited to being this character. And so, you know, as much as we'd all like to think, oh, well, just go off and be happy. That's not going to make us happy because we want him to continue to do what he's going to do. And so when I took that scene out, the ending didn't play as well. So this is a long way of saying that that was, yes, you're correct. That is the character who it is. And it is meant to refer to his origins. And there absolutely are ideas that I have about doing something with that character. But it's not meant as a kind of classic superhero

Easter egg movie, a movie moment where it's kind of like, oh, well, that's the next movie, huh? Right. I'm not saying that's the next movie at all, not even slightly. Last thing for you. I know you have to run. But one aspect of Batman in the compass, I feel that it's never been cracked really well in the films with all due respect to Joel Schumacher and Chris O'Donnell is Robin. Can Robin exist in your universe? Can a teenage boy or girl kind of work in this?

this horrible Gotham that you have created, this, this, this, this pit of despair. I mean, that in the nicest possible way, but it's, it's a harrowing idea to see a teenager in that world. Maybe. I'll just say maybe. I don't know. Okay. I don't know.

Here's a thing. I have a lot of ideas about what I want to do. I'm not sure what the next story is, but I have, I had, as I said, like, what the whole Colin Penguin story was born of the fact that there were things that I saw in this moment, and I definitely want to take on this moment of how this is a power vacuum. But I'm not sure exactly where the point of entry is going to be. And I do, look, you know, when I was a kid, as I said, Adam West was my Batman and Bert Ward was my Robin. And so obviously the tone of that, I didn't see any of the camp in that. I just thought it was, I don't know, it was just so drawn to those guys

doing what they were doing and driving that car and having all those gadgets. And I think, you know, now the idea is obviously trying to think about whether or not there's something interesting to do as a filmmaker with that. And I think, look, the notion of here's the thing. For me, whatever that story is going to be, it's going to be to take these characters and specifically Batman's character and put them in some kind of emotional jeopardy. So when you talk about what you're talking about, there may be. a really interesting story to put, you know, there have to be emotional stakes so that you get drawn

into that character's story. I don't want that character become a cipher. I don't want to be like, okay, so we saw it. It wasn't an origin tale, but you know what? That was kind of his origins. And now he's just perfect. Like, no, you need to test the character again and again and again. And for me, yeah, there might be something in that. I don't know. I'm going to, you know, there's a deep dive that already happened at the beginning. And now I'm going to have to deep dive again if we have the chance to make another one and so we shall see I hope you get the chance man it's it's always a pleasure to catch up with you um as you can tell I'm a big fan of this one and uh there is a lot to be explored so hopefully the audiences will come out and support it certainly the critics are loving this one um enjoy the moment

I'm sorry weren't able to enjoy the premiere but hopefully you're feeling the love for this man and we can chat again soon thanks man I look forward to it and so ends another edition of happy sad confused remember to review write and subscribe subscribe to this show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm a big podcast person. I'm Daisy Ridley and I definitely wasn't pleasure to do this by Josh. The Old West is an iconic period of American history and full of legendary figures whose names still resonate today. Like Jesse James, Billy the Kid and Butch and Sundance, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and Geronimo.

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