Batman
Once, while shooting a commercial at a Hollywood studio, I was sitting with a friend when a big celebrity walked by. Over the years, I’ve seen or worked with a long list of famous people so you’d think I wouldn’t get that excited about a celebrity sighting. But this was no ordinary celebrity and I was thrilled. After he went by, I nudged my friend and said excitedly, “Did you see that? That was Adam West!” The friend, who’d been on the earth for all of 26 years said, “Who is Adam West?” I sighed and looked around for my walker.
Most people know that Adam West starred as Batman in the television series of the same name back in the sixties. But what they don’t know is that if it weren’t for Mr. West, I never would have even been sitting in that studio.
During my junior year of high school (right around when talkies came in), I had a class called Film Evaluation. The class was just what it sounds like; we watched movies, discussed them and (I assume) wrote about them (way older than 26 = fading memory).
One day we discovered there were a bunch of Batman fans in the class. The more we talked, the more we laughed until someone suggested we should make our own version of Batman. The idea was to make a movie and also earn some class credit. We presented the idea to our teacher (Miss Kelly), who could have rolled her eyes and shut us down but instead, gave us her blessing, although I do seem to remember she was hesitant to agree to us receiving credit before seeing the final product. With our project green lighted, we were on our way to making cinematic history.
Today when high school kids want to make a movie, it’s a different story. Monday’s idea gets shot on Tuesday, probably on an iphone. By Wednesday it’s edited on a MacBook. Thursday it’s on YouTube and by Friday it’s got half a million views. After that it’s a screening at Sundance, followed by a meeting at Universal, an office on the lot, Ben is on line one and Matt is on two, and can someone get me my fucking half-decaf /half-caf soy latte with cinnamon?! Or so I’m told…
Meanwhile. back in the disco era, before iphones and soy lattes, we had none of those things, but we did have a Super 8 camera (those of you who don’t know who Adam West is may have to Google that as well). And we had drive. The project became our obsession. If we weren’t actually shooting, we were talking about shooting. If we weren’t talking about shooting, we likely weren’t talking, which as I’m sure anyone who can remember me from that far back will tell you almost never happened (yes, I know it still doesn’t happen today!).
Casting was a breeze, after all who wouldn’t want to be in a batman movie. We went with three standard villains, the Riddler, Penguin, and Egghead and easily found kids (Danny, Louis, and Brett respectively) to play them. For some reason, our friend Bill played both Commissioner Gordon and Alfred. Looking back that sounds like a desperate solution to an “actor” who didn’t show up for one reason (detention?) or another (detention?). Eric played Chief O’Hara and he got to say the Chief’s famous line, “Saints preserve us all.” Technically he said it but no one ever heard it. This was the 70’s. We had no way to record sound so what little dialog we had appeared via hand scrawled signs on the screen.
Paul played the Caped Crusader, which left me to play appropriately, Robin the Boy Wonder. Okay maybe not so appropriately. Sure I was a boy and often full of wonder, but a “boy wonder”? I think not (yes, I know, still not a wonder today).
The plot, if you can call it that, called for our villains to steal some rare books from the Gotham City Library. We filmed in the school library, which, despite the lack of media, was called the “Media Center.” While the Media Center lacked media, it did not lack a security system, which worked perfectly. I know this because while filming our book theft scene, our villains blew right through it with an armload of books, prompting all sorts of alarms to go off as well as a great deal of consternation from the librarian (who we’d neglected to check with in advance). It was the first time I learned about cinematic immunity, the thinking that everything is permissible in the service of making a film. Over the years I’ve learned that kind of thinking can be dangerous. But that’s another story (or stories, lot’s of them).
The Batman TV series always ended with a fight scene so naturally we had to have one too. In our film, the dynamic duo manages to track the villains to their hideout in an old abandoned warehouse. The audience knew it was an old abandoned warehouse because we had a sign on the building (hand written of course) reading, “Old Abandoned Warehouse.” After we climbed up the side of building, another Batman staple and our big “special effect”, we surprised the villains and a fight ensued. There was plenty of overacting and a few signs reading “Bam” or “Oompf” thrown in, just like the show. Overall I remember the fight scene being semi-choreographed chaos on film.
The finished film was in our eyes, a masterpiece. When we showed it in Miss Kelly’s class, the response was great and if I’m not mistaken, she did give us credit. Then for some reason, the English department was showing “They Shoot Horses Don’t They?” to the entire student body over the course of several days. One of the days had a short reel and Miss Kelly offered us the chance to show our film then. We jumped at the chance. The film was a hit and we were instant celebrities.
Perhaps it was the first taste of celebrity or simply the joy of the process, but for whatever reason, I was hooked. During my senior year there was a Batman sequel (a Batsequel of course). And when the senior class did Saturday Night Live for its class play, I offered to make a film for it.
The result was an animated film called, “The Three Muskebeers.” Today I would likely be expelled for a film starring beer cans. Fortunately, times were different then. “The Three Muskebeers”, despite its subject matter was very well received and my career path was chosen.
I’ve been on that path, one that has taken me all over the world, for over thirty years now. Along the way, I’ve worked with the super famous, the not so famous, and everything in between. I’ve got countless stories and even more memories (most all of them good). And none of it would have ever happened without Adam West.
