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Daily Sundial

Fanboy saves Gotham City from Hollywood

DANIEL ANTOLIN

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Published: Monday, July 7, 2008

Updated: Saturday, August 16,
2008

Courtesy Bill Ramey

"Jett" started a site that changed Batman movies.

A 31-year-old Houston man left a movie theater more than 10 years ago
disillusioned. The movie had not yet finished, but the injustice he witnessed
was too much to bear. Batman and Robin were wearing rubber nipples.

Bill Ramey looked at the silver screen as Batman used politically correct
terms, carried a credit card in his utility belt and, if that was not enough, he
was smiling.

It was summer 1997. Director Joel Schumacher’s “Batman & Robin” was in
movie theaters.

“The whole thing just seemed off,” Ramey would later post on the Web.

He started a Web site, a dramatic example that would shake Batman moviemakers
and fanboys alike out of apathy and into action.

Ramey, who last week saw a press screening of “The Dark Knight,” the highly
anticipated sequel to “Batman Begins,” recalls how his creation, Batman on Film,
and similar fan-created Web sites, provided a target audience a forum with which
to demand a definitive Batman origin movie, telling Warner Bros. Pictures
everything from who should be cast in the title role to the fabric from which
the costume should be made.

Christian Bale and Kevlar, a synthetic fiber used in protective helmets and
vests, were often demanded. Warner Bros. Pictures obliged to the former, but
decided to go with black foam and latex for the latter.

“I think they were paying attention to what the fans thought, who they were
suggesting for certain roles ... and maybe if there was any interest in a new
Batman film,” Ramey said.

“Batman Begins” screenwriter David S. Goyer, Special FX Supervisor Chris
Corbould and Executive Producer Michael Ulsan said that they often visited the
Web site during the production of the movie, the Batman on Film Home Page
shows.

Mark S. Reinhart, author of the Batman Filmography, said Batman on Film “had
such a positive impact on Warner Bros. in terms of the direction they are now
taking their Batman film series,” the Home Page shows as well.

Ramey and like-minded, albeit anonymous, agents of the bat with access to
Warner Bros. Pictures’ movers and shakers provided his Web audience with the
latest news about the movie franchise, from its years in development hell to its
resurgence in 2005.

Fans of the Batman were conflicted. The movie franchise was something
sacrosanct of which they were losing control.

“Batman ‘89 basically started the whole ‘superhero movie’ genre. It affected
everything that has come since. That’s the positive,” Ramey said. “On the other
hand, the other three Batman films showed everyone how not to do a comic
book-based film. ‘Batman & Robin’ almost killed the genre.”

Twenty-three-year-old independent director Aaron Schoenke said he was
inspired to become a filmmaker by the first two movies in the series, “Batman”
and “Batman Returns,” directed by Tim Burton.

“The first and second Batman films opened my eyes to filmmaking and all the
extraordinary possibilities that the film medium had to offer creatively,” said
Schoenke, who founded the Calabasas-based Bat in the Sun Productions to direct
character-driven interpretations of The Batman and his gallery of rogues.

Schoenke’s films, such a Patient J, which portrays the manic romance and
exploits of the Joker and his moll, have a loyal Web fan base.

Though Schoenke said he does not strictly adhere to comic book source
material in his fan films.

“Don’t get me wrong, accuracy is very important, but it’s not the sole reason
a film is good or bad,” Schoenke said.

Edward T. Halloran, film literature professor at Cal State Northridge, said
Batman became the victim of the synergistic industrial model of the late 1960s
and early 1970s, when companies such as the Kinney National Company, the owners
of which knew nothing about filmmaking, purchased insolvent companies such as
Warner Brothers-Seven Arts.

Once the Ronald Reagan administration relaxed FCC regulations in the 1980s,
they vertically integrated their assets, Halloran said.

“This way when a Batman movie comes out, so will a comic book adaptation from
DC Comics and a soundtrack from Warner Records, both of which are subsidiaries
of one corporation,” Halloran said. “”That’s synergy, taking a product and
exploiting it.”

How fanboys saved Gotham City from the Hollywood machine involved reminding
filmmakers about its psychological and visual history, which was defined by
different interpretations of its heroes and rogues in comic books, television
and movies.

Ramey, who in 2004 was invited to visit the U.K. set of “Batman Begins,”
Director Chris Nolan’s attempt to reboot the movie franchise, not only documents
this history on his Web site, he provides the analysis to keep its creators
honest.

Four years later, Ramey said he talked to Nolan and “The Dark Knight”
producer Emma Thomas at last week’s press screening about how the movie, which
he describes as an “intense, urban crime drama that happens to have characters
in crazy costumes,” is “badass.”

“The Dark Knight,” which will be released in movie theaters July 18, will
answer what happens when Heath Ledger’s interpretation of the Joker escalates
crime in Gotham City.

As to what will happen when Web savvy people create commercial Web sites
using Ramey’s fan site model, the fight for online audiences seems to be more
civil.

Jim Littler, a former toy marketer who created the Web site Comicbookmovie
when Hollywood started producing several superhero movies in 2000, said, “I have
great relationships with lots of fan sites. They send me in lots of the news I
post.”

“I’d say 75 percent is reliable and the rest is rumor from the set, but we do
our best to ferret out falsehoods by checking sources, even though we’ll still
publish ‘rumor’ if it comes from someone whose proven reliable in the past,”
said Littler, who calls himself a lifelong “comics geek” and fan of movies.

Ramey, who continues to provide comic book geeks and movie lovers news
tidbits, reviews, history, analysis and a few rumors too, never though a fanboy
with a computer could help save a movie franchise, let alone The Batman.

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