From: conty@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (OtakuRoach)
Subject: BTAS:  ADVANCE COMICS interview with Michael Reaves
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 03:21:24 GMT


In the latest ADVANCE COMICS there was an interview with Michael Reaves,
who is one of the writers of BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES.  For a number
of reasons, I won't type in the 4-page interview, but here are the more
interesting tidbits that haven't been discussed to death yet in r.a.animation:
(Comments in [square brackets] and typos are mine.)

[The time period of the series:]
"It's not set in the past, it's set in the present, but it's sort of an
alternate present.  It's as if we gave the 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's a miss
and went from the 40's straight into the 90's."

[Standards and Practices:]
"They're concerned primarily about imitable actions.  You can say that if
he takes out somebody with some sort of karate move, like there was one
show where he punches somebody in the face with a fist, they didn't like
that, so we changed it in the storyboards where he hits somebody with a
heel paw in the face.  Now, anybody in martial arts will tell you that's
a worse blow, but that's not something that evidently some kid would
think of doing. [...]  We can have machine guns in the show, for example,
easier than we can have hand guns.  The idea being that some kid is not
going to go out and find a machine gun."

[On the interpretation of Batman:]
"Most people, when they have a tragedy in their life, they get over it,
they go through with the whole true-blue loss thing, they deal with it,
they get on with their lives.  Batman has never done this.  He has had
the money and the time and privilege to indulge in an adolescent fantasy
of revenge his entire life.  He is not a character that I think children
would care to emulate.  He represents the dark driven side of ourselves.
And it's good to explore that side, but we've done a couple of episodes
with Robin where it's sort of implicit in there that although Robin
loves Batman and respects him, there's no way in Hell he would ever want
to grow up like him.  He doesn't want to be that driven, that obsessed."

[On Warner's plans for the show:]
"They look at this as being around, like the Fleischer cartoons, 50 years
from now.  [...]  We tried to stay away from timely topics, even in terms
of slang and everything in the show.  We tried not to get into current
hip now phrases because we didn't want to date the show."
"If they do more than [100 episodes], I would be surprised, because after
100 episodes it really becomes not cost effective to do any more.  They
could strip those and run them forever."
[Actually, word is Warner commisioned more than 40 additional episodes.]

[Live action vs. animation:]
"I wrote an episode of FLASH, and I know the big problem they had on that
show was it was a live-action show and it was an incredibly expensive thing
to do.  Stuff that they would be agonizing over how to do in that show we
can do as a matter of course in animation."

[An appeal to the viewers:]
"Write to the Fox Network.  Tell them that you're enjoying the show.
Because a lot of the people involved and higher up in the show are very
skittish about the show.  You know that the people who don't like the
show, the people who are going to say that this whole thing is a spawn of
Satan, are already out there with their pens poised, ready to write in.
All that is neccesary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing.
If you want to see more episodes like this, if you want to see BATMAN
continue in other shows being done like this, let them know!  Because
otherwise, we're back to the same old stuff."

-- 
			    E n r i q u e  C o n t y
			The Incredible Man-with-no-Life
			      jester@ihlpl.att.com
		    Disclaimer: You're not dealing with AT&T