Batman’s Batman: Why N.J.’s Michael Uslan is the father of the superhero film craze – NJ.com

Michael Uslan is fresh off talking about “The Batman,” the latest movie to take on the Caped Crusader, when the call drops.

Several attempts to reconnect yield the same result: “Call failed.”

Could it be a disturbance in the force? The Russians? On Twitter, people report a Verizon outage.

“Am calling Batman!” Uslan says in a text message.

And he would be the guy!

If there’s anyone outside of Gotham who could, in fact, reach Batman, Uslan would absolutely be the best bet, batphone or no.

The Jersey City native, who grew up down the Shore and keeps his batcave in Essex County, bought the film rights to the character from DC Comics in 1979. He’s been a producer of every Batman and Batman-adjacent movie since 1989.

Yes, that includes “The Batman,” the film currently in theaters, directed by Matt Reeves and starring Robert Pattinson as the Dark Knight.

Last weekend, the Warner Bros. movie swooped in with another box office win for the character, opening with $128.5 million.

Uslan, the chairman of the New Jersey Motion Picture and Television Commission, is celebrating both the release of the film and another chapter in his own Batman legacy: his second memoir. The producer’s life story — about a boy who grew up loving Batman and did something about it — is also headed to Broadway.

“Batman’s Batman: A Memoir from Hollywood, Land of Bilk and Money” (Indiana University Press/Red Lightning Books, March 1) chronicles the New Jersey roots of Uslan’s passion for producing. He tells the stories of his hits and misses in show business, including “Batman,” but also lesser-known projects, like a live-action Mr. Potato Head series that never got forked (he still thinks it could work).

Uslan’s first memoir, “The Boy Who Loved Batman” (Indiana University Press/Red Lightning Books, 2011), is a superhero producer origin story that chronicles “10 tortuous years” of trying to get his first Batman movie made.

The shimmering final product, Tim Burton’s “Batman,” starring Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne/Batman and Jack Nicholson as the Joker, was a huge success in 1989. Grossing $251 million in the U.S., it was the top film in a year that also saw the release of “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” “Ghostbusters II,” “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,” “Lethal Weapon 2″ and “Back to the Future Part II.”

But it was more than that.

“Batman” set the stage for the cavalcade of superhero films we see today, including the Marvel movies that seem to be a talking point in interviews with every famous director after Martin Scorsese said those films didn’t qualify as “cinema.”

“I guess I accept either the credit or the blame, depending on who you talk to, for what has come out of all of this,” Uslan, 70, says from Los Angeles (he’s a Jersey stalwart, but also a bicoastal grandfather of three).

In fact, top Marvel executives invited Uslan to an expensive New York lunch in 1989, after the release of “Batman.” He wasn’t sure why they were there or why the Marvel guys had ordered one of the priciest bottles of wine. So he asked. They told him it was a thank you. Because of Uslan’s film, Marvel sales were up. People were discovering comic book shops, setting the stage for those characters to get their own film treatments.

While the Marvel Cinematic Universe has certainly become a leviathan force in film since “Iron Man” debuted in 2008, you don’t need a bat signal to know that the Dark Knight, along with his many foils and friends, has more than held his own.

While it’s been difficult to prognosticate lately because the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the moviegoing landscape with the push to streaming, Uslan made a prediction just as his latest movie opened:

“I think that ‘The Batman’ is going to be in theaters for a long time.”

Box office-watchers raved about the massive hold “Spider-Man: No Way Home” had on theaters at the end of 2021 and the start of 2022 — it opened before Christmas and it’s still in theaters with a worldwide gross of $1.8 billion. But Uslan doesn’t see Batman as being in competition with “Spider-Man,” which he calls “a great superhero popcorn movie.”

He says “The Batman” does what standout Caped Crusader movies do best: “completely reinvents what a comic book movie can be, what a superhero movie can be.”

“One of the great things I see as a legacy is that in the last 33 years, four times now a Batman movie or a Batman-related movie has revolutionized the industry,” Uslan says.

He saw it with Burton’s “Batman” in 1989, and again in the “thematic heft” of Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy and its channeling of post-9/11 America. In 2019, he recognized it in “Joker” — the standalone villain origin story from Todd Phillips — and its take on gun violence, mental health and the polarization of U.S. politics through Joaquin Phoenix’s Oscar-winning performance.

“You no longer need to say, ‘That was a great comic book movie,’” Uslan says. “You could say, ‘That was a great film.’”

The sentiment holds true for Reeves’ “The Batman,” he says.

“Consider its themes and some of the points of what it’s saying. It’s very powerful stuff,” Uslan says. “It is again reflecting where we and the world are today.”

The film touches on the pandemic, isolation, the national reckoning on systemic racism, #MeToo and mental health in various ways.

Robert Pattinson’s Batman tries to piece together clues from the Riddler (Paul Dano) following a murder spree in which the villain snuffs out Gotham officials for their corruption. While the story stays true to Batman mythology, Uslan also sees shades of other dark detective movies, like “Zodiac” (2007) and “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991), and crime noir films like “Chinatown” (1974) and “Seven” (1995).

“Like myself, fans around the world have been waiting a long, long time for a movie that concentrates on the fact that Bruce Wayne is the world’s greatest detective,” say Uslan, continuing his conversation with NJ Advance Media after the phone disruption via Zoom.

Batman, of course, is a superhero without mutant superpowers (but plenty of accessories).

“He is our modern-day Sherlock Holmes,” the producer says, wearing a black hat with the red bat logo from the film. “And this movie proves it.”

So what would Batman creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger think of “The Batman,” a film in which Pattinson’s Batman wears smudged rings around his eyes, narrates noirish scenes with words he’s scrawled in a diary and rides his motorcycle to the melancholic yowls of Kurt Cobain? (Finger died in 1974, Kane in 1998.)

“They would absolutely love it,” says Uslan, who wore a button that said “thank you, Bill Finger” to the New York premiere.

To him, “The Batman” is a tale right out of Detective Comics (later DC), where Batman was born in May 1939.

“And here’s the final story on that,” he says.

Uslan has a story for most occasions. His stories even have stories. This one is from 2008, when he was headed to the New York premiere of Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight.”

Jerry Robinson, the Trenton native and comic book artist who co-created Batman characters the Joker, Robin and Alfred, was planning to take a cab to the premiere with his wife.

Oh no, Uslan told him — “You’re going in the limousine with us.”

They pulled up to crowds of people wearing Joker and Batman costumes. Seeing the red carpet and throng of cameras ahead, Robinson whispered to Uslan that he’d just walk around back and meet him inside.

“Jerry, you’re coming down this red carpet with me,” he told Robinson, putting his arm around the man.

“I just called out as loud as I could to the paparazzi,” he says. “I said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is Jerry Robinson, the co-creator of the Joker and Robin,’ and it took Jerry more than a half an hour to walk the red carpet because all the TV cameras swung around, the reporters turned toward him.”

When they got inside the premiere, Uslan introduced Robinson and Athena Finger, Bill’s granddaughter, to director Christopher Nolan, Christian Bale (Batman/Bruce Wayne), Danny DeVito (the Penguin in “Batman Returns”), Aaron Eckhart (Harvey Dent/Two-Face), Michael Caine (Alfred) and Gary Oldman (Jim Gordon). Hugs and thanks were given.

“Jerry turned to me with tears running down his eyes and said, ‘This is the greatest night of my life,’” Uslan says of Robinson, who died in 2011. “So I know how they would react. I know what they would be saying.”

Uslan’s decade-long mission, from 1979 to 1989 — when Keaton finally put on the cape and cowl in Burton’s “Batman” — was to restore the superhero to the dark original vision that Kane and Finger conceived in 1939.

The producer titled his second memoir “Batman’s Batman” because that’s what Benjamin Melniker used to call him.

Before Melniker died in 2018 at the age of 104, the former MGM executive was Uslan’s producing partner on all the “Batman” films and other projects, like Wes Craven’s “Swamp Thing” (1982), the 1994 Emmy-winning animated series “Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?” and the film “Constantine” (2005), starring Keanu Reeves and based on the DC comic book “Hellblazer” (Reeves has said he’d love to do a sequel).

What Melniker meant by “Batman’s Batman” is that Uslan had taken it upon himself to be Batman’s protector, a steward of the character from the Kane and Finger stories he devoured as a child.

Uslan raised the money to buy the film rights from DC Comics with Melniker in his 20s. But really, it’s a wish that burned in his heart ever since he was a kid. In 1966, he eagerly tuned into the “Batman” series starring Adam West from his family home in Deal Park only to realize in horror that his beloved hero had been turned into a joke.

“The whole world was laughing at Batman, and that killed me,” Uslan says.

It was then that he had his “vow” moment, just like when Bruce Wayne vows to get revenge for the murder of his parents. Uslan would make it right — he would restore Batman to his shadowy glory as a fearsome creature of the night.

“I’ve felt a personal burden on my shoulders, a personal responsibility from the beginning that not only did I need to bring darkness and dignity and respect to Batman, but the same to the creators, because I knew them personally,” Uslan says. “And that was my job. That was part of my mission. And I’m very, very happy to feel like we’ve succeeded with that.”

Now, with more than 30 years of films under Batman’s belt, Uslan can rest easy, and even appreciate the camp of the West series and 1966 “Batman” movie for what it was.

Just how did Uslan work up the nerve to take it all the way, or make what he calls that big Grand Canyon leap to Hollywood relevance, sans money, connections or influence?

After all, when he secured the Batman rights, it was a decade after the end of the TV show and the era’s Batman animated series. Even the “groovy” version of the Caped Crusader was once a sensation, but by then he was considered a dead enterprise.

Studio after studio turned Uslan down. He was dejected over the lack of interest in his hero, who, along with the Lone Ranger and Zorro, awed him as a kid.

But if there was anyone who was going to do it, it was Uslan, the original “comic book guy.”

Starting his collection in the 1950s, he amassed 50,000 comic books from 1936 on. He frequented comic book conventions before cosplay was a “thing,” wrote for comics and graphic novels, and even taught the first accredited college course on comic books at his alma mater, Indiana University.

He knew Batman was his calling — it was just a matter of figuring out how to turn the tables on Hollywood, “land of bilk and money,” and minting new generations of Batman diehards in the process.

In his first attempt at breaking in, his main goal was to work as a screenwriter. He sent out 372 resumes. Uslan credits his unshakable belief in Batman — and himself — with keeping his fire burning.

That’s where New Jersey becomes something like Uslan’s Gotham City. Saying his rise is a New Jersey story is not so much a fact as an underestimation. His new book is a universe of Jersey stories — part of the Uslan Extended Universe, even, because it’s his second memoir in 11 years.

He was born at that huge art deco fortress, the former Margaret Hague Maternity Hospital in Jersey City (now home to The Beacon apartments), like so many local babies, including Martha Stewart, former Gov. Jim McGreevey and Frank Sinatra’s kids.

Uslan spent the first three years of his life in Bayonne, then moved down the Shore to Wanamassa, Ocean Township with his parents and older brother, Paul, and finally, to Deal Park (another part of Ocean Township) by the time he was in sixth grade.

He has a strong reverence for his upbringing, treating his younger years as a story that is very much alive and still unfolding — sometimes in the here and now. He invited two of his teachers, the ones who shaped him as a young writer in Ocean Township, to the “Batman” premiere, where he made sure they got a standing ovation.

As a kid, Uslan embraced Batman’s moral code of no killing and no guns, of having honor and integrity. It’s part of what made him, along with lessons from his parents — the tools he would later use to solve problems as a producer.

Uslan hung on the words of his dad, mason Joseph Uslan, who liked to quote Ralph Waldo Emerson, and his mother, Lillian, a bookkeeper who taught him to believe in himself, but also market himself. He calls her his first Batman.

Now, Uslan is bringing his story to a different audience: Broadway.

He met theater giant Bob Nederlander of the Nederlander Organization through a mutual friend and gave him a copy of “The Boy Who Loved Batman.” A few days later, Uslan’s new acquaintance proposed a Broadway play based on the producer’s origin story.

“I don’t think I could get the word ‘yes’ out of my mouth faster,” Uslan says.

In the wake of the COVID-19 shutdown, those who would mount the show felt that uplifting narratives about perseverance and “dreaming big” would be especially appealing. Uslan wrote the first draft of the play (working title “Darknights and Daydreams”) during the pandemic, along with a screenplay for a possible film based on his story.

“It’s just been a very, very exciting process,” Uslan says, and, 45 years into his career, an educational one.

When he’s not working on adapting his life story, Uslan is focused on putting more of his home state in TV and movies. He has been involved since the ’80s, and now is chairman of the New Jersey Motion Picture and Television Commission.

Uslan glows about tax incentives for diverse local productions, the growth of the Jersey film business — even during COVID-19 — and the wide variety of backdrops on offer within a short distance, including beaches, farms, suburbs and cities.

“He understands the industry from every perspective,” says Steven Gorelick, executive director of the commission and a longtime friend.

“I everyday meet and speak with some of the most creative people in the world who are making movies and TV shows, and I still say Michael is one of most creative people I’ve ever met,” Gorelick says, pointing to his film, book and play (there’s also an HBO Max spinoff show on the way starring Colin Farrell’s Penguin from Matt Reeves’ film). “I said the next thing, he’s going to make an opera.”

There’s been plenty of Jersey in the Batman universe. Previous films, including “The Dark Knight Rises” and “Joker,” were filmed in Newark and Jersey City at landmarks like the Loew’s Jersey Theatre in Journal Square, right down the way from Uslan’s birthplace. The score for “The Batman” — “a score for the ages,” Uslan says — comes from Jersey’s Oscar-winning composer Michael Giacchino (who grew up in Edgewater Park, Burlington County).

The producer once pitched two non-Batman DC movies to Carneys Point’s own Bruce Willis, who wanted to know if Uslan was really from New Jersey. They exchanged exit numbers and took it from there. And he got into a furious debate at the “Batman Forever” premiere with Asbury Park’s own Penguin, Danny DeVito, about primo pizza at the Shore. DeVito said top honors should go to Vic’s; Uslan said Freddie’s (pepperoni).

Jersey enough for you?

How’s this: Uslan’s great aunt was silent film star Anna Luther, a Newark native who called people like Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle her friends and vaudeville star Ed Gallagher her (ex-)husband. Luther’s mother was a Bayonne midwife who presided over the birth of Uslan’s father and, two years later, Uslan’s producing partner Benjamin Melniker.

The producer is a student of history — he has a degree in it, one of three he earned at Indiana University, including a law degree — and is keenly aware of his presence in it. That’s why he’ll never have a kind word for anyone trying to break into the film industry who doesn’t know the work of Frank Capra, or hasn’t seen “Citizen Kane.” He once tried to pitch a young film executive who had trouble telling the difference between Audrey Hepburn and Katharine Hepburn.

“I want to chain them all to Turner Classic Movies and prop their eyelids open and make them sit there for the next year,” Uslan says.

Every year, the producer —who received an honorary fine arts/comic book doctorate from Monmouth University in 2012 — teaches two courses at Indiana University, offering pearls gleaned from his experiences in Hollywood.

He’s well aware that a good portion of his students, born in the past two decades, might give him a deer-in-headlights look when he talks about Jack Nicholson (formerly of Neptune City and Spring Lake) playing the Joker. But he always makes clear his conviction that passion for film means learning how the industry got to where it is now. Failing to do so would be like proceeding in life without knowing your own history, he says.

Uslan has a childhood anecdote — or five — for every step of the producing process, what he calls the “13 Ps.” They start with passion and prayer, continue with pitch and packaging, and, if all goes well — it frequently does not — culminate in nice things like profits.

It helps to work with singular talents.

“I’ve been in this business 45 years, and I do not hand out the title ‘genius’ at random,” he says. “But what an honor in a career to have been associated with a number of people who I actually can call geniuses, in terms of what they’ve done and their visions and how they were able to execute their visions.”

Uslan still holds a torch for failed projects including “The Shadow” film that he planned to make with Sam Raimi, who helmed the Spider-Man movies of the early 2000s and the 1990 Shadow-inspired film “Darkman,” starring Liam Neeson. (Alec Baldwin starred in a 1994 film adaptation of “The Shadow” directed by Russell Mulcahy.)

The Uslan-Raimi project, scripted by Siavash Farahani, was based on the 1930s radio character who flourished in the stories of Walter B. Gibson and served as inspiration for Batman (Uslan wrote for the character in DC Comics before penning Batman comics). The film wasn’t given the green light because it was set in the late ′30s and early ‘40s — and “period pieces don’t sell,” or so Uslan was told in the 2000s (had studio execs perchance heard of a film called “Titanic”?).

“It’s like a law in Hollywood,” he says. “Nothing works in Hollywood until it works” — just like for years, there was a “law” that movies driven by women wouldn’t succeed.

Uslan also maintains that his live-action Mr. Potato Head series, pitched before “Toy Story,” would have been “off the wall, crazy.” And then there was “Kidd,” based on the 1983 book from Tom Seligson, about the search for Captain Kidd’s buried treasure in New York.

“It is the ultimate urban ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark.’ It can’t miss,” Uslan says of the stymied film. (Disney eventually used the story as a jumping off point for the 2004 film “National Treasure” — Uslan and Melniker are credited as associate producers.)

What Uslan sees today is no less than the Hollywood playbook at work: “oversaturation.”

It’s part of why a constant parade of superhero films can feel cookie-cutter, though impressive in their look and production. It’s also why Uslan gravitated to Marvel movies like “Deadpool” (2016) and “Guardians of the Galaxy” (2014), which distinguished themselves from the pack with humor and a vigorous remix of existing formulas.

So what remains alluring about the Bat?

For one, he spans generations.

“Whatever Batman you first encounter as a kid becomes your one true Batman,” Uslan says (Keaton is set to reprise the role in HBO Max’s upcoming “Batgirl” film and DC’s “The Flash” movie out in 2023).

Then there’s that old chestnut from Marvel’s Stan Lee, who Uslan first met when he was 11: It’s the villains who define superheroes, who determine the power of their stories.

“Every movie, every cartoon, every TV show reinforces that,” Uslan says.

Batman faces some of the best baddies of all time. He thinks the Joker is chief among them, and the top villain ever created.

But the Dark Knight’s greatest superpower?

“His humanity,” Uslan says.

“As we look at Batman, we are seeing a reflection in the mirror. We are seeing us.”

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Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com and followed at @AmyKup on Twitter.