The Story of Batman The Animated Series | The Heart of Batman

Okay, this is from, uh, the directory that this is from the complete directory of prime time TV shows, uh, and this is their little, uh, capsule summary of Batman: The Animated Series.

Gotham City's caped crusader returned in primetime television in this animated series that was much more somber in tone than either the 1960s live-action Batman or the animated versions that had run in the 70s and 80s. This animated series was produced by Tim Burton. I don't think that's true. Batman: The Animated Series really changed the way people were making animated drama. This was not the usual fare for kids' entertainment. [Music]

We weren't just reinventing Batman; Batman's villain gallery was all being reinvented. Fox did not give us a lot of notes. They had some overall general notes, but at least at first they were pretty hands off. I always look back at this series and I am stunned at the stories that we got away with telling. We did push back aggressively because we felt like we kind of had to. There were many, many days when I would drive home and think, "Oh, I'm going to get fired tomorrow." [Music]

We got an education while we were producing this series, and it really was like watching these mini movies. We didn't treat them like a TV show; we treated them like a motion [Music] picture. [Music] [Music] We knew what we didn't want. We didn't want the show to seem like every other adventure show on TV. We wanted the show to be appealing to kids because we knew that it was, you know, they were our primary intended audience. But at the same time, we wanted to show that we ourselves would watch as adults. Every single project is a puzzle, and every puzzle has only one set of right pieces, and in Batman: The Animated Series, every single piece was the right piece to the puzzle. This was a big paradigm shift in animation.

This Batman series, everybody looked at superheroes differently; everybody looked at cartoons differently. The challenge was, it was in the beginning, and convincing the powers that be that this look and the edginess of it could be successful. That, um, "Oh, it's so dark." Yes, that's what it's good! That's what's good about it! And everybody was like, "I don't know." So getting over that hurdle to the point where they'd let us go that way, that was the biggest challenge. Fortunately, you know, Eric and I were kind of in the right place at the right time. You know, we happened to be working at Warner Brothers when, you know, the prospect of doing an animated Batman show came up.

And, you know, it was, you know, Jean's like dangling that brass ring. We're like, "Okay, grab it." [Music] There's just, uh, artistic integrity that was inherent to this series, and it was absolutely because of all of the people that really cared about what they were working on and put their whole selves into it. And it just shows in the work, and the fact that it resonates with people and fans as long as it has is a testament to it. There's no explanation other than that because it's just an animated show, but the fact that it had that impression for me is a result of the fact that, you know, that passion lives within the entire creation of that experience. So to be part of that collective is just truly unique. [Music]

The '66 Batman show with Adam West was actually my first exposure to Batman as a character. It was like my gateway drug. It was a show that we could watch with our parents, and everybody was entertained. It was very cartoony, so it was all that pop, pow kind of Warhol pop art kind of way of viewing the story. There was just something about it, you know, the whole larger-than-life aspect of it, you know, the costumes and the sets. I was really invested in the show because for crazy villains like the Penguin and the Joker and everything, it really did seem to be sort of life and death stakes.

And then a year later, there was a scene where Batman is singing, "I'm called Little Buttercup" to Robin, and I'm going like that; I'm out! I can't take this seriously! People love that show, but it's not at all what Bruce Timm was going to be going for in this show. I liked the comedy of it; I liked the silliness of it; it didn't scare me. But then we made a cartoon series that was pretty damn scary. [Music]

Once you got into the mid to late '80s, obviously there was a seminal change in the type of stories that were told. Some of the most iconic Batman stories of all time came out at that point with Year One, Dark Knight Returns, Killing Joke. The thing that really changed for me was the Dark Knight Returns graphic novel by Frank Miller. I think for everyone, there were new edges for the kind of stories you could tell with Batman, and it really redefined Batman's stories ever since the late '80s.

Was it was time for Batman; the whole world was saying, "We want some Batman." And that was, well, even before the movie came out, before Tim Burton's movie came out. You know, when I first got into the business, when I got into the animation business, it was a pretty dark time for the industry as a whole. There were the three networks; that was all you had. And animation was all Saturday morning, and a lot of it was because they had a requirement to fill a certain amount of children's programming. It was always very children-oriented, even the action-adventure shows, and they were very formularized. You had to have an interesting sidekick all the time, and almost always you had to have a funny animal character.

So when you did a show like Super Friends or something, you know, as somebody who had grown up with DC Comics, it was like, "Well, not the way I would have done it." [Music] The network had a very skewed vision of what they felt kids wanted to see, so it's all shows about kids and kid issues, and it's not really funny.

I started animation in '81, to Hanna-Barbera. The landscape was that animation was pretty much dedicated to kids 2-11, and almost all of it was on Saturday morning. [Music] They always had in mind whatever the show was, "Is this going to be okay for two-year-olds?" and that's what held back for me a lot of creativity. They had to worry about making sure that the toys were sold but also keeping the various pressure groups off their backs, and there was plenty of that. Not just like the PTA, but there were various actions for children's television. You know, a lot of these people were constantly being called up to Congress, you know, to explain themselves.

Children's programming back then, it was really rough. Congress got involved, and you know how great things are when Congress gets involved? The answer is no! They would say, "Make it goofy. Make it wacky. Make it zany," but they had no idea what that was. It was never funny; it was just sort of on. [Music] We had a wonderful broadcast standards woman on the show, Avery Coburn. She understood this was an afternoon show and that we would be appealing to an older bunch of kids. That there would be guns, and there would be fistfights. If there was something awry, she would have an answer for us.

I've had to do this at countless parties: "What do you do? BSMP? What is that?" And I usually tell them, and they still don't get it. And then I wind up saying, "You know, I censor the shows." [Music] But really, I don't think of it as that; I think of it as an editor would work with a writer on a book. She is an unsung hero of this thing because if we had had a normal broadcast standards person from like the '60s or '70s, I would have been flayed alive. You couldn't have someone hit someone with a frying pan! [Music] Because a child would have access to a frying pan.

You know, you'd have to show seat belts when a child rode in a car. All of these examples of a general policy to keep kids safe. The idea came to try and create a Saturday morning network that was going to be the very first one created since the very early '50s. We have to have cartoons; we have to have advertisers; we have to have eyeballs. But what about the content? How's the content going to be different?

Um, because now you're talking 1990 and not 1952. We decided that we were going to do something different, and it would be a show aimed at comic book lovers in their tweens. We would go over every scene and all the action and talk about standards. I definitely had great respect for those people that were producing this show. I started working in the '80s, and the very first show I worked on was a very—it was a puppy show for ABC. [Music]

You know, they had the Wuzzles and Gummy Bears, so we're talking fairly light fare. The early part of the '80s, we were pushing the wheel, and we were doing what we could in Saturday morning, but it was very restrictive with the programming rules and broadcast standards. It began to get hard to come up with stories that would interest me, the writer, as well as the kids because of the BSNP pressures.

I had to make shows that were essentially, you know, action shows, but the action had to be so toned down that you could hardly call it an action show. You ended up with having the hero standing around talking a lot. "You won't get away with this!" "You're a rotten rug, Jackie!" "Don't worry, General; we'll take care of him." We had the army in there, but they weren't allowed to have weapons—no guns were ever allowed. They could have shovels.

I worked on the last incarnation of Super Friends with Alan Burnett at Hanna-Barbera, and it was very frustrating trying to tell a superhero story at that time, uh, on the networks. "Be careful, Robin! One slip and we're done!" I was about five shows into it and I said, "You know, I'm going to have somebody shrink the superheroes so that they fight small things." And that, that's a sign that there's trouble when you shrink your superheroes because that, you're desperate for stories. You won't be bugging me much longer; we have to see where Robin kicks a spider off a table that's going to attack them.

And, uh, we got the BSNP note, "Is the spider okay?" We have to show the spider's okay! And so we had a panel put in the storyboard where you see the spider crawling away. That first year on Super Friends was just, I don't even wanna—I've never gone back to see them.

I'm sorry, Dr. Gulliver, but there's got to be a better way than shrinking people. My introduction to the superhero world in animation was the Super Friends, which I just thought was goofy as hell. Forgive me, it just was. The drawings were not good; the voices were god-awful; and the scripts were really pretty bad. You really had your hands tied in terms of how the stories worked out. You could not have conflict; you could not have violence of any sort.

They didn't like punching. I mean, I'm talking about Superman hits a wall instead of a person, but that was too violent. The standards and practices were so restrictive that I remember in the last season of Super Friends we introduced Dark Side into it, and there was a great deal of conversation about whether or not we could use the name Dark Side or whether it was too scary. That was the climate that we were in.

The industry just wasn't thriving. [Music] A lot of the earlier generation of, you know, the famous "nine old men," the star animators from, you know, going back to like the Snow White days, a lot of them were, you know, retired, retiring, or dying off, and there didn't seem to be like a whole new generation of people who were being mentored and, um, you know, brought into the business to further that.

There was really nobody in the middle age range doing animation. There were young guys like myself and Bruce Timm, and Tom is, I think, is a little older, in our 20s, and we were just starting our careers, like '79, '80, '81, and then there were the guys who had been on the original Disney features and at Warner Brothers, and they were all in their late 70s and 80s, and they're looking to retire.

And then here at Warner Brothers in '89, I think is when we first started doing Tiny Toons. That was our first big show as a newly revamped studio for TV cartoons. Unfortunately, it was a huge hit. I met Jean McCurdy when I was working at Hanna-Barbera, and I had been there for a number of years. I had done a lot of Scooby, but Jean McCurdy was my boss there. She was in charge of all the writers at Hanna-Barbera, and at some point, she said, "I can't do this anymore; I'm out of here." [Music]

She was gone, and she was over at Warner Brothers, and they had no real production facility going on at all at Warner Brothers. Steven Spielberg and, uh, Terry Semel of Warner Brothers got together one day and they said, "Hey, let's make sort of a junior version of Looney Tunes." I came to Warner Brothers; it was late in November; it was right around Thanksgiving, and the first week in January of 1989, there was a press conference with Spielberg announcing we were going to produce 65 half-hours. I had been there, what, six weeks? [Music]

And they went to McCurdy, who was in charge of the animation department, which was really inactive, and they said, "Who do we get to make this?" They said, "You know what? What's it going to take to put this together?" Because at first, they were talking about farming it out to HB, and I went, "No, no, no, no! You can do this here!" And she said, "She had the nerve to say, 'Why don't you let us do it? Why don't you let me start a division of animation?'" They said, "Well, that's pretty chancy; let's give it a try. I know some really good people."

So it was like, "How am I gonna do this? I'm not real sure." And, you know, thank God for Tom Ruger, who I'd worked with at Hanna-Barbera. Tom was willing to come on board and take it on and really had a vision for what it should be. I was fortunate enough to be the first hire and was asked to come in and do development on Tiny Toons. At that point, Warner Brothers just wanted to please Steven Spielberg. Spielberg was at his peak, so Warner Brothers was all in on getting Steven or maintaining Steven's happiness.

"Please, Mr. Spielberg, we don't care if the show's a piece of junk! I don't care if this is on budget or over budget. I don't care if it's, you know, a hit or a failure; we don't care if it's a disaster! All we care about is keeping Steven Spielberg happy!" But if Steven's happy at the end of the process, we'll be happy because we'll have this great relationship. [Music]

You know, he was a big part of why Tiny Toons had a lot more money thrown at it than previous cartoons for TV. They were so supportive in terms of money, time, all of that. And Steven attracted talent, and the fact that we wanted to be really competitive and were willing to pay to be competitive really made a big difference. We got good people; I had a really decent-sized budget; we had a decent-sized schedule; and of course, you know, the writing and animation was all really good.

It was good. Tiny Toons had happened at Warner Brothers, and that was kind of the golden age of, like, the new revival of animation in the '90s. Frank Miller's Dark Knight had come out as a comic, and then the Michael Keaton, Tim Burton Batman came out. So things were pushing in a different direction Batman-wise and comic-wise. There was a revolution going on that was changing the movie industry, that was changing the television industry, that was changing the comic book industry.

And the two culprits behind this were our first Batman live-action movie in 1989, followed by Batman: The Animated Series. You can't talk about one without also talking about the other. Tim Burton's Batman feature film was a monster hit—just huge! It was like printing money! The revolutionary aspects of this were amazing. Tim had to wrestle with the concept that any move he made could wind up having people unintentionally laugh at the movie, at Batman, at the situations; that was pretty terrifying.

But he figured it out, and I'll never forget the day he said to me, "You know, Michael, in order to do this seriously, this movie is not going to be about Batman." And I said, "What are you talking about?" He says, "Nope! This movie's got to be about Bruce Wayne!"

It was very popular with kids. The stage was really set for Batman to appear in some form or another. Warner's wanted to make the cartoon; Fox wanted to air it, and they realized that it was different than what had gone before. Every single genre movie since 1989, I don't care if it's a superhero, if it's a general comic book movie, if it's sci-fi, whatever, every single one is still to this day being influenced by the vision of Tim Burton.

There was a lot of other adventure shows on TV. They were pretty much, all of them were all toy times prior to that. A lot of the influence came out of companies that wanted to capitalize on brands that may have had some life in theatrical and to build on that they could do an episodic series, which basically advertised the toys for a series. So that the focus on quality entertainment and storytelling was not at the forefront.

One thing I remember coming into work on the Batman Animated Series was a sense of relief that it was a new day in animation. I remember the other writers and artists on the series talking about this opportunity that Batman presented, that kind of the, uh, the cuffs were off. I think even to us working on it was not, we didn't believe they were actually going to do anything like we ended up creating.

When we were finishing up the first season of Tiny Toons, my boss, Jean McCurdy, had a big meeting with the entire crew and basically said, "Yeah, you know, we're probably gonna do another second season; we're still waiting for you to pick up on that. And in the meantime, we're gonna develop other new shows, and one of the things we're thinking about developing is Batman as an animated property. Warner Brothers is doing a new Batman."

Well, I've heard that one before! Oh boy, here comes another Super Friends! These guys have been doing Tiny Toons. I love Tiny Toons, but it's goofy comedy; it's Tiny Toons. It started off very experimental at the beginning. Jean McCurdy wanted to see who on the crew would be interested in doing a Batman show, and Eric Radomski came up with this really stunning background design where he was using very vibrant colors on black paper to sort of mute the look and give it a darker look because of the Tim Burton influence.

I chose to present the piece I felt was influenced by the dark noir sort of beginnings and picking up on Tim Burton's direction of that first film. His influence on my sort of perspective of the character was probably the most influential because I wasn't particularly a comic book reader as a kid. Eric's not really a comic book fan; he is not like me; he's not like a lifelong comic book fan. But all he knew about Batman was the Adam West show and the Tim Burton movie, and he was not even a fan of the Adam West show when he was a kid growing up to see Adam West and, you know, the campy television series, you know, kind of left me, uh, uninterested.

But he loved the first Tim Burton movie! I mean, that's why he was intimate doing the Batman show. Yeah, it's true. The opportunity to bring some influence into animation that could at least be in line with what Tim Burton's movie was was just unique, and that's kind of why my direction came out the way that it did in the very beginning, was that was the main influence for me for what this could be.

And if they were willing to consider that, that was the only piece that I had submitted. [Music] Bruce Timm is the hero to those of us who love and care about Batman because he was the right person at the right moment in time. He was able to see the door opening and jump in and pull it wide open, and Bruce Timm, I think he's been drawing Batman all his life in some form or another.

And he just went to his office, drew a model sheet within like about an hour, filled up an entire eight-and-a-half-by-eleven page of just different Batman designs. So the next time Jean had one of these big meetings, I showed up with this sheet of Batman drawings, and she went, "Wow, that's really cool!" He brought it to me, you know, I did! He's the one who said, "Here, this is what I would do."

"Okay, that looks good." You know, it wasn't hard; it isn't hard to recognize something that's working! Um, and he was working; it was good! It's like, "Yeah, if we do a Batman cartoon, that's exactly what he should look like!" And she said, "Yep, that's him. Why don't you and Eric work together?" They were both great, and it was an interesting pairing because they were very different personalities and styles, but each very passionate about what they did.

Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski barely knew each other. They, you know, they had seen each other, but they were working on different things. Jean literally called us together, basically said, "We like both of your takes on, uh, you know, at least an art direction for this show." She took Eric's background concepts and married them with my character designs, said, "Yeah, I want you guys to make a Batman short. Would you be interested in producing a sample piece that we could, you know, see what this might look like as a show?" You know, like two minutes long, whatever, two, three minutes long. "Here's a certain amount of money; go for it! You know, do exactly what you wanted to do, and, um, we'll show it to Fox, and hopefully, they'll get a lighter fire into them and say, "Yeah, let's make this show!"

I remember Bruce with his, you know, Tiny Toons storyboards and him being very happy that he could now do this instead. I remember it was, uh, maybe six weeks to animate the whole piece, and then we did, uh, just a very basic mix on it with the existing music and sound effects. Bruce and I participated by recording some of the fight sequences because we couldn't afford real actors at the time, so we were in the booth doing our grunts and groans and fisticuffs, and by the time we got it done, they had already signed the deal.

So, what was good about it was that it gave Eric and I kind of a calling card! Wow! It was, I'd never seen anything like that, and nobody had seen anything like that with the cinematic quality of it, even though it's just a, you know, a minute or two long; it captures everything about Batman. Everyone took a real liking to it. We can do that on a weekly basis; that would be awesome!

Out of the blue, Jean had called Eric and I and said, "How would you guys like to produce the show?" I think both of us didn't really know what the producing job was. I was a storyboard artist on, on Tiny Toons when that meeting happened, so at that point, I really had no deeper ambitions or wider ambitions than just, you know, art directing, you know, the Batman cartoon, if it came to be. You know, we were certainly dumbfounded at the same time. It was like, "Yeah, sure, okay!"

So, you know, it's like it was, yeah, I'd have to be stupid to say no! Until you walk out of the room and literally go, "How in the hell are we going to do this?" We've never produced a show! We don't know. We certainly don't know budgets and schedules and what's going to be involved and who's going to be involved and what is our real role because we're literally two artists that were just production artists, uh, you know, yesterday, and today they're asking us to produce this series! We had a green light, and we had a deadline, so we had to kind of get going because we were I think too new to realize the potential disaster it could have been.

We just trudged forward. I ended up working with a lot of people that I'd never worked with before, but, you know, we had to take chances and, unfortunately, a lot of it paid off. The art is useless if the stories aren't any good, and when we first started, we didn't even have a story editor! Jean was able to step in and understood where we were coming from, and actually, that brought us Alan Burnett in the beginning because we needed Bruce, and neither of us had experience as writers.

Alan is just a god! Jean McCurdy and I go back a few years. I was a page at NBC and got an internship at children's programs, and the person who hired me was G. McCurdy, who's the manager of children's programs at that time. Alan Burnett has been part of my life, my entire creative life, I suppose, her television life. So when I got to Hanna-Barbera, Alan was there as a writer, and one of the shows that we were going to develop and try to sell was Super Friends, dedicated to true justice and peace.

And Alan and I both felt that it needed to be serious, that it should be; that it couldn't be Adam West, that we needed to do something that really took the characters seriously. So we tried to convince ABC that this would be the way to go, and they didn't want to do that. I had another vision of what kids would like. [Music] She knew that he was a big comic book fan and specifically a big Batman fan, and she had since I think from the very beginning of the show had tried to get him over to come work here, and he was over Disney, you know, doing one of the duck shows.

And I kept saying to him, "That's ridiculous! You shouldn't be doing that! Wait a second! DuckTales? Really? Come on!" You know, it's like—I mean, I like DuckTales, but are you kidding me? It wasn't until he got the assurances so that we would be able to tell the kinds of stories in an honest way that he committed to come on board.

Jean McCurdy promised me I'd have guns and I'd have fist fights because I wouldn't come over otherwise, and I didn't believe her. I really didn't, and then they had a trailer and those guns were going off, and it was great, and I said even then I said to Jean, "Are you—this is okay? We can do this?" And she said, "Yes, yes, you can!"

Almost we had a policy against showing gun use. We never showed impact, but you hear the bullets and you see the reaction. It was very moving, very dramatic, but more mature, more adult than you would see in any other show up to that [Music].

Stop [Music] I wanted Alan, and he was like, "No, I'm into contract." But I did not come over to Warner Brothers until the very last. I didn't make a decision until the very last day of my deal, and I finally said, "Okay, I'm going to come over." And so I was glad that I did. He's made his move, and so he took a chance and came on board, and from that point on, it pretty much saved the show.

His vision of the show was really, really close to what Eric and I both wanted it to be, and it was true; I could finally have a noirish show with guns and fights—impactful stuff! He seemed to have a vision of the show that was very sharp and very smart, and it was really the words to Bruce's visuals and to Eric's, uh, you know, stylizations. It really was like the missing piece.

He was a little older than us and had more experience and obviously had his career as a writer prior, but he understood what we were trying to do with the series, as well as he was a huge Batman fan, so I think he was able to assure the executives at the time that we had a solid team. It wasn't just two rogue, you know, young, first-time producers saying, "Leave us alone; let's do whatever we want to do!"

So thank God for Alan! He put the whole thing—he put all the pieces together and got it up and running and humming like a fine machine, and so the rest is history. We, you know, we were hiring people like, kind of not off the street, but people who didn't have much experience or whatever. Glenn Murakami was a guy who, he had never worked in the business; he'd never actually held a paying art job before, but he was a comic book fan and he worked in a comic book shop.

I will say it's the first time I felt like I found my people! I mean, growing up and being into comic books and movies and illustration and stuff like that, I think that was the first time I found a collection of people who all saw all of it the same way that I did. I think everyone was striving for the same goal. Everyone wanted to make the best kind of show that they could, so that's pretty unique.

I was too kind of naive to know any better. It came as, uh, you know, as just a team effort to say, "We've got to get this thing done!" I've got ideas; you've got ideas that clearly like what we did together! Let's see what we can do! [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

So [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] The shock of my life was I was sitting down and Bruce shows me that trailer that they did, and I was like, "You've got to be kidding me! You're doing Fleischer Superman? You've got to be kidding me!" You know, just—just sign me up!

Warner Brothers had seven-minute Fleischer shorts of Superman that I thought were awesome. Yeah, Jean liked those, uh, Fleischer cartoons, and she watched them on Moviolas down in the Warner Brothers basement. They were dramatic, and the look of them, everything about it.

Eric and Bruce wanted to make a series like the Fleischer Superman, but they wanted to make it for the '90s. They wanted to make it even darker, and I think maybe I said something about Fleischer to them. I probably did because Fleischer was always something that haunted me; I don't know why, but it just did.

It was funny because Eric and I were both really big fans of the Fleischer Superman cartoons, but we didn't actually want to just recreate that look. We kind of wanted to put our own spin on the superhero world, you know, incorporating film noir and German expressionism and art deco. But we specifically were trying to do something that wasn't exactly Fleischer inspired.

And then one day we were meeting with Eugene McCurdy and she kind of said, "You know, the show should look like a Fleischer Superman cartoon." It was like, "Yes, it should! It's like, yeah, we were trying to not do that, but it totally makes sense to do that, so yeah, why fight it?"

So I may have mentioned Fleischer to them, but I mean, it's so Bruce Timm! Those designs that I—he would have done that that way anyway! But, you know, I don't know that I had to say it out loud; he knew what he wanted to do!

I thought it was an upgrade of the Fleischer stuff, and I thought, "Damn, that's good! That's great!" Visually, that thing was handled. Bruce and Eric and the entire artistic staff and the director, I mean, they had this thing; visually, it was like, uh—It was poetry in motion! I mean, they know how to tell a story without dialogue, without sound.

Dark Deco is a term that I came up with on the spur of the moment. One, just because it was combining two different things. The dark look of the show was something that Eric and I were both really into trying to achieve. We both wanted to bring like a kind of an old-timey film noir kind of sensibility to the visuals, and that meant dark; that meant like, you know, just having the show take place almost all, you know, all the time at night.

Working with a lot of silhouette was going to be part and parcel of the show. The darker setting lends itself to just the graphic side of what a comic book is, and Eric had come up with this brilliant plan of doing all the backgrounds on black paper, on blackboard.

I really liked it. I mean, the idea of doing everything on the black paper was very stylish. It really looks like it's painted on black velvet, and it's just beautiful. You're not pulling drawings out of the light; you're pulling the drawing out of the darkness, which is, of course, where Batman lives.

Having been a painter for the past, you know, the two years prior to painting, I was like, "I want to paint that entire city over and over and over again, and especially at night because all of that dark imagery you've got to paint in."

So it just occurred to me, what if we started with a dark environment, and we just brought light into it? And the deco aspect of it came basically just from me being a fan of architecture of that era. Batman was created in the '40s, so it's almost like it just never stopped being the '40s. There's cell phones and there's VCRs, but it's art deco!

It's like Batman lives in this forever art deco world, so that's the way we handled it. I mean, the cars—some of those cars look like they come from the giant cars of the '40s, but then there's helicopters in the sky that don't look like they were from the past at all but something from the future.

They turn on the TV, and it's black and white, you know? So it's like it's black and white, but yet you have this incredible Batmobile and Batwing and, you know, these very high-tech gadgets. There were computers and portable phones, and there was technology of the time but done and executed in a way that was more kind of reminiscent of this, you know, very classic look and feel.

A lot of film noir, this was the feeling we wanted to have with all the heavy blacks and the shadows, that high contrast photography though, especially in the '30s and '40s. Orson Welles was like the king of it, just where you'd get that shadow, just jet black. We did that; it was the Universal monster movies and Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Fritz Lang, Metropolis, as well as M and Citizen Kane.

The whole concept of film noir, that all influenced the writers and the artists and the editors of Batman comics. All of that were just as influential on the people involved with Batman: The Animated Series, and you can see it. You can see it clear as day! We definitely were informed by noir fiction and pulp stories, and Hitchcock was kind of a guiding light of how to tell a visual story, how to tell a clean visual story, how to deliver mood with camera.

This was a Warner Brothers gangster movie show that had a superhero in it, and noir not just stylistically but thematically, where we were focusing on villains and focusing on somebody who felt wronged and wanted vengeance and sympathetic people that actually were the criminals. And that's a very nuanced rate; it's not just about dark shadows and cool buildings.

Uh, it—it's about the people and the darkness in society. It's really cool! We early on decided we wanted to have individual title cards for each episode. This is something they used to do back in the old days in classic cartoons when they would have those wonderful lobby cards, you know, and going back even further than that, hand-painted lobby cards, you know, so that that kind of stuff was a great throwback. [Music]

We thought, "Okay, why not? You've got nothing better to do; there's a little bit of time left in those 24 hours of every day; why not throw in a title card as well?" So, unfortunately, Eric was really into the whole idea, and, uh, he ended up designing, I would say, most of those title cards himself. Hats off to him because those are still, to this day, some of the coolest title cards you've ever seen in a cartoon.

When we came down to designing the title sequence for the show, Eric and I—I don't remember whose idea it was, but between the two of us, one of us said, "Well, why don't we just redo that pilot film that we did that sold the show with Batman fighting some thugs on a rooftop kind of thing?"

It was dark and gritty and scary! It's all shadows; you don't hardly see anything until Batman's lit up by a bolt of lightning. I think all along we had planned at some point to put, you know, Batman as a title; you know, a series title on it. And at some point, we were just like, "Well, what image do we want to cover up with that title?" Because they all look cool! I don't think we need the title!

You know who that guy is on that building? The lightning's around him; yeah, you know who that is! It just said, "This is something you've never seen before," and you almost had to do it because it was so compelling, and so that title sequence is—it still holds up! It's phenomenal!

I think a lot of people think to adapt a comic book into animation, they're trying to achieve the look of the comic book. Previous attempts to try and do comic book things in animation, they tried to emulate the models from the comic books very closely. That had a lot of anatomy in them, a lot of muscles, a lot of curves, and everything like that.

And one of the genius things that Bruce and Eric did and brought this to the screen was they simplified it! Bruce was aware it needs to be animated; it needs to move around a lot! How simple can we make everything? Every line you draw has to be duplicated, you know, thousands and thousands of times, and then you're painting them all!

This is back when we were still doing cell animation. Oh my gosh! So, uh, it really behooves you to simplify your character design so they don't have a lot of muscles and rendering and all that stuff. Voila! We do that 1999 more times, and we have a 20-minute show! [Music]

The villains all had their own unique design challenges. Some of them, I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to do with the Two-Face character. I pretty much nailed him right out of the gate. [Music] The most obvious thing I did with the Two-Face was to simplify his clothes because in the comics, he traditionally has like a purple suit on one side and like an orange suit on the other, and the purple side has like, you know, like plaid!

Because in comics you can do that! You really want to, like, you know, emphasize, you know, how different the two sides of his personality are! And so I was looking at that in the comics, and I went, "Well, I'm not going to animate—I don't want anybody to try to animate plaid!" That's just way too many lines to animate, and purple and orange is really ugly to look at as a color combination, which is intentionally ugly, but it was just—it was just—I couldn't stand to look at it.

And I thought, "Well, wait a minute! You can't get any more opposite than black and white, so I'll make his bad side, you know, dark, and I'll make his supposedly good side, you know, blindingly white." And, um, it was such an obvious idea!

It was kind of like, in retrospect, kind of like surprised that nobody had ever done it before, but it worked really great for our show! The funny thing about the Bruce Timm style: it is so appealing, and so many people seem to think they can get it. It's a very tough thing to actually do! When I looked at the characters and saw how simple the designs were, I thought, "Well, you know, I guess I don't—this will work, I don't know, we'll see."

Ultimately, it was a brilliant stroke! Bruce Timm's style really is, you know, it's curves against lines! I mean, it's people at Disney who were doing that for years and years, and your own feature! We just utilized it down in TV animation.

I was working at the Don Bluth studios in the early '80s on the video games and on The Secret of NIMH. The whole Don Bluth aesthetic was very much classical Disney—that's where I first heard concepts like straights against curves and talking about, you know, the different masses and stylizing the shape so they'll animate well and, uh, etc. People loved it—they ate it up!

The interesting thing about Bruce Timm, though, is you know, Bruce Timm is self-taught. That's the thing that I just find wacky and remarkable, and maybe that's what's made him so unique, um, that he didn't have anybody telling him how to do it or what to do, which is also always an issue with Bruce! For years, when I was just drawing for my own amusement, I pretty much taught myself how to draw from, um, mostly from, like, uh, you know, copying my favorite artists in comic books.

Later on, um, when I got into the animation business, Dan DeCarlo was one of those artists who got passed around a lot, and I really started paying attention to his comics and the way he drew, uh, girls especially, um, their facial features. And so there's definitely a little bit of DNA—Dan DeCarlo DNA—in the way I draw, um, the female characters in the Batman show. I think you can see it in the smiles and the kind of heart-shaped faces, etc.

Alex Toth was another artist that I, um, kind of got to later in my career. He had designed a lot of stuff for, um, the Hanna-Barbera cartoons in the '60s, you know, specifically Space Ghost. When I eventually got to design Batman for animation, he was kind of a subliminal design in the back of my head. I wasn't specifically trying to draw like Alex Toth, but there's a ghost of an Alex Toth drawing—a Space Ghost drawing—underneath my Batman drawing, even though I wasn't consciously, you know, channeling Alex Toth, but it was just kind of there, and I just kind of—it kind of came out!

With his animation expertise and his comic book background of people like Kirby and Toth and his experience of belief, you know, all melded into this Bruce Timm style. And once I eventually got to do the Batman: The Animated Show, all that stuff kind of, all kind of just rushed together, and became the Batman style. It wasn't your typical Filmation look or Hanna-Barbera; it was a design look that had never been seen on Saturday morning.

I used to have nightmares. My nightmares were very literal. My nightmares were taking artwork to Bruce's office to show him, "Here's my design!" Bruce had a long corner office, and, uh, he kept it very dark, and back then he could smoke in the office. So you'd knock on the door, and the room would be filled with smoke, and you'd have to walk across this long room to get to him at the end of his desk, and it was filled with toys.

But it was dark and stuff like that, and smoke. And he would look at the drawing, and he would sigh, and then he would reach down and pull a piece of paper and put it over my drawing and like redo my drawing. And then I'd look at it, and I'd go, "Okay!"

Like he'd make it better, and then I'd have to take that walk of shame back to my desk to redo the drawing. But he was right! I mean, that was like a, um, a good learning experience. And little by little, I think he could see that I was getting it, and then little by little, he would start going, "Okay, don't do this; okay, do this."

And I apprenticed! You know, I graduated up! But I think that's rare to apprentice like that. I mean, I learned a ton just by going through that process. There was just so much of the show to design, and before I had my own in-house crew to help me design the characters, and we had to kind of get going quickly.

I actually enlisted some of my favorite comic book artists. I just reached out to them, so I had nothing to lose! So I reached out to both Mike Mignola and to Kevin Nolan, whom I didn't know either one of them, but through DC Comics, um, you know, we were working with on the show. I got their phone numbers, and I just called them up and said, "Hey, I'm doing this Batman: The Animated Show; I'm a big fan of your work. Would you like to do some design work for the show?" And they both said, "Okay, sure!"

Mike ended up designing Mr. Freeze. The designs he came up with for, you know, Mr. Freeze is very much an old-school kind of robotic. You know, to me, it looks like, um, Lon Chaney in the old Man-Made Monster movie. You try and scrape off all of the barnacles of the storytelling that have accumulated over the years because there have been so many stories told about these characters and try and get back to the essence of what they are.

All that anybody knew about Mr. Freeze at that time was that he was the jokey guy in the old Batman show who made weird ice puns, you know, and he was either, you know, dry as ice, George Sanders, or he was, you know, crazy Otto Preminger. I said, "But what if we took a character like that and added emotional depth to it?"

You look at Heart of Ice in the episode that Paul wrote season one. It's one of the best episodes, if not the best episode of the series, and it took a character, Mr. Freeze, that previously didn't have this origin, didn't have this emotional story. And when Paul did what he did there, it changed the landscape, you know? It changed people's understanding of Mr. Freeze and the depth with which we were looking at these villains forever. [Music]

I didn't know Paul well; I hardly knew him at all. We passed down the hallway, and I knew him from the fact that he worked for Lucas. Everybody knew that; everybody, that was a big buzz that Paul Dini's writing the Ewok show because everybody wanted something like that, and he was disenchanted at the time for various reasons and was thinking of making a career move leaving Warner Brothers.

And I wanted him to stay on because he's a good writer. I was sort of over on Tiny Toons and sort of somewhere else, and I kind of left the studio for a while to work on some other stuff, and I wasn't really sure if I wanted to go back or to what degree I wanted to go back. And I said, "Don't you want—you can't go! There's got to be something you want to do!"

He said, "Well, I have this idea—a this idea for Mr. Freeze's story," and he told me a sentence or two, and I said, "Right! Do it!" A day or so later, he came back with the outline. I'm reading this story, and it was Heart of Ice, and it was just great! It was exactly what I wanted!

And so he started writing it! Then he was in, he was in, he was back in! By that time, he said, "You know, just come back and start writing." And it's like, "Yeah, all right! This is great! Now it's a lot of fun!" And thank God because he wrote, uh, some of the most important scripts for that show. [Music]

Mr. Freeze has never been more understandable, more relatable to. They found a human-ness in the villains. They found a why, and they let us know the why. How much can you feel for a character like Victor Freeze? Can you empathize with him? Can you love a character like Harley Quinn who makes bad decisions and still keeps going back to this maniac?

Can you empathize a little bit with the Riddler and his ongoing need to try and prove himself over Batman? The idea is to make every character human, even the bad guys. Part of that was Paul; part of that was Alan; and part of it was the two of them made sure that they had a lot of writers who were inclined to take the character seriously and not write in stereotypes, you know? Not have just, you know, some crazy villain doing crazy stuff.

The villains wanted things; they wanted human things! Those make you care about the characters a little bit more, and you know, it's important because that sets it up for the next generation. They can take it a step further and to make the characters a little more human, a little more funny, a little more interesting! In our show, we were able to end something without necessarily a happy ending; uh, the villain gets his comeuppance, but because we've related to the character and we felt sorry for them, it's a tragedy again: very noir, very, very noir. [Music]

All the villains are not just treated as like toss away characters. It was a soap opera, and it opened up the possibilities of animation not just being for children, that you could really get involved into the characters.

Harvey Dent—that was such a great character! One of the fastest storyboards I've ever done was the ending of that one where Grace is coming down the hallway, and he screams, it's Richard Moll doing that death-defying scream!

When I saw that played in an audience at a convention once, and at the end when Grace goes, "Harvey!" and he turns to the camera, I heard this girl in the audience just started sobbing uncontrollably! Like, it's so sad! It's so tragic! [Music]

Villains suffer not because they're villains; they suffered because of something they wanted! It's not just some cheerful happy ending! Usually, "Goodbye, Grace!" [Music]

One of the things that was unique about the working environment on the Batman show was that we were working as a unit; that we were all together, the writers and the artists were all together, and that made a huge difference.

Um, it meant that if there was something that was unclear in the script, the director could come down and say, "Hey, what did you mean by this?" So there was a lot more interaction between the art and the writing staff than there were on most shows.

The show was just— it was a juggernaut; it was just huge! And we were putting out, I think, three scripts a month—something like that! Oh, it was chaos! We, I mean, we really were, you know, flying by the seat of our pants.

This is Sherman Oaks. This is the animation studio for Warner Brothers where they put together the Batman cartoon. And as you can see, Batman himself is kind of beating up on one of the animators. Warner Brothers started at the Sherman Oaks Galleria.

Um, the large—it was an Imperial Bank building is the way we refer to it—it was like a 14-story building right next to what used to be a shopping mall. It was basically just an office building. Um, it was, uh, I heard a lot of people used to complain it was just like a ratty old dump, and I don't know! I'm used to working in radial dumps! Almost every studio I've ever worked in—they were all kind of low-rent.

We shared the floor with a real wild group of people. I mean, I remember there was a fistfight one night! Uh, yay! It's a big, you know, bunch of offices, and there's a big bullpen area where there's just a lot of cubicles and stuff. It looks like it could be, you know, any corporation, you know, except that there's, you know, usually a lot of artwork tacked up all over the walls everywhere!

Everybody was making it up as we went along! I mean, that was part of the fun of it, was figuring out how to do it and how to how to get the best out of people and—and to let people.

I was a real firm believer in letting people work on what it is that they wanted to work on, what they liked, and because that's when you're going to get good work. There is a lot of fun; there is a lot of discord at times; there are a lot of fights because everybody cared about characters!

Animators and cartoons, I think they’re very rebellious, and they need something to rebel against! And in order to help feed that creative juice, "I don't like this," and it's kind of stupid! I mean, look at him jumping out of a third floor window, and he's walking away—no, no! Why don't we have him sit there and break his ankle, and we see him in a cast? There you go!

Well, they wouldn't do that! He said, "Why not?" You know? And then maybe we get something else out of it that's completely unrelated to what we were even talking about that just evolved from that discussion. But the important was, you would have those discussions!

There was a lot of that type of sort of creative energy that was fun. It was fun! We had a good time! We had so many strongly talented people on the series, you know—playing pranks on people while they're working.

Keeps him seeing images of, uh, Dan Riba stumbling down the hallway into these booths in a Batman costume, you know, get in a fight with Eric, you know, stupid stuff like that! This is generally a very congenial place; people here really get along; it's lots of fun!

Well, oh, you saw this last hour! There they go again! It's Batman and the writer! And, you know, it's funny; we finally built a, you know, fancy studio over at Sherman Oaks over there. That's when we started to lose it, I think, because, um, it was better when it was still sort of the termite terrace feel!

Just we weren't successful; you know, you kind of want to be the scrappy, scrappy kids! And we always had Disney as our foil. You know, we always thought we were much better! We made a very good series! I'm not bragging; I'm telling you after the fact that everybody put their heart and soul into it and worked together, and we succeeded in making a series that I'm so proud of!

Let's go 38 to 47. We had Andrea Romano as our recording director, and, uh, and she also cast the show. The real secret of the show was the casting. Andrea studied acting, uh, in college in New York, and then she became a stage manager, I think, and then she became an agent, and then she eventually became a director of animation. But so she understands what actors go through; she understands the process!

So the recording sessions were always really wonderful—a wonderful experience that everyone would look forward to. We, you know, had a meeting with her and kind of told her, you know, the kind of overall feel that we wanted the show to have, that would be, you know, very much, you know, realistic and straight, um, and serious and, uh, not high-pitched and super high energy, you know, like say Tiny Toons.

I think we even mentioned that; we said, "Yeah, ideally, it would sound like a movie from the 1940s," you know, that kind of fast-paced but realistic, you know, kind of naturalistic. And she seemed to get it immediately! She was good! I know exactly what you want for a show like Batman! I need killer actors! Ideally, actors with stage credits because it's that energy that's needed!

I had never done an animated voice before; I had never auditioned for an animated voice before. I was a stage actor. I went to Juilliard! I worked on Broadway; I worked off-Broadway; I worked for Joe Papp at the Public. I was a New York actor for the single character of Batman itself!

I know I listened to well over 500 voices, well over so many actors! We didn't fall in love with anybody, and when you're casting something as awesome as Batman for a series called Batman, you want to fall in love with him! You really want to fall in love with him!

I had done commercial voice-overs in New York, so I had a voice-over agent, and he said, "They're putting together a new show over at Warner Brothers. I know you haven't done any animation, but why don't you go over, give it a shot? It's Batman!"

And I said, "No!" I said, "Batman's been around forever! It was on when I was a kid!"

I didn't go with any preconceptions; I didn't go with any preconceived notions or anticipation of who I was going to meet. I didn't know who Bruce Timm was; I didn't know who Andrea Romano was. I was just an actor going into an audition.

So we bring him in on the callbacks, and he walks through the door, and he asks a couple of very intelligent questions, and then we let him audition for the voice of Batman. And it was truly the Eureka moment that you wish for! Bruce and I looked at each other, and just you could see the stress of months of auditions just fall from our faces because we had found Batman! It was remarkable!

The trick over this long arc has been to not let it get stale, and I learned this early on. Batman is not the disguise. Batman is who he went to, is what he became because of the tragedy of his childhood. It's where he found safety; it's where he is most comfortable—in that cave and the suit of armor he puts on; the role he plays for the world is Bruce Wayne!

That's the performance! And so once I found that about the character, it really made sense to me! It kept the Batman voice from sounding artificial, and it kept Bruce Wayne from—it made him such a different persona! Kevin Conroy is just phenomenal!

But it's not just him! I remember my agent called and left a message on my answering machine, and he's like, "Oh my God! You're her! You're the girl! You're the girl that's the Bat! You're Batgirl!" And he was screaming, and I was screaming, and I was like, "Oh my God!" Like, it was just such a huge thrill to book it!

I was excited about it, but it was really like, "This is a really good job, a really nice job, and I hope it lasts! You know, that'll be nice to do a few episodes!" You know, here we are talking about it 25 years later! We're still talking about that show! I had no idea, I had no idea that something like that was going to happen!

Andrea Romano was able to, you know, she's amazing in terms of not only her ability to figure out who to put where, but to get to them and to convince them to do it! Every week there'd be some incredible guest star—Ephram Zimbalist Jr. and, of course, Arleen Sorkin! It was just an amazing magical time!

Who thinks of going to Paul Williams to be the Penguin? It was perfect, and it just sounded like a weird place because they were pulling guys! Ephram Zimbalist Jr. was a great idea! You know, the guy had a voice! But it's like he wasn't a voice actor up until that point, and neither was Mark Hamill!

Actors all live to a certain extent in a fantasy world, and to me doing Batman was a lifelong dream in the sense that I always thought that the character actors had the most fun. Oddly enough, as fate would have it, Tim Curry, who was voicing the Joker for me, was not a favorite of one of the new producers who came on the show, and truth be told, I never would have replaced Tim Curry. I loved Tim; I thought he was doing a beautiful job, but I could never please this producer.

So now I have to find the Joker, but we're at least two or three, maybe four episodes into animation with Tim Curry's voice! So the animation is done, the mouth flaps exist, there's an energy, there's a performance, there's a timing that I have to find an actor who can bring their own Joker to it and voice mouth flap match tune and sing because the character says in the Christmas episode!

So I auditioned—auditioned people, and I'm like, "You know what? I’ve got to give Mark a shot at this! This might just be the answer to our prayers!" Mark Hamill—oh my God! Do you think we can get him?

Mark walked in, and he was incredible! One of the things that said at the top of the audition script, "Don't think Nicholson!" What a relief that was because I figured if you're going to just try and imitate Jack Nicholson, you're going to really suffer because as wonderful as he is in the movie, Jack is Jack. All we can do is imitate, and that's not something I wanted to do.

I remember hearing his audition for the Joker, and it was the laugh! Once I heard the laugh, I was going like, "Oh God! That's—that's it! You're really sick! You know that, boss?" It just sent goosebumps down my spine!

He is so inhabited that role, and it would just sort of physically take over his body as he did it. It was—it was an amazing transformation to watch! If the world decides to build a Mount Rushmore for the Joker, it's going to be Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger, and Mark Hamill because Mark is the definitive voice of the Joker!

The Joker that you hear today on the cartoon by Mark Hamill is exactly the Joker he did for us. When he walked in and auditioned for us, it was manic, it was funny, and there was a little element of tragedy to it! There was just a little bit of like this—this guy is a lost soul, and he doesn't care, and that's what made it scary!

It was as if from childhood he had thought about how he would voice the Joker if he ever got the chance to do it. Everyone was doing these incredible villain characters! Arlene—wonderful as Harley! I brought her up and said, "Hey, you know, I'm kind of basing this character on my friend; she's a comedic actress. How about getting her to do the voice?"

And Andrea was saying like, "Okay, I'll give her a shot!" She came in, and she had this sort of warped Billie Holiday quality to her voice, and the fact that she hadn't done voiceover; that made her want to experiment and try different things, and she brought in a newness to, uh, through her performance into that character, and it really clicked!

Harley Quinn is a great example—what a character created by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm! And here she is, this sort of zany sidekick to the Joker that it came from Batman: The Animated Series! And now Warner Brothers is thinking of giving her own movie franchise! I mean, this thing really did create some lasting images and some lasting characters.

So it was fun to have actors of that caliber! You know, and we had like almost the entire crew lined up, um, like like a radio play! The great thing about recording for Warner Brothers, um, and Andrea Romano specifically is they really like to get all the actors together in a room. I can't say that I insisted upon it, but I really tried to always make that happen on every series I directed because a major part of acting is reacting!

So you have the other actors to bounce things off of. I wouldn't be nearly as good in what I do if I didn't have Mark Hamill feeding me as the Joker!

So typically, when there's a group cast record, all the actors will be in a semi-circle facing the booth so that we could see the director. Everyone's in the room together, and it's just one big room, and you have music stands and you've got a microphone, and you've got headsets on, so we would all be sitting there.

All of it, except for Mark Hamill, who would always stand—I always knew Mark was in this episode because I'd come in and there'd be one microphone stand standing. I said, "Oh, Mark's in this episode!" You're really listening to each other and playing off each other. It's a very collaborative world!

I would say a line, and maybe the other actor would pause before saying something, and that would give me pause and make me think about what are they thinking? This is what you do in every realm of where good acting is involved, and that—that situation where we were all in the room together lent itself to that.

I wanted to make sure that there was a sensitivity to these pieces, and that's why you'll see where there are emotional scenes that are played. I let them breathe! I wanted them to breathe! I wanted to take more time; I wanted the actors to make me cry, and they almost always did! And if they didn't, I felt like I hadn't done my job right!

Andrea knew what to say to get the actors to give the performance that she and the other people in the booth were expecting or envisioned. So feel free to ask questions as we go along! I'll describe the action that I think is important for you to know, and we'll just go scene by scene!

So remember, the animation is done later; we do the voice first, and all we get is a script with words on it! When we record, it's up to Andrea to paint the pictures for us, and that's what she would do. She would really paint the pictures of what was going on because she'd seen the storyboards, and she would tell us, "You know, uh, okay, you're in a helicopter and the mountain is coming right at you," and you know, these kinds of things you couldn't necessarily picture or get from the script!

There would be brief descriptions, but she would really paint the picture of it, and if it wasn't quite the right sound, especially like, uh, you know, in the fights, you know, there are different kinds of fights! You know, there's a difference between an "uh" and an "oh!" So she would say, "Okay, now you're getting kicked in the stomach!" You know, and she sees the storyboard. "No, you're getting really kicked hard in the stomach!"

So you know, those are things that we would not be able to do unless we had, you know, a wonderful captain at the helm—she was and is! I would never ask an actor to do something that I wouldn't do, so I was right there with them! I would cry with them; I would be angry with them; I would—yeah—with them; I would do everything—I would do it first so that they could see that it's okay to do it that broad!

It's okay to, you know, to cry, to yell, to be, you know, all those things! These are super real authentic emotional pieces that we were working on, and that's part of why the show was so well-loved by the fans. They felt that authenticity!

It was very collaborative how we came to the energy of the show and where the quiet moments needed to be, and those are the moments that I really love to direct, where you just take that breath, that moment, and then a huge fight scene happens. [Music]

Bruce is very upfront; he did not want wall-to-wall music on his shows. You know, at times, sometimes I wish that we had just a little bit more, but he was right in saying that we need breathing space—absolutely! Especially in these types of shows, the film noir—sometimes you just need a simple sound effect, you know, the dripping of the water, you know, a rat scurrying across a sewer line or something, you know?

That's all you needed! You just let the echo take it, and that—that's the music—that little sound effect carrying over an echo plays as music because it does serve the same purpose! Music was equally as important and as wonderful and brilliant as all of the other elements that came together!

And to say that we, you know, we knew that would happen would be a complete, complete lie because all of those things made the series become the iconic series that it has become. [Music] For the first time in almost any animated show like that, we had real orchestral music; it wasn't a synthesizer. [Music]

It was real instrumentation, and we had Shirley Walker, who was just one of the greatest composers ever in my mind! She was such a delightful person as well! She was phenomenal! She came up with a theme for Batman that is just haunting to this day! It's a haunting theme!

When we did Tiny Toons, we need to make the music really important, and Steven wanted to spend all the money on the music. We were spending a fortune! Steven said to me, "Well, we have to have a full orchestra for these cartoons!" And I was like, "Oh, nobody does that! You know, you record these little sound bites, Steven, and then you just cut them in where you need them and you use them over and over again!"

And he was like, "No, we're not going to do that!" And I was like, "Oh, okay!" You know, I wasn't sure what that meant. Well, I made a lot of money!

And so when we started Batman, there was like, "Well, we have to have an orchestra! I mean, that's what we do! That is now what Warner animation does! We do full orchestra!" You know? So it was like, "And so thank you, Steven!" God is the orchestra!

Shirley Walker wanted this Batman: The Animated Series very much! She really kind of stepped forward and said, "You've got to let me score this series!" She was just—oh God, it makes me get teary! She was really a gift! She was something else! Talk about a strong woman, you know, in that business!

And she had worked for Danny Hoffman, and God, the talent and the sound that comes out of her was something else! [Music] I have very, very specific memories of the very first time she conducted an orchestra to our picture over at the lot!

Eric and I went over there, and we're sitting there in the control booth, and she's out there, you know, conducting the orchestra. She runs the film, and we hear the orchestra, you know, power up, and it's playing, you know, that that dynamic opening music to the first episode, "On Leather Wings."

And it was like, you know, trombones and strings, and it was like really dark and spooky and gothic! And it was just like, "Wow! It's like this sounds great! I've never heard a TV cartoon that sounds like this!" It's like, "Yeah, it was something!" [Music]

When I heard the score for that first episode, I—I mean, I just brought tears to your eyes! It's just so beautiful, and it's just—I couldn't believe that they had like—they assembled like an orchestra! It's like one of the great moments of my life!

The first episode we got a tape; it was a VHS tape sent to DC's offices. We all stopped working, and we went to the conference room, and we watched "On Leather Wings" like regular people. And we were thrilled because it took the comics seriously and translated it in a way that we weren't embarrassed by, and that is not always the case!

So we were nervous to watch it, but we didn't know what a Bruce Timm was or a Paul Dini was at that time, but we were just thrilled, and we just then after that we would watch them as they came in and just enjoy the show as fans! And there's nothing better for us to be able to watch something and say, "We don't have to apologize for this at all!"

And that again does not happen all the time! All shows have a lifespan. You start to run out of stories; you start to run out of a new vision! It is very hard to sustain something too long, and it'll become detrimental when you do!

These have lifespans! I believe the period of time when we were doing this series, this was where you wanted to be in animation! This was where everybody wanted to be in animation! And the big reason for that is Jean McCurdy! She was the best animation executive—bar none!

I started as a secretary, and 30 years later I retired as president of the animation division! I think I was the first division president—the female division president of Warner Brothers! I'm proud of that! You know, I have more appreciation for that now being out of it than I did when it was happening and you're having—you're just doing your job!

Listen, I had a great time! I have no regrets! I worked with fabulous people and generous people! Jean had our back all the time—all the damn time! We could not have made the show without her running interference for us! Yeah, she was the enabler! She was the good parent, and there was no disciplinary parent! Just do whatever you want! We amused her, I think!

We were like little clowns that amused her! We were all so young! You know, I mean, we were all young, and there's something to be said for that, that there's a—a juice there and a need to make your statement! And you have you have a real fierce feeling that you're right!

Yeah, even when you're not! Uh-huh! And sometimes it works out!

We got a lot of pushback from people, you know, saying, "Yeah! Who are these two young punks, you know, telling us this is how they want to do the show?" It's like, "Well, that's not how you make a show! You've got to be gutsy! You gotta break your own rules!"

And, and see where they get you, and take some chances and risk upsetting a few people! But you know, more often than not, you'll come up with something kind of fun!

The thing I miss the most are the people and the interaction! The interaction not only with the people themselves but with that creative process is, um, watching people wrestle with the concept and visualizing it and bringing it to life! That's a rush! That is a real rush!

And I mean, I definitely miss—I don't miss all the peripheral shenanigans that go on around choking, but that part of it I miss! I got to work so closely with such creative people as Alan and Sidney, and it was just wonderful to, um, to be creative in my job!

And to work with these people who were at the top of their form and had this vision—these visions of, you know, what animation could be, and, yeah, it was a highlight of my career for sure!

People think of cartoons or comic books as, "Oh, that's just a cartoon or a comic book! It's disposable; it's kid stuff!" And we just played it straight! I think we were all fans of it, and we loved it!

I'm trying to make it not a big mystical thing! I think we just played it straight! When entertainment is done well, it works on a level for kids and adults!

I really think it's something that it has embraced and carried throughout the years! You know, I see people at conventions all the time; they're people who are like in their 30s, you know, saying, "Oh yeah, you know, when I was a kid, your Batman was like—that's why that was my first exposure to Batman!"

And it's like, "Well, that's kind of cool because like my first exposure to Batman was