Wednesday, September 6, 2017

'Batman: The Animated Series' turns 25

Source

  • Kevin Conroy (Bruce Wayne/Batman), Mark Hamill (The Joker), and others that worked on the noir animated series reflect on one of the most beloved adaptations of the Dark Knight.

  • The Juliard trained Conroy, who had never read any of the comics before joining the show, initially wanted to use two distinct voices: one for Bruce, one for Batman. "Early on, I said, 'This is the most famous and powerful guy in Gotham. Are you telling me he just puts on a mask and no one knows it's him? Seriously? There's got to be more to the disguise. My template for the two voices was the 1930s film The Scarlet Pimpernel. I played Bruce Wayne as sort of a humorous playboy to counteract the brooding nature of Batman." After a few episodes, they realized the more humorous tone of his Bruce voice clashed with the show's dark style. Conroy had to re-record the first few episodes, and he was told to tone it down.

  • Loren Lester used inspiration from the 1966 Batman series for his character, Dick Grayson/Robin: "I was definitely influenced by Burt [Ward]'s voice, his energy, his pitch. I was absolutely not doing an impersonation of him, but I couldn't help but be tremendously influenced."



  • Diane Pershing, the voice of Dr. Pamela Isley/Poison Ivy, created her sultry Ivy voice by drawing on her experience from working in perfume commercials.

  • Tim Curry would have been The Joker, but he was let go because of his bronchitis. Mark Hamill and John Glover auditioned for the role, with the aforementioned thinking "there was no way they'd hire Luke Skywalker as the Joker." Of course Hamill got the role and Glover went on to play The Riddler. Mark's signature Joker laugh is what sealed the deal.

  • Danny Elfman scored both of Tim Burton's Batman movies, and he also composed the iconic theme music for The Animated Series. The late Shirley Walker was the series' composer.

  • Kevin Conroy thinks "Perchance to Dream" is the show's best episode. The tie-in movie Mask of the Phantasm is regarded by THR to be the adaptation's "greatest achievement."

  • Conroy said of the show's voice director, Andrea Romano: "She always goes to bat for the actors, even though she's working for the studios. She had an enormous loyalty to her actor. She could coax performances out of people. I remember one day we had an actor who kept giving the same line reading no matter what direction Andrea gave him. She tried several different prompts and he just couldn't do it. Finally she said, 'Perfect, let's keep going,' At the end of the session, Andrea said, 'OK, great work, thanks everyone. Kevin, could you stay after a minute?' I said, 'Sure.' So, I stay after and Andrea asks, 'Is your afternoon free?' I told her that it was and she said, 'Ok good, there's another actor coming in to re-record the guy's part.' Andrea didn't want to embarrass him in front of everyone in the recording session. It was really professional."

  • Mark Hamill on Harley Quinn, an original character to the series that would eventually be added to the comics and future movies: "It was so wonderful to see how Harley Quinn emerged, because originally she didn’t have a name. She was called 'Joker’s Hench-wench' or something like that. Arleen opened her mouth with this Judy Holiday, hair-brained voice and we fell off our chairs."

  • On Harley Quinn, Diane Pershing added: "It was groundbreaking back then. Now they have more strong female characters on cartoons." Pershing recounts how she was approached by victims of sexual abuse at comic conventions. "One girl came up and said she was sexually abused — and when Poison Ivy spoke up and told Harley she couldn't let any man do that to her again, it turned something in her head and she was crying when she told me. I'm listening to this and I'm overwhelmed to think something I did 25 years ago had such a strong impact and I unwittingly was able to help people."

Read the whole fantastic article here.




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