4 @ i 0 n Furst• ( 4) created a "brutal" 8 s: Gotham City (interiors , I, 2, Q sketch 3) . "We really wanted @ i to expre ss the evil quality of g it. The first line of the script n that Tim [Burton, the direc­ s:0 tor] was involved with read , Q 'Hell has erupted through the 3 pavements and just kept on growing.' We tried to imagine that." nig h t, as a matter of fact. T h is sugges ted a "We even took things like prison story's maj or buildings . "W e want ed to very broad graphic stroke. So we d id n' t go architecture and stretched it into skyscrap­ build it on the 00 7 Stage," Furst says, Furst• (4) a donmi a la ville into nitty gri tt y detai l an d ornament - it ers . We created buildings in the style of referring to Pinewood 's 4,350 squ are Gotham City un aspect tres was just massive forms and huge shapes skyscraper architect, Louis Sullivan, and meter stage - one of the largest in Europe agressif (les interieurs 1, 2, and massive bal ustrades . ziggurat structures, which are Babylonian­ - which was used for the James Bond croquis 3). ·Nous voulions "A nd then we tho ug h t, 'W hat style are style pyramids, pushed back and then can­ and Superman mov ies. "It ended up three exprimer l'esprit malin et we go ing for in terms of p eriod ?' and th e tilevered out. And fascist-style buildings. times th e size of the 00 7 stag e. It becam e malfaisant de la ville . La premiere ligne du script avec @ answer was to try and see w h at wo uld And we put them all together. And one of the biggest sets , I'm told , since h appe n if we we nt for no per iod in brutalism, absolute brutalism. Cleopatr a and certainly the biggest laquelle le realisateur Tim ! (Burton} a ete confrm,te , 0 pa rt icul ar - w heth er th at wou ld actu ally "And then we thought, we 'll put in outdoor set in the h istory of Pinewood ." n etait : L'enfer afait eclater Les 8 for mu late its own style . modern architecture , just to confuse the The principal backlot set of Gotham s: trottoirs et ii conti,me d 'evo ­ "Take a city like New York. Got ham Square w ill be enh anced in man y shot s Q issue . But if we put -in modern architec­ luer. Nous avons essaye City is definite ly based in many ways on with optical special effect s. On the lot , the 2 ture, we 'll go for sheer brutalism , like d'imaginer fa ~ th e worst aspec ts of New Ya rk - the fact Russian constructivist buildings. bu ilding s seem onl y half-finished - the y T th at it's very ugly in m any ways. "So we 've got an incredible anomal y of are cut off _above their third store y, and Furst (41 schuf elne " brutale " "It's amazing in New York, how you scaffolding is visible again st the sk y different styles . In the end, you start devel­ Gotham City (lnneanslchten , 1. can stand on Mad ison Ave nue, or on one oping your own style - that sheer pot ­ behind. "We 're building onl y the first 60 2, Zelchnung 3J. 'Wlr wollten Fur st's di scussio ns wi th Burt on ab out of the 'smarter' stree ts, and look towards pourri, or that almost Dadaesque juxtapo ­ feet up on the lot, " Fur st explain s, "and lhre teufllsche Oualltat zum B a t man laid th e foun da tions for th e cine ­ the Hudson River and see power stati ons. sition of styles - ending up with its own we 're talking about 700 feet tall buildings , Ausdruck brlngen. Die erste m ati c Go th am City. "It's th e 50th anniver­ So we th ought tha t it wo uld be fasc in atin g style - hopefully! " so largel y it's model w ork . Zelle des scripts , die Tim [Bur­ sary of Batma n in 1989," th e prod uction to actually bri ng that righ t int o ou r town, Having made his conceptual choices, "Knowing whether so mething should ton, der Reglsseur) las, war: des igner notes, "so, th e firs t th ing was, so th at the bu ild ings th emselves were Furst had to realise the designs in concrete be a model or a traveling matte or whether 'Die Holle lst durch das ptJas­ w hi ch one was ours? Beca use Batma n h as ano m alies of different kinds of stru ctu res. forms. "Obviously , the biggest problem we it should be actually built is something ter gebrochen und wachst und go ne th roug h so many d iffe rent styles, are You' d actu ally h ave office b u ild ing had was that the format of the whole film you do with the stor yboard arti st - you wachst : Wlr versuchten uns das vorzustellen:· we go ing to serio usly loo k at any one of structures locke d onto power stat ion was set in a city which doesn 't exist ," break it down shot by sh ot - camera th ose p art icu lar styles? structures locked ont o apar tment bu ild ­ Furst says . "So we had to break down how angles and everything else - until you "We we re very int eres ted in th e look of ings. You end up wi th th is grea t po tpourri we were actually going to go about that, actually develop what you know you 're Batm an as Bob K ane orig in ally d id it - d esign. bearing in mind we did not want to do it going to have to build and how high it th e gra ph ic, stro ng comic strip look. And "Also in New York you have zo n ing. on location because we wouldn't get in needs to be. Because if you bu ild 60 feet or th ere was ano th er Batm an th at ca m e out Well, imagine going back 200 years in that specific theatrical style - plus which, 30 feet higher , and you can't get back th at in a 1987 graph ic nove l called The Killing New York and th ere's been no pl ann ing we've got a lot of special effects and far, you 've wasted a fortune bec ause you're j ok e, w hich was b ase d on th e J oker commiss ion! complicated stunt work. So we knew we not going to be able to shoot it. You must charac ter. And since th e scr ip t we' re using "We ended up wit h th is rat her were going to end up building an awful lot orche strate these things w ith the script has th e J oker as a m ajor ch ar acter, it was, in teres ting idea of th ese so rt of ca nyons of it. Yau could never take over the major and discuss it w ith the director so that you also, a m ajor influ ence. wi th canti leve red forward struc tu res an d part of a city for that long anyway ." work out what the y want and what you "T hen we rea lised th at Barm an 's a wi th b ridges over and comp ressing th e The production's central set is the can give them . It's a lot of backward s and kn ight of th e d ark an d we k new th at a lot city even mo re, conde nsing it and quarter-mile long exterior of Gotham 's forwards. " of the film was goi ng to be done in the stretc h ing it higher, and a hodgepodge of main street, which includes Gotham nightt ime - we shot 80 % of th e film at different designs in each bu ilding. Square and the frontages of many of the 18 CUE INTERNATIONA L JULY/AUGUST 1989 19 .