The Extras - Batman, Batman, Batman! with Filmmaker Alex Gray

Episode Date: August 20, 2021

Part one of a two-part series with filmmaker and DC expert Alex Gray.  In this episode, we discuss Alex Gray’s early career working on the DVD box set of The Matrix and how that led to his stint as an executive at Warner Home Video.  Alex also recounts the impact of reading Frank Miller’s graphic novel “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns” and how that propelled him into a lifelong passion for Batman.  We then delve into the origins of his fantastic documentary “Masterpiece: Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns.”The Sitcom StudyWelcome to the Sitcom Study, where we contemplate the TV shows we grew up with and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm film historian and author John Fricke. I've written books about Judy Garland and the Wizard of Oz movie, and you're listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies, and animation, and their release on digital, DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Millard, your host. Our guest today initially broke into the industry as an assistant editor

and then editor on a variety of documentary projects before working at Warner Home Video, where he produced extras for television, film, and animation releases. That is where I met him and saw firsthand his passion for classic storytelling structure. One of our first projects together was on the TV series Terminator, The Sarah Connor Chronicles. That began a 13-year collaboration on various animated titles and TV series,

including Supernatural and Lucifer. A lifelong fan of finding the humanity to the superhero myths, he makes it his personal quest on each and every project to connect the viewer to the creator's unique vision. This is something he has done to perfection on home video releases of various TV shows, including Gotham and The Flash and dozens of DC animated titles. With well over 200 produced documentaries on his resume, he is one of the foremost filmmakers working on extras content.

Alex Gray, welcome to The Extras. Awesome. Great to be here, Tim. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate this. Yeah, I've been looking forward to this. Same here. And wow, Sarah Connor Chronicles. It takes you back. That takes me back, man. That takes me back. Great time. It was a good one. Before we get into our discussion about Batman and some of the DC animated titles, I know that you are a collector of classic pinball machines. Tell us a bit about how that came about. I am.

I'm guilty of that, actually. So, oh, wow. That came about because of my passion for arcade gaming and growing up in the 80s and getting to experience what it was like back then to be able to see you walk into this dingy, dark arcade and you see the big kids playing these games. You always wonder what was those ones with the silver ball kind of moving around and that kind of thing. And with the big back glass they'd have on them with some sort of usually like ominous creature or a superhero, something that's larger than life you'd often see.

And I guess it's sort of, it stuck with me at that time, even though my mom probably wanted to pull me out of that arcade pretty quickly. I wanted to stay and experience the sights, the sounds and all that kind of cool stuff. And one of those things do impress you and impress upon you. You remember them. You remember them at a time like when all of a sudden you're so used to the digital world and then you recall back what it was like when life was a little bit more simple. And that was it for me. It was pinball. And it was just so cool to be able to go back and really appreciate what they were bringing to the analog world of the art and how commerce was working

together like that. And then on top of that, the best part, you get to play these things. That's right. It's playable art. Very, very cool. So I did, I got into it. I started collecting some of them. The only problem is that they're a little bit of a backbreaker. They do weigh about 300 pounds each. It's not like collecting stamps, which, you know, most people often tell me you should have gone into that instead. No, I decided to do the physical challenge and take on the pinball side of things. So they're, they're big. Obviously they take up a lot of room as well. Do you have any, any specific one that's kind of a favorite of yours?

I do. The one that stuck out for me was the title that I probably saw first in the arcade. I tell you, there's something about that. I'm a very visual person. So when something does stick with me and it's often not just the visuals, but it's the combination of sound as well. When that starts to come through the game is centaur. And it was a very cool and interesting game, uh, back in the early eighties, but it was creepy and weird and futuristic. It had this like Mad Max sort of approach to it where it was man and machine melded together, literally a creature that's supposed to look like a fawn on one side, but the rest of him is this motorcycle on the back end.

And it is intense. And I thought this thing is so cool. And you felt like you're part of a world of something. Maybe it's a little bit verboten, something I shouldn't be looking at. But I was so enchanted by it. And the best part is it was completely monochromatic. It was just black and white. The artwork is absolutely stunning on this thing. And I remember it sticking with me and I held on to it. And that was the one

thing that when I did get into the desire to start collecting these and I had a couple of free moments and a couple of dollars to be able to expend on it, I found one. And boy, that's a keeper. That's a lifelong keeper. That's my desert island game. That's so great. I love hearing stories like that. When we met was back in 2007. I remember you had done some projects with Joel Silver's company that we were talking about. Maybe you can take me back and for the listeners, tell us a little bit how you got into the business. We're involved in a very interesting business where I think at the onset, we all want to do one thing. We leave school going, I'm going to be the screenwriter. I'm going to be the

producer. Well, most of us don't want to be the producer. I'm going to be the director. That's usually the one I'm going to direct everything. And this and that, and that's, that's my, the nature of what I'm going to do. Yeah. Well, you and me and everybody else wanted that particular job. Right. But what was fascinating is that you quickly learned that, um, I've got bills to pay. I need something consistent. And I learned what was fascinating to me at the time, which was post-production. And we were in this very unique time about post because in school I was learning still on film. It kind of dates me a little bit, but we learned on, on film, we learned how to cut film, like physically touch the film and manipulate the film on our, on these editing machines,

which I won't get too far into, but it's, it's one of these things where you do actually have to think about your edits, make your slices, put them together. Back then it was with tape, sometimes with glue. When you committed to it, eventually you'd print it and that kind of thing. The most important part was that I was lucky. I was in this transitional period where we started to work on something that was called nonlinear editing. And my professor at the time had this like bizarre class. And I say bizarre because it was the strangest title of the class. It was like, you know, media editing and something, something, something, and then something else. And it was like, okay, but what we're going to be doing is using a non-linear editor. And at the time it was Adobe Premiere 1.0, the very start of it and the Avid.

Obviously the Avid turned out to be the more important vehicle and, and to be able to use that. So I learned from there and then had enough knowledge that when I did actually apply for a job as an assistant editor, I recall going in there and, and mind you, for those of you that are not in this business, there's always somebody there. And I don't care who you are, that does actually lend a helping hand to get involved with this stuff. Because as much as we'd like to say that it is all based upon our abilities, and I think that there is something to be said by that, but there's also something to be said about the very onset of it, and which is that you get a helping hand from somebody. A very good friend of mine, Jim Olguin,

was the one who had said, you know, they're hiring at this company over here and they're working on these MTV and VH1 projects. You might be interested in something like this because you know something about this editing thing on the habit, don't you? And I said, I've been studying this. I'm your man. I kind of felt like, yeah, maybe Keanu and the Matrix, I know Kung through. But the point is this, is that I was able to use some of those skills and apply them towards this first job. And really I got bitten by this bug. And although I was the assistant editor and mind you back then, these were not the greatest conditions and they were not necessarily, you know, the most glamorous of opportunity, but what it was for us

was a chance to be able to work on something and be in this world and to be able to look through this monitor and go like, Oh, you put this piece of music together with this image and you come out with that. That's very cool and interesting. And documentary can be formed by this and documentary can be driven by this and it's story. It's real story. And we're putting it together and we're learning something about time. You gotta be, you gotta be condensed on your time. You're what you have to work to time. And so a lot of that came through in terms of my lessons about how all of that works. And I continued with that and jumped from, as you know, in our industry, it's like you

jump from one freelance gig to the next. So I went from this VH1 MTV gig to another one that we're working on a show called Junkyard Wars, which is a pretty cool TV show. And I was an assistant and then also had worked my way into editorial by that point as well. I tell you this because it's important about the fact that out of the blue, another helping hand came about. One night, somebody came up to me and said, hey, would you help me out with an issue I'm having with my computer? And she had come over to my editing bay and said, sure, no problem. I come over there and then we start talking about stuff. And she says, you know what? There is a show that we're going to be working on soon, which is the Matrix box set, which is all the matrix films combined. And we're putting

this whole thing together. It's going to be a ton of documentaries, all this other stuff. Would you be interested in interviewing for this? Uh, yeah, absolutely. Count me in. And I did, I popped over there, got the directions, went over and, and, and it was an awesome experience because I did actually get the job. A part of that too, which was very cool and interesting is that I met a very good friend of mine, uh, whom we know and who's worked with us. And, and obviously you've worked with him and that's Jeff Maynard, a dear friend of mine who we hit it off immediately.

Right. And it was, uh, very cool. And we were friends first, as they say, you know, kind of a thing. And boy, we had a blast there too. And we were working on, and this is where it takes us into this whole thing, which is getting to be able to work on these projects. And the initial thing that we had to do was we saw the two red chairs, the two famous red chairs that of course, uh, were used in the matrix film because mind you, where we were working was not just a post-production

office somewhere in our studio or studio system or in Los Angeles somewhere. No, this was in Venice and it was Joel Silver's place and it was the Wachowski's place. And they had various elements from the film there. It was on many levels incumbent upon us to go, well, we're working here. We ought to sit in these chairs. We ought to sit in these red chairs. You can't do it. Right? Yeah. You can't do it. You can't resist. Right. And so of course, Jeff and I play at, you know, the whole like, you know, red pill, blue pill kind of a thing. And then, thank God we realized this. Somebody has to take a picture of this. Right.

And memorialize it for this. And for those of you out there that are unaware is that we didn't have cameras on our cell phones all, you know, always. I mean, this is something that's relatively new by comparison. And so we're talking early 2000s here, maybe about 2004 or so somewhere on there, 2003. The opportunity to be able to actually memorialize this moment and to be able to see this so many years later is extremely cool. I want to see that picture, by the way. I will share that picture with you. And maybe if you want to share it with your fans too, totally can. But it was a neat moment because you could just tell these are two guys. They're young.

They got the world in front of them. But at the same token, they shared something special that they really enjoyed. And here we were working on something. Sometimes we had to kind of pinch ourselves and go, holy smokes, I am working on this right now. And that was our Joel Silver early experience and leading us to actually, um, I continued on for a while after the, the gig had concluded as we call it the gig. And, um, then Jeff went over to back into, I believe he went into the commercial side again into, uh, advertising. Uh, I stayed

working on a lot of Joel's projects at the time, which I enjoyed tremendously and worked my way up to the point of really looking at story from the point of view of not just the editor. He gave me an opportunity to work on a movie called Kiss Kiss Bang Bang at the time. And Joel wanted some sort of big documentary. I had pitched to my boss at the time and he had suggested that, why not? Let's go with something that, you know, you think that would work. Because I happen to have been a fan of film noir and having studied film noir when I was in school and getting to see original film noir films on film, on 35 millimeter film, my professor actually collected them on film. And let me tell you, Tim, getting to see these films like that

and that tactile experience, seeing that the grittiness of them, the dirt, the hairs, everything that would make a film a film, that warmth that you'd get out of it. It was all there for me. They stuck with me. And so I pitched this idea of making a film noir documentary that was all encompassing. We had a couple of different, you know, various directions, of course, you know, and what have you. And we took off with it. Before we did that, though, I asked my boss at the time, I said, hey, you mind if I do some of these interviews? You mind if I produce it to a certain extent? I mean, you're the main producer, of course, but do you mind if I try this and give it my

fair shake? I kind of feel it in me. And again, my point, and this is another one of those where those helping hands kind of comes in and, you know, whether it's a higher power or whatnot, however, we all believe, but they act through us. And so the people that we interact with, and that was Eric Matthews who had said to me, Hey, yeah, let's, let's try this. Went home and I pulled the Sylvester Stallone and locked myself up in a room, not a hotel room, but in my own room, my home and typed away and typed away and typed away. Remember, it was my first proposal. You know, I'm kind of a verbose dude. So, you know, I wrote probably too much and too many pages and whatnot when he probably only wanted one. But I just kind of went with it and give him a treatment, which is hilarious. For those of you that don't know, a treatment is approximately about like 25 pages. I decided to go for,

why not just be complete? So I gave him this and then he said, you know what you should, let's produce this thing. And we did. And that's how we took off with it. Although the film was never released, it was something that to this day, I'm still proud of because of the amount of effort it took to be able to look at all these films. And one of the most important aspects of that for me was going, what is the connective tissue? What am I looking at? Why do I care about film noir enough that I want you to care about film noir? How, how do I do that? And I started realizing humanity. It's a big angle to all of this. These films, although they're dark and they're gritty, they got to fit certain criteria of like lighting. And then really,

of course, at the time, and you could speak to an expert about all that later on, I'm sure. But regarding the way that these things came about was mostly because of budget and lack thereof. And so they were forced to work in the dark kind of a thing, but that became kind of their visual language. And so, you know, you're learning about that, but the connective thing was that these are human beings talking about their pathos, talking about those things that bothered them. Those things were, they're part of their backstory that gave them the decisions they gave, or at least, I'm excuse me, led them to decisions that they, that they were led to, that they expounded on, or the choices they made. I started really picking up on a lot of that. We had a lot of that in our film then ultimately,

but what I grabbed from that moment, and although the movie wasn't produced, Joel did go out of his way to tell us that he was so proud of this work, but it was something that we couldn't finish. And this is where the naivete came in at the time, which is like, oh, you have to legally clear every single film and you've got to pay money for each of these movies as well. And then we're talking some big bucks on all of them, you know, to get them licensed and whatever. So there went that idea, but him saying what he said and me realizing what I came to the conclusion thereof, I looked at it as a success. I said, you know, I'm going to take that and that's going to be

something that's useful. Yeah. And later on, what I did was I said, you know what? I need to go and apply for this job over here at Warner Brothers. And that leads us to where you were talking about. Yeah. I was just going to ask you that, how, how you transitioned to Warner Brothers? Cause you were there when I started. How did that happen? Yes, it happened like this. And it's a short story, but it was basically I was seated next to Jeff. We're both at an Avid station.

Jeff Maynard, I brought up earlier. We were sitting next to I was sitting at an Avid station at the time, and I had spoken briefly with one of our future colleagues at the time, whom I didn't know that was going to be a future colleague. And that was Paul Hemstreet. And he and I were speaking over the phone because we were working on some notes on one of our matrix pieces. I remember him just being a really warm and gregarious guy, kind of a fellow person that's interested in the arts as well. And I think he felt akin to that as well with me. It seemed like it. And I remember that conversation that we had. And so some years later, I think really I came to a point when I was working in the editorial

side of stuff and I was realizing, you know, I'd like to do more. I'm always the type of person that wants that challenge. I think it's so important that filmmakers, whatever the road is that you take in life, in terms of the filmmaking approach, and I use that lightly, the filmmaking approach in quotes, you have got to be open to these opportunities. Something about it inside of me occurred that I've got to have some studio experience. Out of the blue, I saw a job that was available online and I called Paul and I said, Hey, I'm going to apply for this thing. He said, Oh, that's in my department. But to be honest with you, we already think we hired somebody for that, but why don't you come in? And, uh, and I did as, as a temp and to, and to, to try, at least I applied for the temp position of it. You know, I got the job.

I interviewed with everybody and got to meet them and everything. And they're really just great people all around. And they seem like this is going to be a fit. I received the job. And this is the interesting part of them. Then they say, that was a Friday, right? I got a job. And then you start on Monday.

Okay, cool. I'll come in Monday. Now my office wasn't ready yet. I started as a, as a manager and I guess that back then at least they would have us in these offices. That was part of whatever their rules were, depending upon the level that you started. I mean, they said, I'm sorry, Alex, we don't have your office ready yet. And I was like, office, that's cool.

And nobody told me about that. Sweet. And then I said, okay. And then they said, you're going to sit here in this cubicle out here in the open. I said, all right, I'll do that. And I remember coming in that day to work and I picked some of my best outfits. I wanted to really look the part and feel this like the studio guy, you know, and I come in and I do this one thing, Tim is very interesting.

I set up my computer and I'm ready to sit there and type away and start or whatever it is that I was going to be working on. Probably something that Paul had assigned to me at that time. And I looked up and you know, I often tell people look up, gain perspective in terms of surroundings. Well, I looked up and I saw a fluorescent lamps and I was like, Oh my God, what did I just do? And to set this up, it's because, you know, in context, when you're working in editorial, you work in dark rooms, right? You've got one lamp that's usually kind of an interesting lighting to it, an incandescent of some sort that usually is projected against the wall and fills your room with some sort of ambient light. And it's soft on

your eyes and they tell you, this is what you need when you're looking at that monitor all day. Who knows? It may just be part of the old wives tale kind of a thing about editorial. Maybe, maybe not. But when I looked up when I was there at Warner Brothers Studios and I'm like, oh my Lord, what did I just do? This is fluorescent lighting. This feels garish and weird. And the walls don't have art on them. This is peculiar. But here feels garish and weird. And the walls don't have art on them. This is peculiar. But here's the cool part though, is that immediately I felt this voice inside with me and said, stick with it. Stick with this. This is, and I just felt like this overwhelming thing. I can't really intellectualize it for you, but I know what

it was because it was that feeling that strikes you right in the gut and the heart. And then it tells you do this. This is good. I did. I stuck with it. And there's something about that. And I stuck with it every single day. And then, you know, about a year later, then, then, then I met you, which is very cool. And I remember meeting you and everything and excited. Cause it's like, great, we're going to have somebody that, that understands this stuff. And it's of like mind and totally gets the creative. And he's going to help us because we were busy and we being Bonnie Spence and I, because we had broken off into that area of the department, which was the family TV thing. And then we were like, okay, this is cool. You guys opened your arms to me and it was great joining the team and it has been a great collaboration ever since. I recall,

you know, just from meeting you, it doesn't take long and I'm sure the listeners can sense it even now. You have an intense passion. And I knew that right away as soon as I met you, but you had an intense passion for animated projects that you were working on at the time. I think one or two of them were the Max Fleischer's Superman and Superman, the complete animated series. I say that because I have them right over here next to me. And I recall us chatting about those titles and you always had a focus on classic storytelling and the extras you worked on. Tell us a bit about your philosophy of elevating animated special features documentaries into these mini movies, which you had even back then. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hi, this is Tim Millard, host of The Extras Podcast.

And I wanted to let you know that we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers Catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes. Yeah, let me take you back on some of that because it's, when I first was hired for the job, I was trying to understand their perspective about what they had wanted. And they being it was Paul and John, who was part of that department at the time, and Bonnie and each of them had mentioned that it's really about finding that right team to work in the animation.

They were calling it the family side of the business at the time. I guess that was the grouping that they had come up with. That title would often change. But it was really about the animation, they were calling it the family side of the business at the time. I guess that was the grouping that they had come up with. That title would often change, but it was really about the animation. And they had asked me during my interview as well, like, are you passionate about that? Or do you like this stuff? And I said, absolutely. It's in my wheelhouse. I really enjoy animation and have since childhood and, and being a fan, whether it's from one side of the aisle or the next. And I say that because it's, everything wasn't always DC growing up, you know, for each of us, it's sometimes it's Marvel. And then we learned a lot about watching Stan Lee and his shows and all that kind of good stuff, especially with Spider-Man. But the point is, this is that I came in there and they said,

what can you do with this? And I took a look at that landscape and I took a look at what was being available for the fans. I knew this too, because I'm a fan of the DVD side of things at the time. And DVD for us in the late 90 animation shows, movies, et cetera, coming from the comic book side of the world. I wanted that. And instead, what we were left with was and I recall this and I often say jokingly, two kids go to Warner Brothers Animation and draw Batman for the day. And I thought, that's not so cool. As a fan at the time, you know, in my whatever, late twenties, thirties or whatever, picking the stuff up and going like, yeah, I think we're kind of beyond that. Those of us that were reading comic books and, and those of us that stuck with comic books for as long as we did, myself since the 80s, we had evolved. These were not the books of child's fare anymore. This is not child's play. This is stuff that's dealing with adult themes and characters that

go through pangs of conscience and pathos, like we're talking about earlier, that I went through or others have went through and they understood us on the page and they were sort of an outlet that, Hey, you know what? I'm not alone. And that was very neat. And so is there a way to capture that? The reason it became important was because right around that time, and I'm glad you brought up Max Fleischer. I'm glad you brought up the others too, is that they were exploring what if we created these DC animated movies that were realized from these comic books? They stemmed from there. Will that be a success? And much of that credit goes to that group of people at that right time, that right place. And we were able to say, hey, this is something that we all need. And this is something that could be successful, not only on the front of the package with that animated movie, but what's on that back of the package, which is our special features.

What are we going to be offering? So it was a neat moment that then we pitched pieces, pieces that were deeper. I took it upon myself really to go and write, go sit at my desk. Now I had a mission by the way. Oh, and at that point, finally I had an office, I think. No, you did when I met you. Right. Okay, cool. That's cool. And then I was sitting there, I was just typing and I'd go back in there and I'd be like, I'm going to type up some really things that I've got to get out on the page here about ideas that I've sort of had germinating, I suppose, on some level for all these years.

And I started writing them, as I was saying a little bit ago, is that really to the credit of those that were involved outside of me, which was, you know, Bonnie and really Paul and Amit, who is no longer there. He was this marketing genius, this brilliant marketing perspective that he brought to the job. And he understood that. And he would work in tandem, of course, with Jeff Brown and Jeff would come up. And he was the executive vice president at the time of this particular department. And he understood what we were up to. And then the classic sense, what was so cool about that was that Jeff Brown would allow us to explore. And that was key. That was monumentally important because it wasn't just like, Hey, you guys should just go with the traditional stuff that we've been producing. No, we want to hear what your voice is about. We want to hear what you're going to be bringing to this stuff. And they started to look at these pieces. They started developing budgets with these things as well and saying,

okay, can we do this for X number of dollars? Can we do this in the timeframe allotted? Can we do this in general? And I started to take it upon ourselves and say, yeah, I mean, let's work with some like-minded folk that are out there that get it, that are passionate, that are hungry for telling story. And that took a while to find, but we did find the right ones that in the early days that we ended up working with. And it was very cool. And I recall like having these conversations with you about the direction of things that we're going to be taking stuff.

And you and I would shoot the breeze about story and we'd go out to lunch and talk about things. And this is the early days of two people coming together and going like, okay, this is going to be very cool to be able to have this happen for these things. You know, I didn't phrase the question that way, but I'm glad you went in the direction of the development of the DC animated movies. I kind of forgot just that was happening right then. And it's become a huge success. I don't know how many titles have been released in the last 15, 16, 17 years in that area.

But that really was something brand new, wasn't it? In the sense that these were geared to adults, even with language and themes. And that was a whole new direction, which we'll get into in a little bit. Before we go too far into that though, I know you are a huge Batman fan, Alex. Where did you first develop your interest in Batman? Batman was one of those things as I, I, and a lot of people that do discover Batman, it is not really about us discovering Batman. It's going to sound a little cheesier, but it's about Batman discovering us. And I really feel that way.

I truly do. I started reading comics about 1986 or so. My father would take me to the comic book store because he had a passion for comics early on. Not as much as ultimately like the direction that I ended up going, but mostly for him, it was the Marvel books that he was interested in back in the day. They were throwaways. There were periodicals. They were floppies as we call them.

They would get tossed up or shoved in a back pocket and handed over to friends and then thrown in the trash when mom cleans your room or something like that. And unfortunately, a lot of those great books are long gone. Wish I had my dad's books. He taught me something early on was to take a look at all of them. And he walked me into that store and I distinctly remember this. We walked into a particular comic book store for the first time and I was just inundated, blown away by how many characters and stories and books and everything. It's just,

it's, it was immediate and it was relevant for me on many levels and finding those things that I would be interested in. Admittedly, in 1986, I picked up a couple of Batman books, which was Detective Comics at the time, and then maybe a few other books from the Marvel side and what have you. And a lot of independents that were out there. There's some kind of strange here in the United States. hero type series where he is guy that dons armor and a superhero suit and weaponry and goes and takes on the bad guys and what have you. I think it lasted about three, uh, three issues, you know, and it did pretty much tanked right after that. But I picked them up and I started into what was called the collecting side of things, which we kind of got into on the pinball side of stuff. But I started collecting comic books at that point. But it really was one of those things I was,

I was reading a lot of stuff at the time. As I said, I liked X-Men. I liked Spider-Man. I liked the back issues to things. I liked the older stuff. I always found it very interesting and fascinating. And it appealed to me at that age. At the time I was approximately 10 years old. And so it was, it was a chance to be able to get into stuff that made sense for me. Cut to four years later though. And this is where that pivotal moment happens. I remember I'm at my high school. I'm at the lunch with my friends, my peers. They called the area where we would eat at lunch at was called the quad. I remember that because it was like this four corner location that was like supposedly sealed. I'm sure that a lot of

people got off campus anyway, whether they were supposed to or not, but this was the eighties, mind you. Things were a little more innocent back then. Anyway, I happened to be on campus that day. Not that I would ditch school ever. And, and I was standing around my friends and they started talking about this thing called the Dark Night. Now, mind you, I had heard of the Dark Night, of course, the Dark Night Returns since 86 here and there. But it was on my radar, but not totally on my radar. But it was meant to be this way. Because in 1989, when I did encounter this book and this conversation and my friends discussing it, it was that right moment because it was collected in what was called a graphic novel or this probably one of the very first graphic novels that were available to us. And I remember them telling me about this, that you've got to go and get this thing.

It's amazing. They were talking and talking it up completely. And I, I mean, my, my mind was reeling by the end of the day. I recall immediately after school, walking across the street to the comic book store and looking for it. Thank God they had, I believe one copy left. I picked that book up and I devoured it. It was incredible. And it was meant to be, as I was saying, that I, I got to experience it that way because the book in its initial format came out in a series of also kind of look like trade paperbacks as we call them in the know or graphic novels, but you would have to wait and you'd have to wait extraordinary

periods of time because, um, unfortunately Frank Miller was not the fastest content creator and you'd be on pins and needles waiting, hoping for that, for that book, but ultimately getting to see it in the format that I did and being able to pour through those pages and those images. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm just reminded right now of what that feeling was like. It's, it's the smell of the new paper, but it was also the images that were coming at me. And I don't remember seeing Batman like this before. And it was glossy. It was different, but it was muted. The colors were different. Why did the printing look so odd and different? It wasn't like dot dots, like these little dots that I was used to with limited versions of color that were available to a printer at the time. This was so much more.

It's just you're inundated with an experience. And that was when I had formed a true passion for Batman. That is when Batman was front and center on my radar. It was Batman, Batman, Batman. That's all I want to talk about Batman. Is there a Batman video game? Is there a Batman anything? Action figures?

Whatever was available to me as a then probably 14 year old boy. I wanted it. Right. I said Batman. I wanted it. And guess what happened that summer, Tim? Batman 1989. The movie.

The movie. The movie. Oh, my God. This experience. I remember this. My grandmother, God bless her. She said, I'm going to take you to go and see this film because she knew and picked up on it immediately about how important Batman was to me. And that really hit it home for me big time. And I it was to put it lightly, it was a religious experience. Tim Burton's Batman. And knowing, of course, this is a brief aside here, knowing years later, one of the producers of the film, Michael Uslan, whom I consider a friend and colleague and mentor on a lot of levels. It just puts it full circle. Well, we can get into that if you if you if you choose. But it's it. It's just puts a full circle. We'll, we can get into

that if you, if you, if you choose, but it's, it's, it's 1989 Batman, man, that hit it out of the park for me. It really enraptured everything. And it, and it bookended it for me too, because it was not only just the dark night returns, this graphic novel that I had poured through. Now I understood Batman on this deep level and guess what? It matched. It matched what was going on in the book. It matched what was I, what I was being inundated with on screen. The experience was the same. And I tell you this because a lot of folks out there don't realize it who may be younger than us, but there was this little thing called Batman 66 that was on TV started in the late sixties, obviously 1966. And that was a comedy show. That

was a show that was built a lot differently, very, uh, high color, you know, technicolor levels type color. Uh, and it wasn't the dark night, but, oh man, my first Batman was the dark night though. And getting to be able to, to experience, that's stuck with me always. By that time, I think probably The Dark Knight was considered a seminal work. It had already established its place. And then the movies just reaffirmed that. That leads us to what I really want to talk about today. And that is a special feature extra documentary that you created on this book and Frank Miller called Masterpiece Frank Miller's The Dark Knight

Returns. Let's talk about that now. Tell us a little bit about the genesis of the idea of wanting to do this documentary. When I saw on the schedule that Bruce Timm was contemplating doing the Dark Knight Returns as one of the animated movies through Warner Brothers Animation, through Warner Home Entertainment, through DC, that triumvirate we're talking about early on that was built. This was one of our many projects. And it was something that when I found out that we were going to be doing this, I, and I was shaking with anticipation inside. I tell you, and that is no joke. I mean, truly, it was one of those moments that like, this is incredible. We need to get Frank Miller. That was my immediate thought, right? We need to get Frank Miller. We

need to do anything and everything in our power to get this elusive, masterful, uh, giant of our industry on camera. And I set this up because I think it's important to know that this guy was a Titan by this point, right? Now you speak the words of Frank Miller, you're in the know, you're in the know about the dark night and to be able to actually work on that capacity to say this out loud was a good moment for me, Tim. It really was. It was one of those things where I said, like, you know what? The possibilities there. Why?

Because we had a little bit of muscle behind us, right? We had a little bit of money behind us. We got Warner Brothers. We have a couple of dollars here to this budget. Let's see if we can make something great. Let's get his interview. Well, I had already started, admittedly, in that recent past to try to secure Frank's interview for a few other projects, let's say previous to Masterpiece. And really, I was met with a resounding, not interested. It's so deflating.

But as I've, as you've heard me talk in the past about things is that when challenge does come across our plate, we have to accept that challenge and we all want the victory. And I get that. And I do too. And I'm just like all of you, we all want that. But when you earn that victory by way of the challenge, it's recognizable. It sticks with you. You put in your all, you put in your heart into it. And I had bothered Frank for at least a few years, I would say. And it was always met with either the can't do it now. It's not in my schedule or not interested. I wasn't going to give up though. Heck no. I'm going with this thing. I'm going to find this way because if anything,

I am persistent. That's one of the qualities. I owe that to my mother. I'm going to find this way because if anything, I am persistent. That's one of the qualities. I owe that to my mother. That was her side always in terms of pushing me, I guess. And just being that type of personality, she would push me. And I like that because that gave me cause that I have nothing to lose. I got to keep after him. We brought the project to him. We spoke about it.

And finally, he said, yes, he said yes. And that we would get, uh, Frank Miller involved. And that's really the Genesis of that. Cause once you have Frank Miller involved, I realized at that point to answer your question is that we could make a feature film out of this. We need to think big Warner brothers. Mind you, as you said, I was on the, I was on my own side. I had already started studio West pictures actually at that point. And I'd been working a few years in already. And, uh, it was one of those things like Warner brothers, let's do this. And thank God we had you and Bonnie and Paul and others that were on that side of the aisle that said, you know what we get where you're coming from.

Yeah, let's pursue it. So that's really the start of it. That's terrific. I love that story and the persistence that you mentioned, because so many times in working on the extras and the bonuses for the DVD, it's hard to get people to agree to want to talk about their material. And somebody like Frank doesn't really need to. He's established. He's a legend. His work has already found its place. So what do you think led to that? You know, the fact that he finally did it, was it because of the fact that they were doing the animated The Dark Knight that separated it from the previous requests? I think when you reach a particular level of success, and this is just simply something that I'm guessing at here on this level, because to find the Frank Miller, to find the Alan Moore, Alan Moore, of course, wrote Watchmen. You really need to understand who these people are.

And I think part of that was my journey as well, because admittedly, like I was saying earlier about understanding humanity, I was understanding humanity through the arts of film noir and understanding these particular characters. But part of that was also understanding just people in general. And my objective was to understand to your point, like, whoa, why would Frank do this? What does he want right now? It did occur to me because not only did he say, yes, he said, come out to New York city, come out to my loft. I mean, dude, my mind was blown at that point. All right. It was amazing. It was amazing. Amazing. And he says, you know, it's, it's one of these things that I, but I still didn't know exactly why what occurred to me in the most logical thing that I could figure out was when I first approached him, it was about, I want to make the definitive, all-inclusive,

absolutely ridiculously exhaustive version and entertaining, mind you, version of your book. And I want to capture everything that I possibly can about it. What I think happens eventually is that content creators that are on his level, they reach a point where they want to memorialize. They want to capture what it was, the spirit of everything they brought to it. They want to capture that eventually for posterity sake. We're mortal. We're all going to go one day. Why not lay it down on the tracks on some sort like we are here today. And in terms of a audio podcast, or it could be something video oriented like we did with the documentary in this case, give us that story. Here's your chance.

Give us that story, set the narrative to what you want it to be. Because if you don't, it's a shame on really for the rest of us that are well beyond even this age. So I sort of found it like, is this a guy that has to do my due diligence right now for the future on some level? Like I got to get this guy's interview. I got to do this and I have to figure out all these reasons. So that is really why I believe that he did it was because he wanted to give us that version and he did. And he said, I'm going to give you an hour.

He gave me, I think it was like, came out to like three hours. Wow. He didn't want to stop. And I love that. I love that. I'll get more into the details of that, but it was really so important to understand though upfront. It was just, it occurred to him.

I think that ultimately he has to tell it and tell it for the rest of us. Right. When you had him on board, you still had to probably sit down and write the proposal now. And you were just saying, you now decided, okay, we can go a little bit bigger, obviously. Tell me a little bit about that process of, okay, we've got Frank, you know, how are you going to craft the piece, who you're looking at to tell the rest of the story? Did you ever think about kind of just going with Frank's perspective rather than bringing all these other people? I mean, just go through that for us, if you would. The Dark Knight Returns is a massive read. It spans so many pages and every single page is dense.

It has a tremendous amount of material to be able to glean from it. And to be able to capture that properly, it started to occur to me as I was putting down pen to paper, or at least I was typing at my computer and formulating the story that this could almost be too much on some level. But that's the issue is that creators always go through that where it's like that other voice pops in like, maybe you want to reconsider that. No, no, no, no. I'm going to stick with this. I'm going to stick with it and make it happen the way that my instinct is still telling me I've got to give that full approach. But I've got to keep it entertaining because that's what I always promised my colleagues, my bosses on the studio side.

And I promised that to the fans. I'm not going to give you two kids go to Warner Brothers Animation drawing Batman. Nope. I'm going to give you something that is going to elevate you and entertain you because that is what's important. Elevation and entertaining. What do I mean by that? I mean, like you've really got to say, Hey, I understand where you're coming from. Comic book readership. I've got you. I've got your back. Let's get deep with these guys and I'm going to entertain you. I'm going to use much to my, I'm so thankful to my team that's involved in these pieces is because

what we bring to it are a game where I may go deep in terms of the writing and the interviews and things, but they're bringing these other aspects to it in terms of editorial and sound design and music and effects and things like this, because we want it to be entertaining as well. We're in the entertainment business. Right. So that was something that I had to pitch to Frank that he understood that as well. So in the proposal, it did contain elements of that. I didn't want it to be a lecture. I wanted it to be something that you'd experience. When you're watching the film, I don't want you to notice the edits. I just want you to be enchanted. That would be the greatest gift for any filmmaker. I don't care what level, is that you were enchanted for that two hour period or however long, and then you

left satisfied and maybe you were left with some questions that you had. And for that two hour period or however long, and then you left satisfied and maybe you were left with some questions that you had. And that's cool. That's a job well done. So that was my objective. And that's really what I had to pitch to Frank. So he understood that because I think he was worried too, because it works on the page very well. Because why? You're going through page after page in your own pace. You get to study the images at your own pace. You get to read the story at your own pace. We're giving it to you at 24 frames a second in a hour and a half period, two hour period. That's how you're getting it. So it's a lot more unique. It's challenging as well. But ultimately once I be at once, once he realized the potential, he was on board. And that's when he

said, come out to New York City and I want you to be here. Let's do this interview here at my loft. We've been listening to part one of a two-part series with filmmaker Alex Gray, where we discuss his early career and how his passion for all things Batman led him to create the excellent documentary masterpiece, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. In our next episode, Alex recounts meeting Frank Miller in his New York City home for his much-anticipated interview with the comic book legend. In addition, we'll discuss his interviews with other key participants,

Jeanette Kahn, Denny O'Neill, Malcolm McDowell, Bruce Timm, Grant Morrison, and many others. And we will discuss the creative decisions that went into crafting the documentary in more detail. For those of you interested in learning more about Alex's background, there will be detailed information on the website at www.theextras.tv, where you can read the blog post. And if you're enjoying the guests we have on the show, please subscribe and leave us a review at iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcast provider. Until next time, you've been listening to The Extras with Tim Millard. Stay slightly obsessed.

The Extras is a production of Otaku Media, producers of podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connects creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals at www.otakumedia.tv or look for the link in the show notes.