That was the summer when the Michael Keaton Batman
movie came out and I saw it nine times in the theaters at the old Northlake 2
theater and that was it was awesome I mean I couldn't take my eyes off of it
hi Bruce Wayne both Scott and I were pretty jazzed about it we were reading
the novel adaptation of the movie and we had been for several years around the
neighborhood just into video making videos video cameras doing stupid
skits and movies and we're like hey we need to film a Batman movie you know a
couple things happened and then I remember Chip getting the Batman suit
for Christmas I think and then it was like on because we had what we thought
at the time was just a you know a bad-ass-looking Batman suit
suddenly Chip and I really kind of took up this wanting to do our own Batman
movie and we just decided to make it a retread in a good way we decided to do
one like a real costume like real special effects and as many actors as we
could find in our neighborhood
when we had no budget you know we just were making stuff up so we were using
like people's houses and you know pretty much like your your deck your basement
your house your living room you know we just watched it Chip and I just watched
it and it's kind of funny how many things I look at now and say oh that
actually worked pretty well let's beat it man I don't like it up to what are you
scared of heights I don't like it up here let's split what you're afraid of
heights decent people shouldn't live here they'd be happier someplace else
pretty tough talk about Carl decent people shouldn't live here they'd be
happier someplace else pretty tough talk about Carl I think the thing that
sticks out from behind the scenes for me is how did we get all these kids don't
want to do this you know Charles Harris Ben Temple Rebecca Bullock Bonnie
Woodson you know Courtney Fleming Lana Chip's sister like why did these kids
want to do this with us and how did we convince them our neighborhood was a
really special place we had in these movies we had you know people in you
know high school and in the 10th grade all the way down to like elementary
school kids but it just felt like more like a family like we were all brothers
and sisters we were pretty close
given that we had no training that we did this for fun that we did it from
elementary school to high school you know the fact we were able to talk all
our friends into being a part of it I think it was a win to this day the
access chemicals scene I still think is awesome we filmed that in my old basement
on the Vista Drive we had all the all the kids over there at night I don't know
where parents were or where my parents were and we were recreating that access
chemicals scene which you remember from the Tim Burton Batman is where the
Joker becomes the Joker
and out here boys
want it to keep going like I think it's good enough it's it's actually good
enough we're like wow this is actually a coherent telling of the story and while
there's some parts of it for sure we want to go back and like redo and make
it better if it's it flows pretty nicely we just did it because we loved it it
was fun we had no idea what we were doing and and that's kind of the charm of
it I think it's fun if you listen to like JJ Abrams childhood stories it's
very similar to Chip and I and somehow we didn't end up doing that there was no
like person like oh you guys are great or hey let's take your natural kind of
raw talent and like develop it I wish we could finish it I wish we had
finished it I think the reason we probably didn't finish it is we just got
older there were always other things and there are we're always going to be other
things but I think what I would tell myself if I could go back in time is
say you can do all those other things but still make time to goof off like
still make time to grab the camera and go do things but I would say you know you
are creative you're you're designed and made to be creative and so believe in
that and I think if we had sort of maybe kept the crew together so to speak I
would have been interested to see what we could have churned out you know when
we were 16 17 18 years old because we were doing pretty cool stuff when we were
11 12 13 but you know we're still relatively young you never know what might happen
you
