The Poster Memorabilia blog

The Best Batman Many Overlook

From Lakers courtside to a Chinese Theatre ceremony — six signatures for the Batman that started it all.

By an anonymous Hollywood insider

The 1989 Batman movie deserves more recognition than it has received over the years. Look, I get it. No one can touch Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy. Even I think they're the best superhero movies ever made, way above the MCU in many respects. But we also have to give credit where it's due.

Tim Burton's Batman essentially paved the way for modern superhero movies. We wouldn't have 20th Century Fox’s early 2000s X-Men series, Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy, heck even the MCU and the DCEU without it. The current craze—some would say oversaturation—for hero flicks is all thanks to this one!

What a cast it had, too! Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne? Kim Basinger as Vicki Vale? Billy Dee Williams as Harvey Dent? The Jack Nicholson as the Joker!? This is a stellar lineup for a time when superhero movies weren't even a thing yet. And I don't think any other film has trumped it since.

I loved the movie and this cast so much that I spent most of the 2010s chasing them down for autographs. I moved to Hollywood to work in the industry, but when that didn't pan out exactly as I hoped, I turned my attention to autograph-hounding instead.

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The first one was pure luck. I had just gotten my Batman 1989 poster when my friend invited me to watch a Lakers game later that evening. This was some time in 2013, and I hadn't officially started autograph-hounding yet. Little did I know, I'd actually begin that very night.

The game was great, but all I could focus on was Jack Nicholson, who famously sat courtside in practically every Lakers game at the time. He was part of the reason why I went to the game in the first place. I wanted to try my luck and get him to sign my poster.

After an hour or so of waiting around and schmoozing my way through the crowd after the game, I finally managed to get it. I always thought he was such a character back then, like he was always a variation of the persona he showed on screen. But to my surprise, he seemed like a regular guy, a nice one at that. I expected him to be annoyed by a fan asking for his autograph, but he wasn't.

“Michael Keaton is one of the real ones.”

Speaking of nice guys, I have to say that Michael Keaton is one of the real ones. I met him at the New York Film Festival in 2014, at the US premiere of his film, Birdman, and the guy was all smiles as he interacted with fans. To this day, he remains the most pleasant celebrity I’ve ever encountered.

I wish I could say the same of Tim Burton, though. It's not that the director was a douche to me or anything like that; it's just that we had very little interaction apart from my asking him to sign the poster and him doing it. It wasn't much of an encounter at all, but I can't blame him. This happened during his handprint ceremony at the TCL Chinese Theatre in 2016.

He was the man of the hour, so he couldn't very well interact with fans all that much. I was even lucky I managed to get his autograph at all. A few moments later, his people whisked him away to speak with the press.

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The following year, in 2017, I finally met Kim Basinger. She looked beautiful at the Fifty Shades Darker premiere. I couldn't take my eyes off of her, especially when she signed the poster. I hope she wasn't weirded out by my staring, but I bet she was.

2018 was a lucky year for me because this was when I met the two remaining cast members I wanted autographs from. I saw Billy Dee Williams at the Solo: A Star Wars Story premiere in May and Robert Wuhl at the 43rd New York Honors Gala in October. Like with Burton, they weren't noteworthy interactions, but I was so happy I finally got their autographs.

Some things you watch. This one you keep.

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