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Batman influences

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This a collage of Batman influences. I made this to broaden minds about the character. Batman was intended to have elements of film noir crime drama viglantism, dramatic thriller gothic German expressionism, and detective mystery. Vigilante Zorro, the Bat film, detective Sherlock Holmes, vigilante the Shadow were original inspirations on creators Bill Finger and Bob Kane, Paul Kirsey in Death Wish, Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver and Dirty Harry Callahan have been inspirations especially on writer Frank Miller's Batman material.

Bob Kane explained in his autobiography Batman & Me (1990), "The Mark of Zorro (1920), a movie starring Douglas Fairbanks, Zorro's use of a mask to conceal his identity as Don Diego gave me (and Bill Finger) the idea of giving Batman a secret identity. Like the foppish dandy and wealthy Spanish count, Bruce Wayne would be a man of means who put on a facade of being leisurely effete. Zorro rode a black horse named Toronado and would enter a cave and exit from a grandfather clock in the living room. The bat-cave was inspired by this cave in Zorro. The Bat (1926) wore a costume that looked like my early Batman's, with a black robe and a bat shaped-head. This made him look like a bat -- very ominous." 

Bill Finger explained in Jim Steranko's History of Comics volume 1 (1970), "My idea was to have Batman be a combination of Douglas Fairbanks (Zorro), Sherlock Holmes, the Shadow, and Doc Savage as well. My first script was a take-off on a Shadow story. I patterned my style of writing Batman after The Shadow. Also after the old Warner Brothers movies, the (film noir) gangster movies with James Cagney, George Raft, Bogart. I always liked that kind of dramatic point of view. It was completely pulp style."

I think of the Zorro (1957-1959) TV show, by Walt Disney Productions for ABC, as the Batman show in the 1950s. "Out of the night when the full moon is bright, comes a hero known as Batman. This bold renegade wears the form of a bat, a bat that stands for Batman. Batman, the bat so cunning and free. Batman, who strikes terror to the heart of the frightful and frightened fiends. Batman Batman Batman Batman Batman." Imagine if it starred Clint Eastwood as Batman. Clint Eastwood was a TV actor in the '50s and early '60s on Rawhide (1959-1965) and Mr. Ed (1962). I think early on Clint would have played a Zorro-style vigilante outlaw Batman, like the 1939/1940 comics Batman was, like eventually Michael Keaton's Batman was, just not a Adam West-style wholesome goodie-goodie law abiding Caped Crusader. Clint Eastwood didn't become the big iconic movie star until the late '60s and the '70s with The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1967) and "Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?" Dirty Harry (1971), "Go ahead, make my day" Sudden Impact (1983), etc.

Bob Kane explained in his autobiography Batman & Me (1990), "The Shadows' auto-gyro was the inspiration for DC writer Gardner Fox to create the Batgyro, the first Batplane (Detective Comics # 31 (1939))." 

Frank Miller said in Comics Interview #31 (1986): "Batman represents a very powerful specific force that movie-makers attempt to represent with Dirty Harry, Paul Kersey in Death Wish. There are a lot of similarities between the characters. Batman only really works if the world is a malevolent, frightening place. The same is true of Dirty Harry. For instance, Bernard Goetz, in New York, changed the color of New York life for a few weeks. He pulled something up out of what was going on, common to people's emotional states. What he actually did, as far as shooting the four youths, was a crime in itself that would have been very forgettable. But something was implied by it, represented by it. He became a symbol. And with Batman were talking about the epitome of the symbolic character - the will to resist. His methods couldn't be nice. He is essentially a terrorist superhero. Batman has his roots in pulps, specifically the Shadow. Much of what he does to criminals is staged like a horror movie. With the aspect of being like Dracula - coming and going mysteriously. He's the hero who acts like a villain - the epitome of the Dionysian hero. I didn't want to soften him any. As of now, Dirty Harry is a much larger hero because of Eastwood's screen presence. With Batman - he can either become Dirty Harry, or he can become much softer, mushier, nicer, in which case he just doesn't work as a character, and that's what's happened to him. You know, a Rainbow Batman, all kinds of awful stuff got done to the character. If he's one of many clowns going around only fighting criminals in situations where nobody gets hurt, then it all gets that much more preposterous. I see too many pictures of him standing around hospital rooms or standing in restaurants."

I see the obvious Travis Bickle Taxi Driver (1976) influences in Frank Miller's Batman: Year One (1986) when Bruce Wayne's walking down the streets around porn theaters and he meets the underage prostitute Holly and the pimp Stan, and he tries to save the girl from the pimp. In Taxi Driver Travis walks down the streets around porn theaters and he meets the underage prostitute "Easy"/Iris, and the pimp "Sport"/Matthew, and he tries to save the girl from the pimp. 
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