353 - Hollywood: Blueprint (Patreon)

353 - Standing Up for What's Right

In the business-class cabin of a flight bound for Los Angeles, Christian Bale waited until they were in the air, then asked Nina to trade seats so he could speak with Evan.

Evan had slept well for the first time in weeks, with Jennifer beside him. Now he watched the clouds beyond the window and thought through the work still waiting in post-production.

"For the second Batman film, should I put the weight back on?"

Christian had lost several pounds for his part in The Departed. He wanted to know whether he should return to the build he had carried in the first Batman picture.

"Get back to where you were for the first one," Evan said.

He turned and looked Christian over. The actor had kept himself fit throughout the shoot.

"And prepare yourself, Chris." Evan met his eyes. "Batman won't be the one driving this story. The Joker will. Bruce is going to spend a lot of the film on the back foot."

The ending of Batman Begins had offered at least a little light. For all Gotham's darkness, the final scene with Rachel and Bruce had given the audience something to hold on to.

The next film, The Dark Knight, would be heavier. Evan had held back some of the harsher material in the first picture, knowing audiences had to be willing to follow this version of Batman before he could take them further.

A franchise opening with a budget above $100 million could not be made like a cult film with no regard for its audience. It had to work as a commercial picture, even beneath its darker, more grounded surface.

"All right. I think I can handle that."

Christian shrugged, not yet understanding how much the warning covered. "Is Naomi coming back as Rachel, or are you recasting her?"

Naomi Watts's pregnancy had been one of the subjects the press circled during the recent uproar. At the time, Christian had not wanted to ask about it.

Now that the attention was easing, he finally did.

Evan slapped his thigh.

He had let that question slip while The Departed occupied nearly every hour of his day.

"I'll have to ask her when I get home," he said, giving Christian a rueful smile. "You know how sensitive things can be at this stage. She may decide she wants to stay home with the baby instead of taking another part."

Even as he said it, Evan doubted she would choose that. Naomi cared fiercely about her career. He imagined she would leave much of the day-to-day care to others and hurry back to a set as soon as she had recovered.

"So I might not need a new girlfriend," Christian joked, meaning Bruce's. He traded seats with Nina again.

Evan watched him go. Christian might picture Rachel and Bruce finally finding happiness together. Evan had no intention of giving Bruce such an easy ending.

In Evan's view, romance with Batman had a way of ending badly for the women involved. That was not a pattern he meant to discard just to satisfy an audience hoping for a tidy couple.

Comic readers knew how fraught Bruce Wayne's love life could be. Evan thought it would take someone with Diana Prince's strength to stand beside him and survive the fallout.

In Evan's irreverent version of things, Wonder Woman could sleep with Batman or Superman and still walk away unscathed. The thought amused him, though it did little to settle Rachel's place in the sequel.

Rachel was not the only casting question. Evan still had to decide whether Nicolas Cage would return as Arthur, the Joker. Cage had not signed a multipicture deal, and his price would be high.

As a director, Evan wanted the actor who would give him the strongest film. As a producer and studio owner, he also had to reckon with the cost and leverage that came with a star. Neither choice was simple.

"Warner's publicity people have everything ready," Nina said.

She had returned to the seat beside him and lowered her voice. "They're waiting for you to get back."

"Tell me something first." Evan frowned slightly. "Is this real, or is it a stunt they came up with? I don't object to the campaign, but I want to know what happened."

He had approved harsh publicity tactics before, even ones that exploited a death. This plan made him pause because it involved a child.

Nina had expected the question. "As far as I can verify, it's real. Daisy found out about the boy first. The plan came afterward."

"Good."

At Los Angeles International Airport, Evan parted from the two actors and took the car waiting for him back to the manor.

He had not seen Naomi in more than two months. He missed her, and he wanted to see how she and the baby were doing. She had followed his wishes and stayed at the estate through the uproar, even keeping her prenatal appointments discreet.

Her due date was around mid-March, only two months away. Evan worried about anything that might put her under unnecessary strain.

He stayed home with her for the next two days. Then a call from Warner brought him to the studio for the publicity event Nina had described.

By late January, a CNN report cut through the awards-season coverage and drew attention across the country.

It traced the story back to the Batman march in Los Angeles. The fans had gone out to support Evan and to challenge the accusations against him.

After the coverage aired, children at other schools began holding their own Batman gatherings. Wearing homemade costumes, they turned the marchers' slogan into a protest against bullying.

The march itself had lasted one evening. Its effect spread for weeks, reaching schools far from Hollywood.

Bullying and racial prejudice remained persistent problems for children. A costume could make a child feel brave, but it could not make either problem disappear.

"Schools across the country have seen groups of young Batmen turn out in homemade armor," the CNN report said. "They say they are standing against bullying and discrimination."

"At a public elementary school in northern California, teachers planned a Batman-themed anti-bullying assembly. Students were invited to bring something they had made for it."

"A third-grade boy wanted to take part. His family could not afford a costume. His teacher, Mara Ellis, suggested he make a shield from scrap cardboard and paint his own bat emblem on it."

"He cut a shield from a packing box, painted a bat emblem across it, and carried it to school. He thought it looked terrific. Other students mocked him, tore the cardboard, and smeared paint across the drawing."

"The boy hid and cried. It was not the first time he had been picked on. Mara could not ignore the irony of children gathered for an anti-bullying event doing exactly that. She contacted Daisy, one of the organizers of the original march, hoping someone might help."

"Daisy wrote back quickly. She had passed the story to Evan Rosenberg, the director behind the Batman films."

"Rosenberg was angry when he heard what had happened. He contacted Mara, and the following day he went to the California school to meet the boy."

"In front of the other students, he told him, 'Don't let anyone's laughter make you give up on what matters to you.' The boy received a complete Batman costume and a hand-drawn invitation from Rosenberg to the premiere of the next film."

"Rosenberg also offered to support the boy's education through college, so his family's finances would not keep him from studying."

"Warner executives soon heard the story. Members of the Batman cast and crew wore cloth patches bearing the boy's bat emblem, posed for photographs, and sent the pictures to him. With his mother's permission, the studio put a run of one hundred thousand patches into merchandise stores."

"Fans bought out the run in a day. Warner paid the proceeds to the boy's mother under the licensing agreement she had approved, money intended to help the family and recognize what he had created."

"As the story spread, Rosenberg announced that he would put part of his Batman earnings into a fund for children harmed by school bullying."

"Outside the Warner Bros. building, the studio placed a large stone monument carved with the boy's cardboard shield and bat emblem. It stood as a record of the staff who had rallied around him."

"DC Comics made one more promise. When the boy finished college, he could come to DC for a design job, whether or not he had studied comics."

The report ran for almost twenty minutes and traveled quickly beyond entertainment news. The boy's face was blurred throughout. The producers withheld his name and other identifying details to protect his privacy.

Viewers never saw an unblurred photograph of him.

When a CNN reporter asked Evan about the visit, he faced the camera. "Children may not understand how much damage they do when they bully someone. Those of us old enough to know better have a duty to protect this boy's belief that standing up for what's right still matters."

The statement resonated with parents watching at home. Some who knew Evan only from the recent controversy began looking more closely at the man and the films he had made.