Batman Producer Explains Journey From the Shadows to the Spotlight

“Doors are going to slam in your face”—an absolute guarantee from DC Comics writer and movie producer Michael Uslan as he gave a lecture at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday night at the Tate Center Theater.

No doubt this has been a reality in Uslan’s life as he suffered many rejections from Hollywood studios for his silver screen interpretation of the Batman comic. But the slamming doors did not deter him from coming back and knocking over and over again until his dream was realized, a characteristic he urged the audience to adopt for their own dreams.

“You have to knock on the door until your knuckles bleed,” he advised. While his perseverance eventually led to grossing more than $1 billion in the worldwide theatrical box office with the latest Batman installment, The Dark Knight, Uslan emphasized that it should be all about the dream and not the numbers.

He cited that his father—a mason worker in New Jersey—always loved his job, but Uslan never found a passion for the craft. “I had to figure out what my bricks and stones were,” Uslan said. Without sounding overly nerdy, Uslan proudly stated his were comic books and movies.

By the time Uslan was in college, he boasted a collection of 30,000 comic books. Out of all the characters within those comic book pages, it was Batman and his humanity that intrigued him the most.

This obsession with comic books was what ultimately got his foot in the door with making a movie out of the Batman story. When the opportunity came up at Indiana University in the early 1970s for experimental curriculum courses, Uslan cleverly convinced a panel of deans and professors for the College of Arts and Sciences to accredit a course in comic books folklore.

He did this—of course—while donning long hair, wearing a Spiderman t-shirt and love beads, and forcing one particular dean to see a parallel between the story of Superman and the biblical story of Moses as reason to accept his proposal.

Uslan then became the first college professor of comic books, which garnered media attention from the likes of CBS and NBC. In turn, this caught the attention of comic book gurus from Marvel and DC Comics, eventually landing Uslan a position as “junior woodchuck”—also known as intern—under Saul Harrison at DC Comics.

After writing for the comic Shadow at DC Comics, Uslan found himself listening to Julie Schwartz say the words he had been waiting to hear his entire life: “How about writing for Batman?”

In 1989 Tim Burton’s Batman was released, marking the first of many Batman projects of which Uslan would be an instrumental part.

Other bumps along the road to Batman included sending out 372 cover letters typed from a typewriter, giving up his career as a lawyer, and humbly asking his father-in-law to help pay the bills while he was waiting for his big break.

He wanted the audience to understand if you truly want to reach your goals, you have to have a high threshold for frustration and you cannot be afraid to get up and make something happen.

Uslan’s newest film, The Spirit, will be in theaters Dec. 25.

The lecture was sponsored by the University Union’s Ideas and Issues Committee. According to ticket sales representative Heather Pederson, 224 people attended the lecture.