Man or Batman: Film producer speaks at Commons

Film producer Michael Uslan spoke to a crowd of more than 100 students about movies, comics and his career in both fields Wednesday in the Commonwealth Ballroom.

Uslan is an Emmy award-winning producer of all “Batman” movies since 1989’s “Batman,” including the most recent ventures with “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight.” It was his idea to bring the dark, serious Batman onto the silver screen and it took almost two decades of trying for him to see his dream come to fruition.

Uslan’s cinematic vision of Batman was to “try to make everyone forget about that funny, potbelly guy with the pows, zaps and whams.”

Instead of dwelling on box office figures and tales of bumping elbows with Hollywood’s finest, Uslan spoke of the importance of following your dreams. For Uslan, his dream was comic books.

“Every journey begins at a starting point, and for me, it started with an absolute love of comic books when I was a kid,” Uslan said.

According to Uslan, his private collection at one point totaled more than 50,000 comics, before he donated 40,000 to the Indiana University library.

Uslan is also credited with being the first to teach a course on comic books at an accredited university. While a student at IU in the ’70s, he decided to take full advantage of a new experimental curriculum program.

Uslan convinced the university to take his request seriously by challenging a dean to compare the story of Superman to the story of Moses in the Bible.

In an effort to obtain more notoriety for his class, Uslan’s anonymously called up the United Press International and raved to a reporter that the publicly-funded comic book class was a Communist plot to infiltrate the youth of America.

The story received national media attention, and led Uslan into a career in comics. After many years of hard work in both the comic and film industry, he finally got his dream to come true with 1989’s “Batman.”

“If you take steps in direction of your goal, it’s amazing how you can get your dreams to come true,” Uslan said.

Currently, Uslan is partnering with “Spiderman” director Sam Raimi on a film remake of “The Shadow.” The film he most recently completed, “The Spirit,” will be released Dec. 25. Frank Miller directed the movie from Will Eisner’s source material, both of them comic legends in their own right.

Students seemed to enjoy his vision of how to achieve success.

“He gave a really good outline for how to achieve your dreams,” said Jeff Early, a sociology major. “I thought it was really inspiring.”

As for his career, Uslan seems pretty pleased.

“This is the only job I’ve found where I get to be 16 for the rest of my life.”