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Greg Rucka discusses Batman Gotham Knight

I know some of you don't like these question and answers because they're "too long."  Greg Rucka is brilliant and I would recommend reading through this.  At least skim through it.  This movie is getting closer to being released...

Want a nice, frank conversation? Corner Greg Rucka and pick a subject.
He is anything but restrained, speaking freely and constantly exuding
the kind of creative flashpoint from which arises his fascinating
array of benchmark characters.

Raised on California's Central Coast, and schooled at Vassar College
and USC, Rucka brings a street sensibility to his work – which has
ranged from nearly a dozen novels and several short stories to a
daunting list of comics, non-fiction essays and, now, a segment of the
highly-anticipated animated film, "Batman Gotham Knight."

Rucka has already built an astonishing career, complete with his share
of Eisner Awards for works like "Whiteout: Melt" and "Gotham Central:
Half a Life." His characters, most notably bodyguard Atticus Kodiak
and "Queen & Country" series protagonist Tara Chace, have drawn a
legion of fans into his literary wake. He's written for some of DC
Comics' best-known characters, including Superman and Wonder Woman.
Inspired by his graphic novel of the same name, "Whiteout" will come
to theaters as a major motion picture later this fall with Kate
Beckinsale in the lead role.

But Batman is the subject today – and Rucka is happy to share his
thoughts. For his segment, entitled "Crossfire," Rucka brings to
animated life the detectives familiar to fans of his "Gotham Central"
comics – highlighted by the starring role of Crispus Allen. In the
segment, which is the second chapter of the six-part film, the Gotham
City police don't trust the mysterious Dark Knight – until they get a
first-hand experience of his power and integrity while both detectives
and super hero are under fire.

If you want to read a great Greg Rucka biography, or two, go to his
website – www.gregrucka.com. It's worth the trip.



Question:
As this is your first time writing for animation, how did you feel
about the translation of your words to the screen?

Greg Rucka answers:
It was dynamite, especially the final sequences of my segment. It was
almost exactly what I was going for. What was really cool was to hear
Kevin Conroy say stuff that I typed. I've written some screen stuff
before, but I haven't written Batman for the screen before. That's
cool on one level. But I love those Alan Burnett-Bruce Timm-Paul Dini
animated series – I thought it was revolutionary – and Kevin was
central to that.


Question:
As this film is produced in an anime-style, does the look of your
segment come close to the way you envisioned that world?

Greg Rucka answers:
I try not to set my expectations to high or have any preconceived
notions, because everything has to go through so many hands of
creation. "Batman Begins" did such a great job of building Gotham that
that was the Gotham that I was writing. In that sense, it is the city
as I imagined it.

My biggest gripe is the pacing of the dialogue – I think I heard
everything a lot crisper in my head. Like during this one conversation
between the two main cops, I was trying to achieve the unique
relationship between partners, and the familiarity that comes when
they spend hours at a time talking in their car. Instead it was very
heavy and argumentative.

But the flipside is that I really like the segment, and the film
itself is brilliantly done. In a way, this is just like writing a
comic in that it's an entirely collaborative process. But trying to
always be open to that collaboration and what it's going to bring is a
hard part of the job.


Question:
Were there any particular visuals that struck you within your segment?

Greg Rucka answers:
The image of Batman coming through flaming wreckage was pretty much
exactly as I wanted it. I really was trying to get the psychological
impact of seeing this man, who maybe isn't a man if you don't know,
coming through the flames – literally a walking, talking, burning
bush, standing and staring the villain down. If somebody was staring
me down from the middle of flames, they could have anything they want.
I think the animators executed that really well.

I also really like this moment when you're in the squad room and you
see the Batman silhouette through the dusted glass – because that was
an image that I clearly had in my mind when I wrote it. You see what
the detectives are seeing – not the Batman, but a shadow of the
Batman. That visually goes to the trust issues.


Question:
Was there anything you definitely wanted to incorporate into your segment?

Greg Rucka answers:
I wanted that revolutionary moment for Crispus Allen, that moment of
understanding of exactly what Batman is in the context of Gotham. I
won't give away any spoilers, but in that moment, that came across
really well, too.

Ultimately, getting to use Cris was just great. And it was especially
neat seeing Cris get picked up in some of the other pieces I didn't
write. In my 10 years of working for DC, there aren't a whole slew of
characters that I created that have been given legs and moved into the
wider world. So just seeing Cris in three other segments was kind of a
hoot.


Question:
How were you approached and what made you say yes?

Greg Rucka answers:
It was pretty much a no-brainer for me. It's Batman, it's animated …
if you've gotten to write Batman before, then you know – it's a
thrill. It's really, really fun. Plus, I was asked to bring that
Gotham Central segment to this film, and that appealed to me on so
many levels – particularly to my ego, in the sense that I love that
element in that universe.

That approach really gives the everyman element – the view from the
street. Most of the time in comics, and even in animation, we're with
the guy in the suit. And you forget what that guy in the suit looks
like to everyone else.


Question:
How was the writing process for an animated film different than for comics?

Greg Rucka answers:
When you script comics, you can't script action – you can only script
a moment of action. Writing for film or television or animation or
live-action changes that. You can write a sentence that says "running
across the road" and they'll actually run across the road. That's the
most obvious mechanical element. When you write a comic strip, I tend
to be very controlling of what the camera is doing. When you're
writing for film, whatever the format, that's not really your job.
That's the director's job. So it becomes a task of conveying what
information has to be seen – what the viewer must know – and hopefully
the director gets it.


Question:
What were you setting out to accomplish in your segment in terms of
balancing the theme of trust with all the action?

Greg Rucka answers:
The action element is easier to accomplish because you know there's
going to be a gun battle – I described some specifics, but I'm not
going to script out the action beat by beat by beat. That would take
40 pages for 20 seconds of screen time. But the trust issue influences
the writing at every level. My overriding thought was this: Gotham has
no trust in the people it should trust, and that's had a tremendous
effect on all cops, especially the few good cops who have tried to do
right. Crispus Allen is one of the good guys. But what he wonders is
that, in a world where the most reprehensibly corrupt group is the
cops, how are we going to fix that by turning to a masked guy who
doesn't have to answer to anybody?


Question: You've had some notable experience working on Batman – can
you compare the differences in working on this Batman tale vs. the
Batman, Detective Comics and Gotham Central comics?

Greg Rucka answers:
Almost everything I've written for Batman treats him as a fully
established entity in that world. He's known and he's trusted. Every
now and then there's a story line that tries to shake that up, but we
all know how that'll end. Gotham Knight fits very tightly in the gap
of continuity between the two (live-action) movies, right between that
moment of introduction in Batman Begins and his first major battle in
Dark Knight, so I'm getting to write it fresh – to write characters
who are seeing Batman for the first time. Those were rich moments.


Question:
Are there any rules for you in writing for Batman?

Greg Rucka answers:
This is my favorite kind of Batman – when you see him in short bursts.
Chris Nolan really made that point in "Batman Begins." For Batman to
work psychologically, you can't see him coming. That's the essence of
the character. If YOU are watching the movie, and he's about to leap
off a building, sure, do a long sweeping shot of him and eat it up
with a spoon. But if your point of view is that of one of the
characters, nobody should see him for long. If you're in Gordon's POV,
then he shouldn't get a good look at the guy. Batman is always goal
oriented – he's not going to waste time. I think the key to writing
Batman is to give him the fewest words possible, because he's there to
get the job done.


Question:
What's your attraction to Batman?

Greg Rucka answers:
Aside from the cool factor? I love the inherent tragedy of the man.
The really good characters in Gotham are filled with pathos. Your
heart breaks for them – and especially for Bruce Wayne. When Batman is
made properly, and Batman Begins certainly did this, what you're
seeing is a man who is driven by a fundamentally altruistic mission,
even if it's for the most personal reasons. And it's a mission that
he's doomed to fail at. Still, he doesn't stop. There was a line that
I used in a Batman comic – and I've heard it echoed elsewhere – that
Batman is on a fool's errand. Well, it is a fool's errand, but that
doesn't make him a fool.


Question:
You have extensive experience within comic book arena – what made this
your genre of choice?

Greg Rucka answers:
It was purely by accident. I'm a novelist, but I'm also a novelist who
has always loved comics. So when the opportunity came, I was going to
take it. I had written a couple of novels, and I had an idea of a
comic – Whiteout – and as a result I was brought to the attention of
Denny O'Neil at DC Comics. He had read my novels, and he asked if I
had any interest in doing some Batman stories. I was in New York at
the time, and I said "Hell Yeah!" On the flight back, I wrote the
whole script for the first story. I typed it up when I got home, sent
it off a day later, and they called and said "What do you want to do
next?" And all of a sudden, I was in the clutches of DC Comics, from
which I've never fully escaped.


Question:
Where else would you like to creatively venture?

Greg Rucka answers:
I've got an interest in everything – books, comics, live-action,
animation. I've got two young kids, so I'm trying to come up with a
good young kids story. If I've got it in me, I'd like to find it. I'd
also love to do a project that involved the colonial period of
American history – it's a period of such remarkable courage, and that
appeals to me, maybe because of where we are in the journey of this
nation right now.


Question:
As a writer, what do you see as the positives and negatives of the
extreme passion of the comics fans today?

Greg Rucka answers:
The great thing about comics fandom is that it's immediate. I write a
novel and it'll be a year before people tell me what they think of it.
Comics fans react that day. Comics are in many ways like soap operas
in that the fanbase rests mostly in the characters. Consequently, the
fans can be prone to hysteria. With the prevalence of the internet,
there's been this movement where everyone wants to be an insider,
everyone has an opinion, and everyone wants to spread the information
as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, a lot of times, the information
is wrong or horribly incomplete. That's the huge downside. You have
people reviewing the first 22 pages of a story arc that is going to
span months, and that's like judging a novel on the first paragraph of
the book. You can't judge the story before you know what it is –
that's what I find most annoying. But at the end of the day, you also
have to remember that these things don't exist without that fanbase –
and they are devoted … and vocal.


Question:
As a comic book fan, and a comic book writer, is there a better time
to be a "geek"?

Greg Rucka answers:
This is the summer of the geek. Go down the line of movies and look
what's coming up, and it's going to be insane. It's truly fantastic
and flattering to be a part of it. It's not often you get to have a
role in something that is going to live and endure long after you're
gone, and to have been a part of that legacy in any way, shape or form
is an honor.


Question:
There have been so many different takes on Batman – how did you know
yours was the right one?

Greg Rucka answers:
I don't. But it's the right one for me.


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