The Dark Knight of Burbank, Part II: An Obsession Revealed!

I woke up just after 4:30 am on January 17th, 1994, on the floor of the one bedroom in my Burbank one-bedroom apartment. This was not the result of the previous night’s drunken binging or Hollywood partying with producers, starlets and celebrities, but rather a function of the rather sizable earthquake that had hit the San Fernando valley several seconds before I hit the floor.

By the way, your comprehension of the story that follows kind of depends on you reading Part I of the tale. If you haven’t, you’ll likely want to do that now.

Within moments I was standing, bedheaded and breathless in a doorway, which is what one is supposed to do in such circumstances. The fear in that situation comes from contemplating two impossibly unknowable things: 1) how long the quake will last and 2) just how strong it will be. If the answer to those questions is a low number, the doorframe is the place for you. It’s solid, it keeps you from running across broken glass or other debris, and you have a decent chance to emerge from the situation unscathed.

I think the Northridge Earthquake lasted all of 30 seconds, but I’ll tell you the most obvious thing in the world: it seemed quite a bit longer than that. In general, I’m a tough guy to scare, but standing there in a pitch-black room while fate rolls your building around in his hand like he’s on a hot streak at destiny’s craps table has a way of making you seriously reconsider being an optimist.

But the quake did end, my heart did slow to a normal beat, and I was able to take stock of the event’s results. Not too terrible, really; some broken glass, a number of displaced books and movies, some pans and dishes that slid around to places where they didn’t belong, and a six-month-old kitten named Indiana who stayed hidden for a few hours afterwards (finally found, by the way, cowering in terror in the folds between the shower curtains).

Work was called off that day due to minor damage and power outages that had resulted. Bored and restless later in the morning, I decided to go outside and perform an amateur survey of my apartment building. I suppose I hoped that I’d spot a hairline crack or discern a subtle gas leak and somehow play the hero to all of my otherwise clueless neighbors by taking the initiative to alert the proper authorities.

My review of the building’s exterior yielded just two pieces of information: I had absolutely no clue what I was looking for, and my upstairs nutjob neighbor had his front door open, where I could hear the sound of vacuuming coming from within.

“Ah, what the hell.” I thought. I’ll do the rare thing in Hollywood and I’ll go engage him in conversation. It’s a natural disaster, after all, and what kind of a human being would I be if I didn’t at least try to simulate some fair amount of concern for the welfare of my fellow man?

I climbed the steps and rapped politely on Bruce’s door. He turned and saw me, smiled, and shut off his vacuum. Opened the screened door and invited me in as we exchanged the first bits of anecdotal earthquake information.

But to be honest, I’m truly unable to relate our actual conversation to you because of what I saw when I stepped through that door.

What’s more, I can distinctly remember having a hard time making eye contact as we spoke specifically because I was so distracted trying to take in all the details of my suddenly very bizarre surroundings.

Because every available display space in Bruce’s living room was filled with Batman memorabilia.

Now obviously I have nothing against collectors of toys or other movie stuff. The idea of a grown man owning movie-related toys shouldn’t be cause for concern in and of itself - but what I saw that day didn’t strike me as the passion of a diehard collector. For one thing, none of the memorabilia - most of which were toys and action figures - were preserved in packages.

They looked a lot like they were being played with.

There were action figures lining the shelves and a 70’s series-style Batcave set up, complete with figures and vehicles. A model of a Batwing jet hung on wires from the ceiling. A life-sized cardboard cutout of Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman stood near the kitchen counter. There were posters and movie stills and other framed Bat-bits, a phantasmagoric Dark Knight playroom of unimaginable scope and comprehensiveness.

As we stood there, a mild aftershock shimmied the building back and forth. A handful of Batman toys - Robin, the Riddler, perhaps a Bat-cycle or two - shifted and tumbled to the floor.

Bruce chuckled a bit and rushed to pick them up and replace them on their perch.

“Yeah, the quake this morning pretty much put everyone onto the floor this morning. It gave me a good excuse to dust everyone off, clean up a bit.”

what, wait - did he just say “everyONE”?

I should pause here to assure you: “Bruce” was not this man’s real name. I may be making this story available to the entire world, but I’m not about to go ahead and invite him to my door by naming him here.

We exchanged a few more pleasantries as I tried so very very hard to stare inobviously around the living room. Unavoidably I contemplated - ever so briefly - just what the hell might be going on back in the bedroom. We finished chatting, I left the apartment and made my way back downstairs.

In the months to follow, I developed a heightened awareness of all the Batman-related goings on of my passionate upstairs neighbor. The units in my apartment building had window A/C sets, but they weren’t all that effective or reliable, so keeping the windows open throughout the year was not uncommon - and now that I’d been clued in to this key component of his personality, it was as if all Batman-related stimuli had been made suddenly visible to my senses.

Because I was familiar with the characters, soundtracks and dialogue of the Batman movies, I came to realize that Bruce watched at least one of Burton’s two films (because the third hadn’t been made yet; this would have been from ‘94 through the early part of ‘95) at least twice every week.

Now don’t get me wrong: I am, obviously, a movie fan. And in those unfettered bachelor days, I’d see at least two movies in the theater every week, in addition to rentals and owners at home. I loved watching movies and would consume everything I could get my hands on. I watched and rewatched all of my favorites, depending on the mood or the needs of the moment.

But what I did not do, and what I fail to comprehend, is how a movie lover - even an extreme movie lover - could watch the same two movies every single week and still derive any kind of healthy passion or pleasure from them, to the veritable exclusion of all other media properties.

Okay, that’s not entirely true. I also periodically would hear Bruce loudly enjoying the Bananarama version of Venus, cranked up, just about every day. Every. Day. Now just what in the hell could that possibly be about? What kind of crossover between Batman and Bananarama could there possibly be?

And please remember that I’m not eavesdropping any of this; all of it is being played out in complete audio overflow from the top floor down to mine, without expending even the tiniest amount of effort on my part. I can even recall a phone conversation Bruce had with a friend in which they were making a detailed and foolproof plan to get out to the theater in order to see the Batman Forever trailer.

Yes, just the trailer. I don’t remember what film it was to be attached to because that clearly wasn’t the objective of Bruce’s conversation, which covered the range of Keaton vs. Kilmer, Burton vs. Schumacher, and a host of other Dark Knightian interrogatives.

Each day was like being dragged further inside the head of Ain’t It Cool News’s dorkiest and most enflamed board poster, and I hadn’t even heard of AICN yet. I found myself tempted to taunt Bruce with antics both cruel and bizarre, such as showing up at his door dressed in a full-on Batman costume, yet never referencing it while asking him to keep an eye on things while I “headed out for a bit tonight”. Or I considered purchasing a few Batman action figures and simply leaving their severed heads or limbs in his mailbox or perhaps placed just so in his laundry basket.

I didn’t do any of these things, but still the contemplation of them amused me.

So in this summer of 2008, as the building hype of The Dark Knight threatens to overcome us, to shake and rattle our expectations like we’re just so many precariously-placed action figures on a shelf, I find my thoughts reeling back to Burbank and the one-bedroom apartment where I lived just below Batman’s Annie Wilkes.

Epilogue:
When I was first getting to know the spectacular gal who was destined to become Mrs. Burbanked, I told her my stories of my Batman-obsessed nutjob neighbor. She smiled and giggled at the tales, but assumed that I was embellishing them, as was the style that she had come to expect from me in my endless attempts to amuse and beguile her. When she moved out to LA, it was inevitable that she experience Bruce herself, and that moment came on a sunny day out in the smallish parking lot shared by the tenants of my building.

Future Mrs. B and I were heading for my car when we came across Bruce, who was polishing some wax on the surface of his recently-purchased, sparkling new car, a jaunty little two-door Honda Del Sol.

It was black.

I made the introductions, fully aware of the fact that Future Mrs. B knew everything I knew about Bruce, and also that he couldn’t possibly know anything I had told her. She stole a glance over his shoulder and commented about what a nice car he had; was it new?

“Yeah, I just got it last week,” he said. “They wouldn’t sell me the Batmobile, so this is the one I settled on, ha-ha!”

And she suddenly realized that everything I had told her was absolutely true. For all I know, that was the moment that legitimized me in her mind as a man of honesty and integrity. Probably not, but it’s curious to imagine such a thing.

Final Epilogue And This Is The End, Really:
Just prior to leaving Burbank for good, I needed to get rid of a lot of stuff that I couldn’t transport back east. One of the items to go was an original 1989 Burton Batman advance one-sheet, the all-black sheet with only the massive Bat-symbol on it. Peter Guber had given it to me and it was stunning and iconic and it broke my heart to part with it, but I had foolishly had it dry-mounted on foam board and it would not have survived my cross-country trip.

I sold everything that could sell, but I gave that poster to Bruce. It was the only one he didn’t have, he told me, and he truly seemed blown away and moved at my giving it to him. I suppose I was seeking some small amount of mental karma, some absolution for all of the ways I’d plotted to taunt the obsession of the strange little man who lived in the apartment above mine in Burbank.

(some images borrowed from the extremely awesome Michael’s Review of the Week action figure site)