When I was younger, I went through a phase of reading as many TV series bibles as I could get my hands on. For those who don’t know, a series bible is a document written up by a producer or head writer for a television show before it goes into production that can convey the show’s vision to staff writers – not just technical details or worldbuilding, but to convey the personality, morality, and tone of the show. My favourite is the Battlestar Galactica series bible, but the Batman: The Animated Series bible is up there with it. The fascinating thing about this document is that it’s much more about what the show won’t do as opposed to what it will; as an example, the opening section has a single paragraph dedicated to what the show is going for (dark noir tone) and two paragraphs of what you shouldn’t do, followed by four bullet points of specific actions to avoid.
This kind of attitude is all over the bible; writers are warned to stay away from absurdist and satirical comedy in favour of gritty, down-to-earth jokes that fit plausibly into the character’s motivations (“After all, this is Batman, not Jonathan Swift.”); Batman does not kill; Batman cannot get out of every situation with a wacky gadget a la the Batman TV show. It’s a cliche to say that limitations spark creativity, but it’s true; it’s fascinating how you think of ways around a problem, and indeed I find myself wondering how I could violate the spirit of the rules whilst delivering the letter of them (could Batman send someone to a parallel dimension – arguably, worse than killing them?).
The sections on the characters are the most ‘positive’ element of the book, in the sense that this is far more about active action as opposed to actions you can’t do. This makes sense; for one thing, they’re largely concerned with character motivation, which by definition articulates actions they’ll take. One of the more interesting notes in the document is that Joker, Penguin, and Catwoman are the only villains Batman has already met before the beginning of the series; ironically, the bible makes it clear that Batman’s origin has been done to death (an even more terrible irony given that this was written roughly three decades before the movies beat it into the ground), but it’s more than willing to explore the origins of its villains.
I wonder now; the one ‘positive’ idea that the show brings to the Batman concept is that Bruce channels his grief into being Batman (with the unspoken implication that this is healthy). Outside of this, much of the document is actually lifting from different old Batman stories into a single neat package, as well as some basic storytelling; there’s a section dedicated to the structure of individual episodes where the bible stresses that each episode be a ‘mini-movie’ with a traditional act structure and at least one big, visual setpiece. Is that all storytelling is? One original thought and then ten thousand things you’re not gonna do?
About the writer
Tristan J. Nankervis
Tristan J Nankervis (aka Drunk Napoleon) has been a writer, pop culture critic, dishwasher, standup comedian, waiter, potato cake factory worker, gamer, TV worker, and various other things. You can find him in Hobart, Tasmania.
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Certainly that bible worked, at least from the standpoint of someone who is a huge fan of the show (and who’s read almost as many bad Batman comics as good). And it’s amazing how the writers dealt with Fox’s Standards and Practices team and still told their own stories.
What did we watch?
The Chair Company
Loved this. More to come.
Paprika – For all that the animation is as wonderful as it was in Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress, the story is a lot harder to follow and gets lost in a haze combining the themes of those films without really coming together. There are definitely a lot of things I liked here, but the whole just left me wanting. Plus the presence of an obese man-child who is fat shamed often doesn’t go down well with me (even if the story starts to treat him like a person by the end).
NCAA Men’s Basketball – The game between Iowa and Florida was actually engaging. And if you don’t have a rooting interest, at least you can root for the defending champ to lose.
Doctor Who, “The Enemy of the World,” parts 1 and 2 – The Doctor is a dead ringer for Salamander, a renowned scientist who is trying to turn his fame into absolute power and take over the world. Fun in a minor way so far, though it’s not really exciting to see Troughton playing two roles.
I think I preferred the novel of Paprika which is somehow even more dense and strange.
Live music — jamming with friends, one of whom brought drums, so we got some nice grooves going. Also karaoke, in a related story my throat is sore.
Body Double — a very funny joke to make a movie with Dennis Franz as a movie director but also to cast someone else as a porno director who appears later. But this is very much the point, the mingling and mirror of worlds that are not so different after all, Franz’ film has plenty of tits too (and the final sequence and its ending image over the real(?) movie’s credits is a hoot). De Palma is fascinated by bothness, the way people and the situations people create contain contradictions that are often ignored or not resolved, he’s there to show them in all their messiness that in its own bothness is meticulously shot and blocked. The big kill scene here is sadistic as fuck but also sort of funny in how sadistic it is (to me at least, a lot of feminists of the time were not fans); the Frankie Goes To Hollywood scene is as great as advertised, a nerd who also fucks in a movie that is also a music video. What I think those feminists miss is how Melanie Griffith’s bothness — a porn actress who is also the most down-to-earth and funny person in the movie — is part of De Palma’s understanding of how movies often deny women that complexity. He’s a pervert and a polemicist, if this starts a bit slow it goes hog wild by the end. Fun stuff with lots to chew on.
Woo, live music! You may have nailed why I like DePalma so much (that and the perversion).
Maybe it is my literalism but I think De Palma is often very sincere in his own way, refracted through virtuoso filming and cinematic reference but getting at something true.
Yeah, he’s nowhere near as arch as his hero Hitchcock, despite the obvious similarities.
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
The fact that I fear this is somehow exactly how it would go if I had kids is indeed why I have never had them. An agonizing movie about being stressed and exhausted and overwhelmed, unable to do easily, naturally, or well something that so many people around you seem to be accomplishing either effortlessly or at least far, far better. Everything is awful and loud, and everything has a dripping hole in it. It’s not only a depression metaphor, but it’s a pretty good one. Magnetic Rose Byrne performance.
Bound
Rewatch for Movie Club. I wrote this up back on The Solute, and my feelings haven’t changed much, so I’ll just say that it’s still as sexy and playful and fun and neatly structured as ever.
The Ballad of Wallis Island
Glad Screen Drafts pointed me towards this. I’ll save my full (affectionate) feelings for Wednesday’s Streaming Shuffle.
Project Hail Mary
So good to see puppet-work and actual fucking sets in a big-budget science fiction movie. This is smaller in scope than The Martian, but it’s still probably true that if you liked that, you’ll like this, especially if “Ryan Gosling forms a friendship with an adorable rock spider alien” sounds like a good bonus. Excellent visuals, and some especially good supporting work, unsurprisingly, by Sandra Hüller, playing a woman who knows exactly what she’s willing to do to save the Earth and exactly how much she’s going to lose in the process of doing it. (And how little reward she’ll get, either in fact or in public memory.)
Inside No. 9, “Mulberry Close”
A new couple moves into a tight-knit (read: nosy) suburban neighborhood, and their motion-activated doorbell camera captures a found footage tale of community antagonisms gradually ramping up into full-blown suspicion: did the husband dismember his wife and take her body out in some suitcases? Are their Halloween decorations signs of devil worship? (At least one neighbor gives these possibilities equal weight.) It’s all Hitchcock with more dark comedy until an incredibly brutal bit of violence (just off-screen, for maximum effect) amplifies the stakes into something truly upsetting and adds way more acid to the final jokes. Very much a “fuck the suburbs” episode, and very well done.
I thought Legs was effectively oppressive but it didn’t really click with me — this may be part of the point, as I thought Christian Slater had some good thoughts regarding the hole. I also thought the ending was extremely dark and don’t see a lot of hope there, it’s basically exactly what the cop said would happen for a different person happening to Byrne. Grim! Huge laugh at the hamster escalation though.
Yeah, I don’t see the ending opening out into any hope either. Very bleak.
I laughed so hard at that hamster getting creamed by the car. Sorry to all hamsters everywhere. Usually animal death is upsetting, but sometimes it’s really fucking hilarious.
I think the ending is more of a dream state, though it does allow you to see it as darkly as you wish to. The film is rooted in a horrifying sense of normality: bodies function normally – until they don’t, and on the flip side, parenting is hard – but maybe it’ll get easier?
The hamster incident hilariously wrecks the plot device of lovable pet/animal saves the day, and is on the same psychic wavelength as the disturbingly weird support group for parents with the same problem(s) as the character played by Rose Byrne.
I think it’s the closest to a happy ending this story could have — raising this kid won’t get any better, but at least the mother can “see” her in a way she couldn’t before.
VHS ’99 – Not surprisingly the best segment here is the last one from the Deadstream directors, Vanessa and Joseph Winter, who create a very cool, ghoulish vision of hell out of what’s likely a low budget while extracting laughs once again from idiots trapped in the supernatural. Can’t wait to see what they do next. I also liked the first but the subtext of L7-esque riot grrl punk zombies disemboweling late 90’s pop punk, Jackass-worshipping teens who don’t respect the dead is probably lost on a lot of people. Otherwise these didn’t feel, uh, fleshed out enough so to speak, cool concepts that typically don’t earn the found footage premise. There were several points where you’d just stop filming or the visual would totally become incomprehensible because you’re getting chased by a monster.
Showed Reggie Dinkins episodes to my friend, a very funny time. Great throwaway joke is Brina saying “We have sex twice a week and on Halloween.”
Live Music – UK indiepop legends Heavenly, who I’ve never had much of a personal connection to and kinda filed in the “too twee for me” compartment of my brain. But I think that was a little unfair as they have some really great songs. Surprisingly young audience too, for a band that did most of their work in the early 90s. Support (and the reason I went) was Tulpa, really fun new-ish noise-pop band who have some songs that remind me of late-era Sonic Youth (and a couple that are slightly too indebted to Pavement), but always with a focus on the hooks (vocal or instrumental – they’ve got some great riffs).
Seinfeld, S7 – “The Secret Code”. Another episode that kinda just piles ridiculous stuff together, most of it funny but without the deeper connection of the best episodes. George managing to get into the one situation where giving a stranger his “secret code” is pretty damn funny though.
Woooooo live music! Heavenly is just on the right side of twee for me but I feel I only hear them in small doses on the college radio, and that’s the right amount.
Woooooo live music!!
What did we play?
Slay the Spire II
Now out in early access. Lots of new material here, from cards to enemies, and some of my standard strategies from the first game don’t apply anymore (or at least not yet), so there’s a new and interesting learning curve. (Which is a fancy way of saying I haven’t won yet, but hey, I’m still at the point where I’m taking certain cards and relics just to try them out! I’m getting familiar with the new game!) The art is lusher, and although in some cases I think it’s gained facility–like more movement–at the cost of some of its original charm, the new style largely works and has opened the door to some new kinds of enemy characters.
Öoo – thought this looked like a fun puzzly platformy diversion and it was, although maybe even shorter than I expected. I hit the end credits in just a couple of hours, although there were a few nicely fiendish post-game puzzles. Definitely a winner in terms of bite-sized puzzle design though, the way it shows you “impossible” scenarios then teaches you to overcome them with the skills / resources already available is very satisfying.
Hollow Knight on Nintendo Switch
Beat the big Metroid, Uumuu. A smoother fight than the last few, but then again I had help from a swordfighter guy. I sure hope he doesn’t die from the infection that’s going around. After that I found the spirit I was looking for in a big jar, hit it with magic sword, went to the other dimension and killed her for the spirit I needed. I must say, I get a weird feeling from doing that, since the spirit is basically offering itself to me but I still feel like I’m not supposed to do this. Still one left to go.
Left the Teacher’s Archives and opened up, you guessed it, yet another new area right in a spot where I didn’t think there’d be any, the Queen’s Gardens. I explored the area, which is quite dangerous thanks to its combination of very tough flying enemies with huge projectiles, and small ground enemies with annoying projectiles. One particular gauntlet was very tough, and eventually made my way to another one that also has a new boss, the Lord Traitor. He beat me once and I left it there for next week. He has a lot of dangerous moves, but I also got a bug guy with a big club, Cloth, helping me to fight him. I sure hope he doesn’t die from the infection that’s going around.
So I did get the true ending in MIO and get 100%. Now I’m trying a playthrough to get the “Harry ending,” which is something I don’t think I should spoil for anyone who hasn’t already played through the game.
The nice thing is how much easier I’m finding the platforming sections second time around. Plus learning a couple of game-break skips, one of which I’m hoping to use to beat the game a little earlier than I’m supposed to. It’s definitely going faster than my first playthrough, unsurprisingly.
I think I read this when you’d linked it in the past, and it really is a fascinating, illuminating, and useful document. This is the kind of thing I will sometimes design as a fiction-writing cheatsheet to give myself “external” constraints.
Your characters can do anything, so it’s helpful to establish for yourself what you don’t want for them, I think.
As you allude to, this is in a unique position (and come to think of it, so is Battlestar) of having a huge history of prior work to react against. The restrictions are born of not wanting to go down paths already taken by Adam West and company, even as they mine the comics for stories and plots.
Interesting that Battlestar Galactica isn’t just reacting to its previous incarnation, but to Star Trek, which Ron Moore obviously worked on. I think a creative could consider their works in this kind of tradition even when they’re not making an adaptation of something – interesting train of thought.
Saving for later as a fan, I think even for non-Batman fans this is considered an excellent tv bible, similar to how people who don’t like Stephen King will recommend On Writing.
Year of the Month update!
Next month, you can write about any of these movies, albums, books, etc. from 1949.
April. 9th: Cori Domschot: I Was a Male War Bride
Apr. 16th: Cori Domschot: On the Town
And there’s still time this month to sign up for any of these movies, albums, books, TV, etc. from 1980.
TBD: Ruck Cohlchez: Underwater Moonlight
Mar. 25th: Bridgett Taylor: Magnum PI
I’m taking Confessions of A Mask. Let’s make it almost a month and do it on the 23rd!
You have to have some kind of boundary or you don’t have a thing. You draw a line and create a shape, you give a story a beginning, middle and end. So keeping a show bible’s boundaries nice and sharp seems like a logical creative choice.
It probably also saves you a lot of time reining in excited new scriptwriters.