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Like many who grew up in the '60s and '70s (and perhaps even '80s and later), Tim and Paul had the course of their lives changed by the 1966 Batman TV show, from the types of play they did growing up to their present-day interests.

In this series, they discuss the show's allure and its failures, the arc of the show from satire to sitcom, its influences (the '40s serials and the comic books themselves) and the things it, in turn, influenced.

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Sep 13, 2018

As we saw a few episodes back, in 1965 Peggy Shaw turned in a script called Fashions in Crime, based on the 1948 comics story of the same name, and beset by script elements that would work in a comic but would be tough to film.

Shaw's script was apparently handed to writer Stephen Kandel to rework. The resulting 1966 work, The Cat's Tale, solves many of the problems of Shaw's script, in part by totally abandoning it halfway through. Still, it ultimately wasn't used. In this episode, Tim & Paul compare the two scripts & consider whether Kandel's script also had fatal flaws.

PLUS: the Ettore Cenci version of Hefti's theme, a correction regarding 8 mm film, a look back on a Batman-branded building that once existed in the Tokyo suburbs as a tie-in to the Tim Burton/Michael Keaton films, another nail in the coffin of the 4th-season myth, and your mail!

"The Cat's Tale," unfilmed script by Stephen Kandel, PDF

"The Silent Film Capers" by Dick Carr:

Photos of the Batman Building in Hachioji, Tokyo, taken September 22, 1989 by Tim Young. Click to enlarge!

 

The top of the Batman Building is in the very center of this photo!

 

This was the grand opening -- note the bouquets out front.

Floor guide

 

 

That other "It's Getting Harder" song from 1967 (from the film To Sir With Love). Nope, no double-entendre here!

 

This episode's version of Hefti's theme: