The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
TerrifiCon marks ‘Batman’ anniversary
At Mohegan Sun, Robert Wuhl, Billy Dee Williams marking 30 years
As we told you last year, TerrifiCon is a big, fun and wacky convention for comics lovers, movie fans and people who like to dress up in colorful costumes.
The Connecticutproduced event returns FridaySunday, Aug. 911, at Mohegan Sun’s Earth Expo and Convention Center, and its producer Mitch Hallock said he’s expecting more than 25,000 visitors for the “three days of superpowered awesomeness.”
Attractions include Billy Dee Williams, the original Lando Calrissian from “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi,” not to mention his role in the 1989 film version of “Batman” (with Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson).
Joining Williams at the event will be Robert Wuhl, who played reporter Alexander Knox in “Batman,” marking its 30th anniversary; Val Kilmer from the 1995 film “Batman Forever”; John Borrowman from “Doctor Who”; John Welsey Shipp from “Flash”; and voice actors from “Pinky & the Brain” and other toons. In addition, there’s a long list of comic book luminaries coming in, amid the vendors, autograph signings and costume contest.
Wuhl, who also had roles in “Bull Durham” and “Good Morning Vietnam” and created and starred in the HBO series “Arli$$,” said in a phone chat from Los Angeles that it’s only his second comic con.
He called the Tim Burton version of “Batman” a “wonderful opportunity, a great experience.”
What he learned from his brief exposure to another comic con, Wuhl said, was that “even as a standup comic, you don’t really get to see the people come up one by one and talk to you. You realize that even though it’s how many degrees separated from the film, you have touched them in some way.
“... Plus, I have fun! I’m a people person, I like doing (appearances). I like joking with them, asking them questions. I know what I know; I want to know what they know,” Wuhl said.
And with these fans, it’s like they know almost more about your character than you do, right?
“No, no. Not ‘almost.’ They came up to me... and they knew things about my character and what happened that I had no idea of. None, zero. No, these people are wonderful,” he said. “...At the time, ‘Batman’ was the most expensive movie ever made .... And there had been ‘Superman’ movies with Christopher Reeve, but nothing was as dark as Tim Burton’s ‘Batman.’ And the studio, believe me, and exhibitors were quite worried about that.”
Wuhl gives most of the credit for the film’s success to Burton, who cast not only Nicholson as the Joker (an easy choice, he said) but Keaton as Batman.
“People forget the backlash to Michael Keaton’s casting in that movie. If there had been social media in that day, Michael Keaton would not have survived it, I don’t believe. Because the backlash in that day was ‘What? Mr. Mom is playing Batman?’”
Wuhl, who grew up in New Jersey and still lives in New York for part of the year, wrote for a couple of Grammy Awards and two of the Oscars shows with buddy Billy Crystal in the late 1980s (winning Emmys for shows that included the Jack Palance pushups on stage); Wuhl has done standup but not regularly in recent years.
“I did do standup (once) because my goddaughter, for her birthday — I asked her what she wanted and she said,
‘I never saw you do standup. I hear people say you were good.’ So I went to a club and did 10 minutes. I had a good time!”