From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to the Treatment.

My guest, director Christopher Nolan, has used both film noir and intimacy to create really

personal stories with his

film's Memento, Following, and Insomnia. He's now using those tools to work on a movie with a much

bigger set of resources and probably expectations of my guess. The new movie is Batman

begins. Chris, thanks for being here. Thank you for helping me. But it really is a noir story, Batman.

I mean, obviously all of his antecedents were film noir anyway.

I think the roots of the character, when you look back at the history, the almost

it's a 66 year history that this character has in comics.

And, you know, he was born at the end of the 30s very much in that, that cinematic period.

And I think a lot of that fed into the way that

Bob Kane first treated the character. Right down to the Joker being inspired by

Conrad Vait and the man who laughed. Yeah, exactly. And I think there are a lot of, I think

Bob Kane liked his movies, absolutely. Well, if you could, tell us a little bit what the movie's about.

The movie is about the origin story of how Bruce Wayne and why Bruce Wayne becomes Batman.

And that's a story that it's never been dealt with on screen.

And even in the comics, strangely, there's never really been a definitive account of that origin.

You have treatments of it in flashback and Monter's. strangely, there's never really been a definitive account of that origin.

You have treatments of it in flashback and montage and so forth.

So there are these great, what David Gory and I would refer to as the mile posts, the sort of known bits of history.

But within that, there's all kinds of freedom to explore things and flesh things out and really fill a bit of a gap in pop culture or try to.

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