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BATMAN: A HERO FOR OUR TIME?

The first major feature motion picture he directed (following his 29-minute short, ”Frankenweenie,” the story of a boy who revives his dead dog-twice) was ”Pee-wee`s Big Adventure.” The second was ”Beetlejuice.”

The third was ”Batman,” and the fourth was ”Edward Scissorhands.” Not surprisingly, Tim Burton`s favorite word is ”weird.”

At the moment Burton-who concedes that he has always been ”a fairly isolated character”-is sitting in a Near North hotel room, dressed in gray, baggy pants, boots and a shirt that`s his favorite color: black. ”I think people should dress how they feel, and I do feel a kind of heaviness sometimes and a darkness, and yet I use that as a catharsis,” he is saying. ”I mean, it`s not something I`m stuck in. Addressing those issues actually helps me to be lighter. People think that I`m some kind of dark character-they always have-but I`m not. I`m really not.”

Exuding an adolescent giddiness and a bouncy, constantly agitated, Richard Lewis-like body language, he keeps his hands in constant motion, rubbing them through his long, dark hair as his head bobs back and forth. Laughing frequently and easily-even giggling, for heaven`s sake-he segues into talking about his fifth film, ”Batman Returns,” a follow-up to 1989`s

”Batman” which again features Michael Keaton as the Dark Knight of Gotham City.

”At one point during the filming Tim was starting to look pretty damn healthy and focused and mature, like he pretty much had his finger on exactly what we were doing-and that made me real nervous,” Keaton would say later.

”I like him when he`s pale and gaunt, and his hair all over the place and needing washing and his shirttail flying, and he`s pacing and looking lost. And I think, `That`s when I got him right where I want him.` ”

”Tim has a very unusual, sophisticated way of viewing the world,” adds Michelle Pfeiffer, who co-stars as the dual personality of put-upon secretary Selina Kyle/sinuously sinister Catwoman. ”There is an innocent, childish, wicked darkness to his films. Nobody else is doing that, and that is a sign of genius to me. The fact that he somehow has managed to retain that view and has also become as successful as he has is kind of a miracle.

”I was surprised that someone who`s so visual also paid such close attention to character development and placed a lot of importance on basing everything in reality-that is, where we could. Movies of even this genre play better when you can somehow emotionally engage people. Tim is smart enough to know that even villains have a vulnerable side and are struggling in their own way with something. And that`s how you truly frighten people: tricking them into caring about you.”

The heavily ballyhooed film opens Friday, but long before there were reports about all the logistical problems on the set, which included a collection of penguins made up of live animals, robots operated by puppeteers and performers of small stature in penguin suits.

In addition, there seemed to be some kind of curse hanging over from the first ”Batman,” with the deaths of one of that movie`s screenwriters, Warren Skaaren, and production designer Anton Furst, who had won an Oscar. ”Warren, who wasn`t involved in this film, died before `Batman Returns` got started,” says Burton. ”I think it was some weird sort of bone cancer, something strange. It was horrible.” And during the middle of the filming Furst committed suicide. ”He also wasn`t actually involved in this, but he was a friend of mine and it was devastating.

”The shooting was pretty intense. There were a lot of technical things, a lot of weird things. But directing is not supposed to be fun. It`s more satisfying than it is fun. The Penguin`s lair was probably the toughest thing because of all the elements; the cold, the water, the penguins, everything. We spent too much time there. We were like the circus that didn`t leave town. And the real penguins got attracted to the puppets and the little people, like a weird sexual thing. There were some interesting mating possibilities.”

For relaxation and diversion, Burton turned to gazing into a `60s-style lava lamp he kept in his trailer. ”You know, you find weird images that kind of get you through. Directing is such an unnatural thing, and I don`t mean that in a bad way. It`s so twisted and weird that you find yourself gravitating toward weird things to get you through.”

He says there never was a question of the movie`s being called ”Batman II.” ”I like the idea of `Batman Returns` because it has a kind of mystery sound to it; it just seemed kind of cool.” There was a question of his doing another film. ”But then I decided that these other characters interested me, and I`d be working with different writers and a different designer and we`d be shooting in a different place (Hollywood instead of London) and all that helped give it another energy. This kind of material seems to afford a nice canvas for themes and ideas and stuff.”

Burton hesitates when asked to speculate on the universal appeal of his title character. ”For me, I just find Batman to be quite modern in the sense that he was a conflicted character, a split personality, somebody who wants to do good but is at odds with himself in some ways. He`s someone who kind of wants to remain hidden, and all that.” Laughter. ”Or maybe I just liked him because he wears a good outfit.

”In the first movie, Michael and I were like two accountants trying to make an action movie. It was, like, `How do I move with these pointed ears?`

But he came into `Batman Returns` very strong. He has such energy-the kind he used (as the bio-exorcist) in `Beetlejuice.` He`s basically a very manic performer, but in `Batman Returns` he had to put a lid on it, which gives him a very quiet intensity, like someone who is just about to jump out of his skin-or cape.”

The film, like its precedessor, will make do without Batman`s comic book sidekick, Robin. ”To me, there`s something about Batman where he is this lone figure, and I have trouble disrupting that psychology.”

The Joker (outrageously played by Jack Nicholson in 1989) also will be missing, having fallen to his death in the last film.

Burton and writer Daniel Waters (”Heathers”) collaborated to give fresh ”backstories” to two of their new shady characters, Catwoman and Danny DeVito`s Penguin. (The third is nefarious millionaire Max Shreck, played by Christopher Walken.) ”Again, the thing that attracted me to the world of Batman-unlike other comics like Superman, which was much more clearly and simplistically good and evil-is that it had more of a weird psychological depth to these characters. They`re a little stranger and a little more gray.” Catwoman originally was to go to Annette Bening, who proceeded to get pregnant. There were reports that Ellen Barkin, Lena Olin and Jennifer Jason Leigh were considered for the role, and certainly Sean Young (speaking of weird) tried to grab it. ”In some ways, you think of Michelle Pfeiffer, and you think, `It`s perfect,` ” says Burton. ”In some ways, it was almost too perfect. But I met her and I really liked her and as we got into it, she was incredible. She just amazed me with what she did physically. I mean, you look at her and you don`t think she could be this incredibly physical and coordinated. But she was, like, doing karate fights on curved roofs with four- inch heels, and she learned to use the whip unbelievably beautifully.

”Batman and Catwoman are drawn toward one another-good/bad, bad/good, that kind of a thing. And she`s wearing black and he`s wearing black, and she has a whip, and it sounds like a pretty good weekend to me.”

The Penguin, he says, was in some ways his least favorite character in the comics. ”It was because all the others had a sort of interesting psychological profile, and I could never quite figure out what the Penguin`s was. When Danny got involved, it was very apparent he didn`t want it to just be Danny DeVito in a top hat and tuxedo, quacking.”

(”When I was offered the part, the last thing I wanted to hear from Tim was that we were going to do the Penguin like the comic book or the TV show,” says DeVito. ”We talked instead about the origins of the character and what Tim had in mind visually and psychologically. It turned the corner for me within an hour.”)

During the filming on one tense night, when the Penguin`s umbrella wouldn`t open, DeVito entertained the crew by telling a series of dirty penguin jokes. Burton smiles. ”Danny kept everybody going. Also, because he`s a director himself, he really knows what you go through, and he was such a supporter in very tough times. He was really the light for the crew, and everybody appreciated it. He has such life and such power and such a twisted sense of joy. It`s just a pleasure to work with him and to watch him. He very much became the character. I`m not sure if he`s a Method actor, but I do know that if people got close to him on the set, he`d bite them.”

If production designer Bo Welch`s sets reflect the under side of Gotham City-including a mammoth, somber stand-in for Rockefeller Center-it isn`t entirely unintentional. Says Burton: ”I tried to be true to the spirit of Batman, and not make the movie look like `The Sound of Music` or something.” Much has been written about the director`s being influenced by the German Expressionism of the `20s. ”I don`t think about it consciously, but I obviously do like it, and in the world of Batman, it sort of makes sense. You have this city at night, and there are these kind of weird animal people roaming around. With this world and this canvas, the reality is all heightened with themes like the way bosses treat their employees and sexism and the relationships in politics. I mean, we`re not going to save the rain forest with this picture, but we do enjoy our themes.”

Burton-now 33 and married to Lena Gieseke, a German artist he met while filming ”Batman”-grew up in Burbank, Calif., where his father was with the city`s park and recreation department. He confides he was never close to his parents. ”For whatever reason. I don`t know. At some point I`ll probably have to deal with it. I think they`re good people, but the culture-middle class, white America-is not the most emotionally involved. I wasn`t really taught emotion. I left the house pretty early.

”I guess I was an outsider, although I didn`t feel that way when I was younger. You know, there`s such a strong sense of categorization in America. There`s racism, sexism, and there`re more subtle versions of those things. Which is: This person`s normal, this person`s weird, this person`s good at sports, this person`s not. You`re put into categories from Day One. I never thought of myself as different, but if you hear it enough times and you start thinking of yourself that way, you start moving to the side to let the

`normal` people through.”

Although he started making 8 mm horror movies before he reached his teens, he wasn`t interested in filmmaking as a career. Graduating from high school, he attended the California Institute of the Arts, where he studied animation, and went to work at the Walt Disney Studios, working as an apprentice on such projects as ”The Fox and the Hound” and ”The Black Cauldron.”

”At first I thought, `Wow, this is incredible,` but once I got into it, I realized I wasn`t cut out for it. I didn`t have the patience, and I didn`t like what they were doing. There`s this rap about `the greatest artists in the world,` so you`re called upon to be a great artist, and then they turn you into a kind of zombie factory worker. It drove me crazy, and I got out of it relatively quickly.”

However, at Disney he was given the chance to make a six-minute animated film called ”Vincent,” the story of a 7-year-old suburban boy who reads Poe and wants to be Vincent Price (Burton`s childhood idol). The live-action short, ”Frankenweenie,” caught the attention of the film industry as well as Paul Reubens, who tapped him to direct ”Pee-wee`s Big Adventure” in 1985.

Three years later, when he shot ”Beetlejuice”-a wacky Gothic comedy about house-haunting-a baffled Warner Bros. studio tried to get him to pick a more commercial title. ”They wanted to call it `House Ghosts.` That was a dangerous time. A dangerous time. Instead, I jokingly suggested `Scared Sheetless.` And they almost went for it.” Laughter again. ”I almost threw myself out the window.”

His most personal film, ”Edward Scissorhands,” takes a wicked look, in part, at a blandly pastel suburban tract development, but the boy from Burbank denies it`s Burton`s Revenge. ”I don`t hate where I grew up. It`s part of your life, so you have to feel some affection for it . . . even though I`m glad I got out when I did.”

Burton`s films usually elicit a love-them-or-hate-them response, which he says is all right. (”I`d rather get that than a shrug.”) Surprisingly, they all have made pots of money, from the Pee-wee picture, which was shot for less than $7 million and grossed more than $40 million, to ”Batman,” which brought in a reported $406 million in worldwide ticket sales-the sixth-highest-grossing film of all time. Obviously, then, the performance expectation for ”Batman Returns” is enormous.

”That kind of pressure is abstract in the sense that there`s nothing you can really do about it,” he says. ”All of that is sort of hovering, but for me to think about it is just a waste of energy. You just make the best film you can, and hope for the best.”

”I glance at the reviews, but I don`t dwell on them,” says Burton, who hedges about the possibility of a third ”Batman.” ”In some ways, it`s been quite healthy for me because while some people have liked my movies, I`ve also been completely lambasted. So there`s no danger of my getting egotistical. On occasion, though, there`s a strong dynamic where people `get` it-either reviewers or others. Which makes me feel good. I mean, it makes me feel, in some ways, that I`m still on this planet.”