As a writer, I may get hung up on a shitty piece I wrote once in a while. Did this film ever affect you over time as an artist?
To be honest, I haven't thought about it much. My job is always about moving on. In fact, I was set to do another Batman. I even met with Nick Cage on the set of Face/Off because I was going to have him play The Scarecrow. Frankly, I was running out of villains. At the time I was all over the world doing press, because obviously, we didn't have Skype or electronics to do remote interviews, and let me tell you, the knives were out over Batman & Robin. But I did my job. So I'm in Rio, cutting the ribbon to yet another toy store with Warner Bros merchandise and I just thought… what the fuck is going on? So I went on a vacation to Mexico and I call my bosses and say, I just can't do another Batman. You would think they wouldn't want me to make another. But the licensing, the toys, the pajamas, they've produced astronomical numbers in sales. I just needed to get out of carrying the summer movie thing, for my own sanity.
So you did question yourself in a way.
Well, I literally had one of those bad soap opera moments when I was in Rio. I looked in the mirror and said, "Why did you want to be a director?" I remember starting as a $200 dollar a week costume designer before wanting to be a director. And I was there thinking, why did I want to do this? It was because I grew up behind a movie theatre when I was a kid, before television. I loved movies and wanted to tell those stories. So I said, let's get back down to basics, let's get out of here. It was very hard to leave Warner Bros, it was very painful because it had been my home for a very long time.