Max Carver, one of the Iceberg Lounge twins in The Batman, revealed a surprising cinematic tie to Matt Reeves’ 2022 caped caper.
Instead of auditioning for their intended roles as the bouncers of the aforementioned establishment, Max and twin brother Charlie were instead asked to read lines from the 1971 masterpiece The French Connection. As Max told The Illuminerdi, he and his sibling didn’t even know they were up for The Batman at first.
“It was a trip, man, because we didn’t know it was The Batman when we auditioned for it. We knew it was going to be something big, but we were reading sides from The French Connection . . . there were two different scenes, and I’m a fan of that movie too. So when we found out that we were going to be cast, I believe it was like Christmas Eve morning. And they said, ‘Hey, congratulations, you got the job.’ And we were like, ‘Really?’ ‘Yeah. It’s for The Batman. You’re going to London in six weeks.'”
Knowing that The French Connection was involved made Max doubly excited, as it meant that “this was going to be a different Batman.” He continued, “If that’s what they were making sure was there in their decisions for who was being cast, I was like, ‘Oh, this is going to be cool. This is going to be really cool.'”
Considered one of the greatest films of all-time, The French Connection stars Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider as detectives on the hunt for a prolific heroin smuggler. As a film that helped define the dark, crime-riddled New York City of the ’70s, it inspired the gritty Robert Pattinson-led Batman throwback that was designed as a street-level thriller on a blockbuster superhero budget, along with other greats including Chinatown and Taxi Driver.
Look for shades of The French Connection in The Batman, which is still screening across the world.