Michael Uslan
Field: arts
Michael Uslan recounts his journey from an Indiana University undergraduate to the producer who acquired the film rights to Batman and helped launch its movie franchise. He describes creating the first accredited college course on comic books, marketing himself to generate press attention, breaking into the comics and film industries, and enduring a decade of rejection before Batman's success. He closes with four lessons: take calculated risks, believe in yourself and your work, tolerate frustration, and follow your passion.
Key moments
- 01 Creating and defending the first accredited comic book course at IU by comparing Superman's origin to the story of Moses
- 02 Generating national press by calling a reporter to complain about his own course
- 03 Getting his start writing for DC Comics and eventually writing Batman
- 04 Buying the rights to Batman, facing rejection from every studio, and its eventual box-office success
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Michael Uslan at Indiana, 2006
An Indiana University address about impossible dreams, small achievable goals, campus opportunity, persistence, and knocking again.
Speech arc
- 01Indiana University
Opening move
- 02Class of 2006
Speech beat
- 03Bloomington to Hollywood
Speech beat
- 04Big dream
Speech beat
- 05Small goals
Speech beat
- 06Comic-book course
Speech beat
- 07Closed doors
Speech beat
- 08Knock again
Final charge
Seat: A huge dream starts from an ordinary place
Uslan begins by remembering himself in the same seats, with no job lined up but with a dream large enough to seem impossible.
Memory
He uses the graduation arena to collapse the distance between speaker and class.
Dream
The dream is specific: produce a definitive, serious Batman movie.
Barrier
He had no family, friends, or money in the motion picture business.
Uslan begins by remembering himself in the same seats, with no job lined up but with a dream large enough to seem impossible.
Steps: Big dreams need smaller reachable goals
The speech turns ambition into method: break an impossible leap into steps that can create credibility, contacts, and evidence.
Method
Small achievable goals become the bridge from Bloomington to Hollywood.
Platform
Indiana University gives him the chance to create and teach a comic-book course.
Signal
That course becomes proof of seriousness and a way to get on the radar.
The speech turns ambition into method: break an impossible leap into steps that can create credibility, contacts, and evidence.
Doors: Rejection is part of the route
Uslan catalogs closed doors and dismissive answers to show that persistence is not a slogan but repeated action after refusal.
No
Applications, agents, and investors reject the idea as too risky or too strange.
Resilience
He asks graduates to pick themselves up instead of taking refusal as final.
Repetition
Many doors can say no before one opens.
Uslan catalogs closed doors and dismissive answers to show that persistence is not a slogan but repeated action after refusal.
• Key takeaways •
Name the dream clearly
Connects to persistence.
Break it into reachable goals
Connects to creativity.
Use the platform you have
Connects to career.
Treat rejection as motion
Connects to goal setting.
Knock again
Connects to resilience.
Closing charge
The final lesson is earned persistence: keep faith with the vision, but keep doing the work needed to make others believe it.
Knock again until vision gains a hearing
Trust
Repeated effort builds contacts, reputation, and proof.
Opening
The call eventually comes because earlier work created the conditions for it.
Charge
Graduates are invited to dream boldly, work wisely, and keep knocking.
The final lesson is earned persistence: keep faith with the vision, but keep doing the work needed to make others believe it.
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Transcript
The previously catalogued transcript link is no longer live and is queued for re-sourcing.
Machine transcript available for archive analysis; it is unverified and may contain transcription errors. Machine transcript source ->
Provenance
BROKEN transcript link (checked 2026-06-26): graduationwisdom.com repurposed into lifestyle blog; speech pages gone. Provenance: Imported from NPR commencement archive; cross-referenced with Open Commencement DB
NPR archive last updated in 2015; destination availability has not been exhaustively rechecked | Open Commencement DB transcript; not independently verified against the original recording | Transcript URL dead (graduationwisdom.com repurposed into lifestyle blog; speech pages gone); no video fallback — needs re-sourcing
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