Christopher Lee and Oliver Reed wanted to play Zod, notes Ilya "Christopher had played against type in Musketeers but playing Zod in all black would bring back the Vampire thing, I turned him down." Meanwhile, Ilya and Oliver had this love/hate friendship. Love because of the booze and hate because of Ilya's age, he was younger and effectively Oliver Reed’s boss on the Musketeers shoot. I asked about his famous moustache, contrary to popular belief it wasn't there for pulling the girls but to make him look older.

Ilya relates a story from the Musketeers, "I drove Chuck [Heston] to the hotel, Oliver was there having a drink. I was surprised by Chuck's low key, He wasn't like the movie star that I saw in the movies, he slouches and is very down-to-earth. Anyway, Oliver was on whiskey and Chuck had a port or two. Well, Chuck had enough. He was tired and wanted to retire. Oliver came out with, 'What, haven't you got any balls?’ Chuck suddenly rose, towering over him, his face became Ben-Hur, 'I'VE HAD ENOUGH'. Oliver turned into a pussy cat, 'okay'. That was the legend I had imagined off screen." So was it the drink that was key in turning Reed down? "It would've caused problems with Chris, can you imagine, 'You think you're Superman? Let's see you drink.'"

One day, a cop walked up to Ilya, he thought he was in trouble but it turned out that he wanted to play Superman! "Thank God Robert Redford turned us down otherwise I would've become your cab driver."

The producers met Christopher Reeve in New York and tested him there. "Dick didn't want to see him but I told Dick that we’ve got to test him." When they saw Reeve, they producers weren't sure because of his skinny frame but, nonetheless, the actor was asked to do another test in England with Dick. The rest is history! Ilya isn't 100 percent sure but he thinks that Chris was offered Indiana Jones in the 1980s!

"What was Chris like on set?" Ilya has nothing but praise for his character, "He was a professional, he was always on time, he never complained, man, he was brilliant, the way he bulked up, amazing. He always called me boss. That was very nice of him."

Since Donner's removal from Superman II, Margot Kidder has always been vitriolic towards the producers, "Look, Margot is lovely but she doesn't know the whole story, she's heard rumours and...she doesn't know that Pierre and I fought for her -- it was her or Stockard but we felt Margot was less motherly. She looked more like the Lois from the comic books."

Most of the crew was already on board. But key personnel such as John Barry and Geoffrey Unsworth signed on after Dick Donner replaced Guy Hamilton. "We give the director 3 choices for a cinematographer, if all three are not available, we secure [another] one for him." John Barry's vision of Krypton was based on Eddie Greenberg's storyboards -- he was actually the one who envisioned a crystal-like planet.

Click Here to read the memo sent to all production staff about security.

With shooting underway, it didn't take too long before tensions rose, but Ilya feels that the conflicts led to a better film. He's adamant that the tensions were sometimes exaggerated, there were some bad days when Dick and Ilya didn't speak, but on other days they conversed happily.

Ilya is quick to enthuse about the teamwork during the Superman films, "Two people were instrumental in Superman's take-off, Alex Salkind and Christopher Reeve. The former's money and the latter's 100% dedication to making the character believable."

"I was on Dick's side," says Ilya who reacted to June's Empire interview with disappointment especially because he feels that the pair reconciled during the late nineties. In fact, they'd made up even earlier -- In Starburst issue 78 from 1984, Ilya gave an interview talking about Supergirl and Santa Claus but it begins with the aftermath of Dick's departure -- In there he mentions that he and Donner embraced on the Supergirl set. It does seem bizarre that Donner continues to paint the producers in black after their numerous meetings post Superman II. Ilya contacted Dick about doing a Superman 1 and 2 super cut for DVD but he was ignored. He's livid by claims that he was banned from the set, "Please, come on, me banned from the set? I was never banned from the set." Despite the apparent oddity of Donner's statements, Ilya feels that Dick is a good guy and says that he is more than happy to meet him again.

I asked if the Superman production ended up being too big for co-producer Pierre Spengler. "It was too big for him, me and Dick. It was too big for everyone." Ilya doesn't understand the seemingly inconsistent statements from Donner, "When he said that it was the blind leading the blind, it was absolutely true but then he comes out with stuff, which, I don't know..." Reading Donner's comments, there's definitely a lack of consistent statements, what he said in 1979 and what he says now doesn't seem to correlate. Ilya continues, "I asked Pierre how many units we had, it was eleven at the production's peak!" When the ground under them threatened to swallow the production once and for all, John Glen of Bond fame came on aboard along with acclaimed horror director, Andre De Toth, "Andre was a great director, he supervised a lot of the flying stuff."

Meanwhile, Donner apparently struggled with choosing takes, "He shot the Red Sun 300 times and then chose take 3! I was there and I agreed with Dick, yeah, shoot it again. There were times when my father even suggested shooting a scene again. Sometimes on a film we were more perfectionists than the director." But Ilya believes that Donner was just too slow on the simple shots, "I remember supervising the shoot on the Daily Planet set, before we went to the States, I didn't say anything, just sat there. It was take after take, it's one thing shooting special effects but simple close-ups, come on."

"At which point did relations sour?" I asked. "When my father's money was disappearing, Dick got frustrated, but I was frustrated too, I was losing my film to Warner Bros. People don't understand how difficult this film was to make, it was a logistical nightmare, it was a monster. The special effects were unpredictable; you didn't know how they were going to turn out. There were tons of re-shoots, we shot over a million feet of film. I don't know how we made this movie."

Usually, dailies (prints of the previous day’s shooting) screen for 20 minutes, but not on Superman, Ilya continues, "I would sit down and watch the dailies with Paul Hitchcock for 2 hours, we had to analyse the model unit footage, the flying footage, the optical footage, you know, we watched everything. Paul worked with DC COMICS, he was there to make sure we didn't cross the line or get anything wrong. After we watched it, the crew came in and watched their work."

When relations between Donner and the producers became impossible, Richard Lester was offered a producer role on the film. I asked Ilya about the stories that the Salkinds owed money to Lester from the Musketeer films. "Lester was not owed any money. We paid him a salary to be a producer. He was there to accelerate Donner and he did minor work with the units. He didn't even take credit, He was certainly entitled to it." Pierre came in for a lot of criticism, but Ilya stands by him on key decisions, "Yeah he and Dick definitely didn't always get along but other times they were okay. Pierre thinks a lot before he speaks and Donner wanted immediate answers. Pierre was a little negative at the beginning. He didn't believe we could make Superman fly but he did find [special effects photographer] Zoran Perisic! He also said that he felt that the [originally scripted] ending of II would work better in one. Lester went with that to Donner."

With their money dissolving quicker than sand in an hourglass, they sold a few of their rights back to Warners; in return the studio ploughed fifty million dollars into the production. The lucrative video rights to Superman sold for 11 million - the studio ultimately made a billion. I asked Ilya about the infamous blackmail story: "We have the negatives, give us 11 million." Ilya responded, "We were flat broke, we undersold all our rights, we needed the money. It happens all the time in Hollywood. We made nothing on the Superman films. Warners and the creditors took all the profits, we were left with nothing."

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