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I met Michael Thau at Musso and Frank Grill, probably one of the most famous restaurants in Hollywood. When I entered, Michael was already there looking for me. I was quite impressed, he was there exactly on time. On the second night we ate at an Indian place and again he met me bang on time. This is our conversation. What are your memories of the theatrical version of Superman II? I don't remember seeing Superman 2 but I know where I was for the first one. How did you begin the restoration? We started like the first one; we brought all the footage over. We spent many man hours with 3 or 4 people down in the vaults going through negatives looking for key numbers and slates - and it took a long time because at some point the Salkinds stopped paying their storage bills so the labs stopped categorising the film, but they had some rudimentary details on where this piece of negative went etc. It was all packed away well in metal cans and labeled and kept well, quite surprising because the entire Salkind library kept moving from facility to facility because they didn't pay their bills. A company would hold it, say for ten years and then get rid of it by selling it to another facility; you know 20 cents on the dollar. Isn't it amazing that it survived? Yes, considering where I found it back in 2000 when I was doing the first one. Where I found it, it wasn't climate controlled, it wasn't modern at all but it was very British especially the guys who worked there. What was the quality like? Oh very good, little damage here and there but not a lot. At what point did the studio say, "Michael, we wanna do this"? They called me first, they didn't call Dick first. So were they gonna do it without Dick's permission or no? No, we had to make sure it was feasible, why get Donner excited about something if we couldn't find the negative? That took a lot of money and man hours on a union lot but the advantage of all that is that it's handled professionally. Did you find it at Pinewood? No, it was somewhere else. We found negatives, music elements and everything else for Superman The Movie, Superman II, Superman III, Supergirl, Three and Four Musketeers, Prince and the Pauper, most of the Salkind library was there. So you found the footage, at what point did you have to persuade Dick? It wasn't a matter of persuading, at a certain point when I started finding
the Brando footage and was able to put scenes together, I told him that
they had hired me and wanted to do this film, do you want to look at some
of the scenes I've cut? He was in Canada at the time doing something.
Anyway, he asked me if they were treating me nice and I said 'Yes'. "I'm
really happy for you." So you put something together for Dick to look at? Not the whole film, I cut together the scenes with Brando and showed him, but before that I made him read the 1977 shooting script and then we watched the Lester cut in the cutting room to show him what we were trying to do and what was already there. And then, you know I didn't get him very often, maybe an hour here and there whilst he was finishing off 16 Blocks. I told him that there are scenes that I didn't want to touch because it's Stuart's cutting and they were really well cut, examples of this are the two diner scenes, the moon scenes [I put a different, alternate ending on the moon scene] and the Oval office interiors, which I extended in the middle [Ursa strips off a badge, no reason to cut it out.] When did Tom Mankiewicz get involved? I talked to Dick and showed him a couple of things first before getting to Tom. Tom's never really needed to work - he plays the stocks early in the morning. In Los Angeles you get up at 6AM to do that. Was there any contact with Richard Lester? Everyone tried to call him, Ilya tried to call him, then he got Pierre Spengler to try and call him, WB called him, WB legal called him, New Wave, who were shooting interviews in England, tried countless times, I don't even know if he has an agent, he never responded. He hasn't even been involved with DVD releases of his other films. He hasn't worked in film since The Three Musketeers. No, no way past that. Duh, it was Return of the Musketeers. The one Pierre Spengler produced. What happened? Roy Kinnear was tragically killed on the set. He's refused to work with Ilya Salkind on the other DVDS. He doesn't even want to talk to anyone. Maybe he's sick? Dick was surprised that he was an American. Maybe he knew back then, but it's been thirty years. They still harbour feelings, all of them, Stuart Baird, Tom Mankiewicz and Dick. I spoke to Tom about it and he concluded that it was showbiz. Dick still feels that he stabbed him in the back? Oh yeah. I don't see it that way, by the time Lester was confirmed as director,
Dick was gone. I agree, I don't think Lester stabbed him in the back. Salkinds did.
He never got a call from the guy. Yeah, Lester should've called him.
Easy answer, 9 months that includes preliminary planning. Karen Rasch got a co-producer credit on this one because she did so much, very few people working on this one, really, it was me and her. Of course you have the other people working in their specialized areas whereas we had to cover the entire thing. It wasn't putting film together; it was weaving in and out of 2 pictures and sound elements etc.
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