What kind of films did you like in your childhood?
When I was a kid, those were the Disney movies, soon as I became more conscience - I liked the Orson Welles films.

How did you meet Alexander Salkind?
His wife wrote a theatre play and I auditioned for a role. I was accepted actually, and started rehearsals until the director came and noticed that I didn't look like a Mexican, for which he was right and I lost the role, but I remained friends with Ilya, son of the writer who was also a son of Alexander Salkind. At 16, impatient to start working I asked Alexander if he can give me a job, and he gave me a job to make coffee and answer the telephone. That was the start.

What was your first job in the film industry?
More and less at the same time I worked on a film called "Secret Paris" were I was helping the location manager to find some gypsies around Paris. Later I was assistant director on a film called "Hot Line", which was the last film of Robert Taylor and on other various films.

One of your first major production assignments with Salkinds were the Musketeers movies. How did you come up with the solution to divide finished movie in two?
This was a unique case because we made the decision after we started the production. We realized that for the kind of audience we wanted to aim at, a three and half hour film would be too long and since there was natural split in the story, we decide to separate it in two films. It worked out very well.

Who came up with the idea for Superman as a major motion picture?
Alexander's son, Ilya. He has been reading comic books, which I haven't and he came up with the idea, how about making a movie about Superman.

What was your first reaction?
It's going to be expensive!

Superman was arranged as so called ''negative pick up deal''. Can you explain that?
That kind of arrangement is not unusual. It was unusual for the size of film. The arrangement is that the production responsibility lies with the producer. The distribution company like Warner Bros in this case, agrees to pay a certain amount on the delivery of the film, so they don't take the risk, because if the film is never finished they don't pay.

Superman had a long preproduction and changed couple of screenwriters.

Did you ever doubt in its success?
No, not really. Otherwise we would not have continued. Sure there was a lot of problems, only to get to the right screenplay was a very long process and actually involved 6 writers. It really has been a mixture. Mario Puzo was the first one. God part of the structure that Mario had designed remained in the two films. Then we had the Robert Benton and David and Leslie Newman who did the next draft. In the middle we had Norman Enfield, and finally we had Tom Mankowitz who came on board at the same time as Richard Donner and he was credited as creative consultant. He basically polished it and changed certain things and stayed quite a while during production. Also when we were preparing the movie, we had the thought to go rather retro, even for Krypton but then we decided to go completely other way with designs of John Barry which were futuristic.

How did you choose Christopher Reeve for the title role?
Christopher Reeve came after a long search once we have decided that we will not take a star. Originally we thought, and I was not too keen, but commercially it sort of made sense, to take a big star for Superman. We considered names like Robert Redford, Schwarzeneger who wanted to do it... We had various ideas, some good some bad, but ultimately we decide that we will have Superman as an unknown and to have stars around him.

Superman the movie was a huge success and then everybody came back for the sequel except the director Richard Donner. Why?
Because we have had some tensions and he at some point made a declaration, saying that he didn't want to work with me any more. Therefore he had to stay home because I was the producer on this film.

Why didn't you use the Marlon Brando footage shoot by Donner for Superman II?
Because it was costing 11, 3% of the gross. It didn't make sense commercially.

Superman III was more a comedy. Was this a wrong direction for the series?
It made less money then previous two?
Film still did 95 million at box office in USA alone. Today it is equal to 160 million. Good enough for success.

After Superman III, instead of IV, Salkinds did Supergirl. What went wrong with this picture?
Hard to say. The elements were there.

Why did the Salkinds sold the rights for Superman to Golan - Globus production?
At the time we discussed a possibility of doing Superman IV ourselves, and Ilya and I, actually we were probably wrong, decided to do something new. So we had the property of Superman but we weren't doing anything with it, and Cannon wanted it and paid good money for it.

What you think of Superman IV?
It was a misfire - definitely.

Were you involved in Superman V which was from 1991 till 1993 in preparation by Salkinds?
No, but I read the script and I've might have became involved but it never went in to that stage.

Was Christopher Reeve considered?
Yes.

You did the sequel for the Musketeers in 1989. Was it hard to get all the crew back together again?
It was quite miraculous. It's funny because it was an idea we had at the time of making the original Musketeers. We then made a joke with Richard Lester like we should come back in twenty years with older Musketeers... And years later I was in L.A having dinner with Michael York and somehow this joke came back, and we said maybe it's going to be fun to try. He accepted and then I called Richard Lester, he said yes, I called the writers and everybody else and they all said yes. There wasn't a single no. So it was amazingly easy.

How did you join the production of Emir Kusturica Underground?
I was meeting with general manager of Ciby 2000 about some other projects and then he mentioned to me that they were in pre production on the Kusturica movie in Prague. They needed a producer to come on board and they offered me a job. I meet Emir before in Moscow and always wanted to work with him and that was a great opportunity.
It became a unique experience, a long one but wonderful because the man is extremely creative and I was not bored for one single minute.

What was the budget of the film?
It ended up being 15 million dollars which for what it was and for what you had on the screen, was not a lot. We ended up having various versions, we had the theatrical version, and we had a TV series of six hours. There was lot of production values there, huge sets, very long shoot, so I think all in all from production point of view it wasn't unreasonable.

You became an independent producer in 1985. Is this more difficult now or back then?
Much more difficult now. The main reason is that you have a few independent distributors who have the means of supporting the projects. Twenty years ago you were able to prefinance a film through presales like Musketeers or Superman to some extent.
Today you have to divide your locations in such a way to take advantage of all the various taxes in this country and that country, then you have to find a distributor, often you have a sales agents who will be involved in distribution and you have to trust their talent and their expertise so that they will eventually bring you the contracts.

What should a producer do in order to succeed in the film business?
I've succeed in doing what I love which is I guess a huge success in one life. I succeeded in making a living, even do my old friend, also a producer said, film producing is no way to make a living, it is a way to make a fortune. Maybe. Like in every profession you have to work with conviction, sincerity, passion, and then success will at some time follow.

Ivan Karl

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