Written by Ahem

RICHARD DONNER: Metteur en Scene and Innocent Storyteller

"There is no formula for success. But there is a formula for failure; and that is trying to please everyone"- Nicholas Ray

"I have taken on the responsibility of trying to visualise Superman for people from eight to eighty"- Richard Donner Born on the 24th of April 1930, Richard D. Schwartzberg always had ambitions to be an actor. After a few bit part experiences in off-Broadway productions he met film director Martin Ritt. Ritt persuaded the young actor to follow a career in directing, and on request he became his assistant. Travelling to California now under the name of Richard Donner, the young apprentice eventually became a director of numerous documentaries and television commercials. With the experience on his side, Donner was offered a chance to direct television shows.

He went on to helm episodes of a wide variety of US television shows that have since become American cultural heritage. Wanted: Dead or Alive, The Rifleman, Twilight Zone, Sam Benedict, Combat!, The Fugitive, Philbert (Three's a Crowd), The Man from U.N.C.L.E, Gilligan's Island, The Wild, Wild West, Get Smart, The Trials of O'Brien, It's About Time, The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, Cannon, Cade's County, Ghost Story, The Streets of San Francisco, The Sixth Sense, Kojak, The Six Million Dollar Man, Petrocelli and Bronk demonstrate a phenomenal versatility and unquestionable respect for storytelling.

Donner also experimented with motion pictures in the 1960s directing the clumsy and lightweight X-15, Salt and Pepper and Twinky. Unremarkable and lacking excitement, the films convinced Donner to remain at the forefront of television directors. In the later part of his television career he directed the television movies Senior Year, Lucas Tanner, A Shadow in the Streets, the Nielsen ratings record-breaker Sarah T.- Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic and a feature length episode of Bronk. His admirable innocent storytelling secured him the offer to direct a David Seltzer-scripted post-The Exorcist horror film.

Donner took up the offer, and what followed was his entrance into the elite world of competent, Hollywood directors. Donner achieved a status on par with that of his mentor, Martin Ritt.

Richard Donner is a metteur en scene; a director who doesn't impose a personality across his work or hold onto a signature style. He is a versatile storyteller with a varied body of work and themes within them. He can do horror (The Omen) fantasy (RadioFlyer) popcorn (Lethal Weapon) children's films (The Goonies) and comedy (Scrooged) and not carry a reputation from one film to the other.

For those unfamiliar with the term "metteur en scene", it is a part of the auteur theory, an idea developed most famously by Cahiers Du Cinema and the writers Andre Bazin and Francois Truffaut, and before them Lindsay Anderson and later Andrew Sarris. The theory basically concerns authorship in the cinema.
Here is a brief summary by John Laughie:
"Most Auteuristic critics made a distinction between the auteur and the (mere)metteur en scene: the one consistently expressing his own unique obsessions, the other a competent, even highly competent, film-maker, but lacking the consistency which betrayed the profound involvement of a personality" To look at this theory within the context of the Superman movies, one only has to compare the style of Richard Donner (Metteur en scene) to that of Richard Lester (Auteur). For example, Donner's epic direction of Superman: The Movie carries no recognisable patterns from his previous work on The Omen, his future work on Inside Moves or The Toy. The director simply does not carry a recognisable style from one film to the other.

When examining Donner's work one cannot pin-point any worthy themes, characters or issues reflected from his personality into his work. To give a good example, the poster art of The Goonies clearly indicates the author of the piece; above the title are the words "STEVEN SPIELBERG PRESENTS", underneath the title are the words " A RICHARD DONNER FILM". The film, with it's syrupy, stereotype, white, middle class "cute" children has the universally recognised sentimental, Spielberg touch . Richard Donner may be credited as director, but authorship is owned entirely by Spielberg.

Likewise with Donner's Lethal Weapon series, Conspiracy Theory and Assassins, all of the trademarks of high conceptaction producer Joel Silver dominates the film. Does Donner actually chose to execute such large scale pyrotechnics EVERY TIME he decides to work with Silver? Obviously, Joel Silver is the author of these generic "high concept" action pictures, he chooses Donner to abide by his rules. Other examples are the Mel Gibson vehicle Maverick, a film authored by scriptwriter William Goldman and largely improvised by the all-star cast, and Radioflyer, a film authored by children's writer David M Evans, and if you compare the film to Evan's own directorial effort, The Sandlot Kids, both films look as though they were made by the same person. Donner's training in television heavily contributed towards his ability to tell somebody else's story. A television trained director, due to the practical, economic demands of filmmaking treats the script material as sacred and makes sure it is obeyed and played exactly as it is written. If the director feels the material doesn't work however, instead of adding elements of their own personality and idiosyncrasies to the film as an auteur would, they instead allow the actors to add-lib and improvise. When dealing with comedy found in the scenes shared by Lex Luthor, Eve and Otis in Superman:The Movie, Richard Donner would ask his writer Tom Mankiewicz exactly how the scene would play, then on set he would occasionally use Mankiewicz framework as a guide for the actors to improvise. Many of the on-screen jokes and dialogue were add-libbed, and this television trained technique brings a spontaneity to the scenes, the humour deriving from the actors and the scriptwriter, NOT from Donner. The Authors of these jokes are none other than Gene Hackman, Valerie Perrine, Ned Beatty and Tom Mankiewicz.

Likewise for the finale of Donner's comedy Scrooged, the director had the challenge of making actor Bill Murray cry on-screen. Feeling that the best person to drive the performance was the actor himself, Donner allowed Murray to improvise his entire end speech. The resulting performance in which Murray reduces himself to tears is so personal to the actor that the film adopts elements of Murray's own personality. While the film is directed by Richard Donner, the author of the film, its sardonic wit and tone, is Bill Murray. To contrast this with the directional style of Lester, one only has to view the opening of Superman III. Aware of his slapstick reputation, Lester delivers a self-conscious display of sight gags and surreal humour that play towards his auteur reputation. Lester even brought in his comedian regular BobTodd to portray a pedestrian hit in the face with a custard pie, left bewildered staring at the camera in a moment of Lesterian sprung tempo rhythm.Lester is the author of this sequence, he illustrates a pattern in his work.

Although the writers are David and Leslie Newman, if Lester disagreed with their writing he would create HIS own add-libbed humour. Unlike the metteur en scene, if the material doesn't work for an auteur, then they have the added option of falling back on their reputation. Auteur Lester continued to impose many of his infamous director's traits onto the Superman legend. Lester's penchant for slapstick humour and off-beat comedy, his knack of applying his unique brand of elaborate physical comedy seen in his work with Peter Sellers and The Goon Show, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum and The Three Musketeers was much criticised when it fell into the Metropolis battle of Superman II. Lester is the author of these comical pieces, they were improvised on set by the director himself. The majority of loyal Superman fans do feel that the latter directorial approach removed any "heart" from the series, especially with the resulting Superman III, Lester's obvious disinterest in the character and the favouring of a shift in tone towards comedy. Of course, Lester did work with many physical comedians in the past, and therefore imposes his experiences across his work. It is often argued that due to his obvious fascination with slapstick, surreal humour and interpreting the world through his own unique style, it was wrong for Lester to work on Superman. In effect, he was imposing and prioritising his own style across the films and happily ignoring the subject matter at hand. Can this then explain why many fans believe Superman IV: The Quest For Peace had more focus and more heart than any Lester Superman, and was more in line with the tone of the first film?

Why is Sidney J Furie's direction compared directly to Richard Donner's? Of course, Sidney J Furie, like Donner, is a metteur en scene and does not carry a recognisable signature style through each of his films; like Donner, Furie came from a strong television trained background that demanded a versatility capable of adapting to various stories requiring a different tone. When he went on to make films, Furie took these experiences with him. He has directed works as diverse as the spy film The Ipcress File, the war film The Boys of Company C and the popcorn action movie Iron Eagle, and like Donner, he has no reoccuring styles or patterns in his work. On Superman IV: The Quest For Peace he allowed actors Gene Hackman and John Cryer to improvise within a framework and even let Margot Kidder and Mariel Hemmingway rewrite their own dialogue. The same applies to metteur en scene Jeannot Szwarc, another director with a wide range of television work who went on to make horror (Bug!), a Summer blockbuster (Jaws 2) and a romance (Somewhere in Time). Many critics have credited his innocent, lyrical quality found in Supergirl, a Superman spin-off film. As with Donner and Furie and unlike Lester, Szwarc did not impose any self conscious idiosyncrasies across the film, but chose to respect the material as he would a police drama or a period romance. Any intended humour would derive from the script or be improvised by the actors. For example, a lot of the comical dialogue between Faye Dunaway and Brenda Vaccaro was improvised.

There is a definite link here between television-trained directors and the metteur en scene.

Similarly, just as the auteur is viewed as the creator, and therefore in charge of the entire production, Lester, unlike Donner, demands as much control over his camera movement as possible. When making Superman II and III, Lester's main camera operator was Freddie Cooper who had worked with Lester since the 1960s. Cooper, familiar with Lester's personal style was able to hold the exact framing Lester created. On Superman:The Movie Richard Donner did the complete opposite. Aware that Geoffrey Unsworth had a much greater knowledge of the imaging vocabulary, Donner allowed the cinematographer and camera operator Peter MacDonald to frame exactly where they felt they could achieve the most suited visual. With all of his varied collaborations on his other films Donner has taken the same procedure. On LadyHawke he allowed the renowned cameraman Vitorrio Storarro to work his famous colour theories to exploit the European locale to best effect, and on the New York based Scrooged he allowed Michael Chapman to lend his distinct depiction of the city in Taxi Driver to that of Donner's comedy.

Also, whereas Lester has always favoured a musical score by his like-minded frequent collaborator Ken Thorne, Donner has worked with musicians as varied as John Williams (Superman: The Movie), Andrew Powell and the Alan Parson's project (Ladyhawke), Eric Clapton and Michael Kamen (Lethal Weapon) and Jerry Goldsmith (The Omen) among others. Does the Superhero genre require a television trained, metteur en scene for it's director? One could argue that aspects of Auteurism can sometimes enhance the material. When applied to Batman and it's sequel, Tim Burton's renowned obsession with gothic design and perverse characterisation was highly popular among both Batman comic and film fans. Is this the exception to the rule, or can auteurs exist within the superhero circle? However you wish to interpret it, one statement remains fact, and that is that within the Superman franchise, the work of the metteur en scene has, by the fans reasoning, more heart than the work of the self-conscious auteur. They are innocent storytellers who purely translate the Superhero to the big screen in the most pure form the material allows. And Richard Donner was the first.

When one now reconsiders Nicholas Ray's commentary on a formula for success, his own reputation as an auteur becomes apparent. Generic Revision of the Superhero Movie What Donner did for Superman is undoubtedly the greatest generic revision of the superhero/comic book movie. Until Donner 's Superman involvement, the only commercially viable and logical approach to make a filmed Superhero was to copy the trend-setting Batman television series. The pop art of the 1960s had imposed itself over Adam West's interpretation of Batman in a frenzy of go-go dancing farce that sky rocketed viewing ratings. Whenever a more sincere interpretation of a comic book was attempted as with The Green Hornet, viewing figures would reflect a less than commercially acceptable public response.

Esquire writers Robert Benton, David and Leslie Newman as well as The Godfather writer Mario Puzo had written the original draft of the new Superman film's script as a Casino Royale style comedy played as a variation on the Batman television series. Richard Donner did not agree with the approach of the film, especially as producer Ilya Salkind had wanted to stay true to the legend with no tampering. It is easy to look back at the original draft of Superman: The Movie and compare it to the modern standard of comic book film making as seen in Sam Raimi's Spiderman or Brian Singer's X-men, but at the time, the scriptwriters had more than met the generic criteria. Within the generic framework of the time, Newman and Benton's effort was incredibly competent. The guest cameos and parody were an accepted convention, a standard that was takenfor granted. For example, Superman meeting television's Kojak while pursuing Lex Luthor is no sillier than Batman and Robin meeting Sammy Davis Jr. while climbing the side of a skyscraper.

Donner's next action is what redefined the genre, and that was the decision to bring in Tom Mankiewicz. Mankiewicz, unlike the popculturally indoctrinated Newman's and Benton, was a specialist of adventure writing. Mankiewicz was at the time a regular writer for the James Bond franchise, a job that allowed him to maintain the iconography of Ian fleming's hero while providing value formoney entertainment. Audiences and critics both applauded the films for their ability to emphasise the adventure within the real world. But what is "value for money"? How can one impress viewers looking for comedy, action, suspense, romance, thrills and fantasy on an equal level? What was so crucial in Donner's view was that James Bond had a much more rounded audience base than television's Batman had yet still managed to remain a truthful British institution. Donner had seen this work for a British legend, so why could this not apply to an American legend? Why did the superhero sub-genre decide the tone of the film? What if the legend of Superman was taken OUT of the exisiting Superhero genre and given the same tone as James Bond? At director Donner's insistence, Tom Mankiewicz rewrote the script.

Donner's skill was not in imposing his own genius across Superman: The Movie, but instead he used his television trained storytelling as a basis to bring the best out of his collaborators. In the process he leant the film an objectivity and innocence that would emphasise Supeman's status as an American institution.

Richard Donner's second landmark achievement was to cast an unknown actor as the Man of Steel. Again, working against the status quo, it was Donner who engineered the million dollar casting formula that is often hyped today by Hollywood screenwriter William Goldman. By choosing an unknown as the protagonist and surrounding them with Hollywood stars, the audience identify with the character and not the actor.  

Director Richard Donner also made sure that his top billing stars were heavilya bosrbed in their characters. The director made sure that Gene Hackman's moustache was removed and that he was seen at least once with Lex Luthor's trademark bald head. In the past, Ceasar Romero famously kept his own moustache while filming television's Batman because of course, a bankable star guest is used to bring in the audience. But to Donner, you could still have a star and make him a true spitting image of their character.  

Verisimilitude

During the production of Superman, Richard Donner made his technical crew recite one word, "Verisimilitude". The word was written across signs hung across the doors of every technical department with pride, and nobody heard itmore so than the special effects crews. Superman:The Movie was Richard Donner's first experience with special effects filmmaking. Knowing that his knowledge was somewhat limited, Donner communicated with his many special effects units using one instinct: his opinion. If he did not "believe" what was presented before him, he left the effects artists to return to the drawing board. As with his actors Donner allowed his technical crew to improvise themselves. If the specialists knew more than he did, it seemed obvious to let them create the work. Donner made the greatest focus the flying scenes, and with his full support, the artists and technicians worked nearly two years to perfect them.

Although Les Bowie and Roy Field had already been asked by the Salkinds to work on the film, an immense pressure was coming from elsewhere. Star Wars was about to make impact, it's ground-breaking special effects costs had already earned the film a reputation with Hollywood producers, while Steven Spielberg was shooting Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Both of these films were being used to showcase computerised apparitions and extravagant spectacle unlike anything seen before. John Dykstra, Industrial Light and Magic and Douglas Trumbull were the only names producers were taking seriously. While the Salkinds were dictating a bias towards this fashionable new-wave of special  effects rollercoasters, Donner was concerned that the new trend could jeopardise his quest for verisimilitude. Continuing to use the technical formula of the James Bond films as a model, Richard Donner realised that for those films the subtle, understated and seamless special effects work allowed the audience to take the technical wizardry for granted as opposed to being awe-struck by loud spectacle. Particularly impressive in Donner's eye was the work of James Bond miniatures specialist Derek Meddings. Amazed by the invention of Meddings work , the detail and craftmanship that went into making an image that the audience would totally take for granted, Donner eagerly persuaded the Salkinds to go with his choice. Unconvinced, the producers ignored Donner and continued to follow what was popular. Unsatisfied, Donner himself arranged to contact Meddings. An unsuccessful phone call with the artist caused a determined Richard Donner to march down onto the set of the film Meddings was then working on. Admiring his perseverance, Meddings agreed to commit to the project.

The special effects crew went on to win a special achievement Academy Award for their work.

Continuing The Journey

Unfortunately, legalities prevented Richard Donner from completing his near finished Superman II. The friends he had made on the original Superman film were heartbroken, but that did not kill their association with the maverick director:

When Superman special effects pioneer Les Bowie died in 1979, Richard Donner ordered the publishing of no less than a costly two-page obituary in Variety Magazine. The tribute did not come from either the Salkinds or Warner Brothers, but was paid for personally by Donner.

Margot Kidder has remained a close friend of Richard Donner, the actress can be seen in an cameo role in Maverick.

Roy Field has also continued his association with Richard Donner. The visual effects guru was recommended to friend Mel Gibson by Donner when the actor's Air America was in pre-planning. Field also hosts a documentary on the Superman: The Movie special edition DVD.

Today Richard Donner continues to direct motion pictures and television, his most ambitious achievement of recent being the Tales From The Crypt television show, but it is as a producer that he has held a regular position on the top 100 Hollywood power elite list. He is also part of a production company with the brilliant Lauren Shuler, who also happens to be his wife. His work may have an anonymous feel, his contractual obligations may not always offer him good material to work with, but Richard Donner has no shame, no reputation to tarnish and most pleasingly, no ego. The metteur en scene will always stay faithful to the authors of his work, be it Steven Spielberg, Joel Silver, Tom Mankiewicz, Bill Murray, William Goldman or David M Evans. Auteur Lester may be the most high profile director associated with Superman film series, but it was not Lester who obliterated the modern conventions of the filmed superhero, redefined the comic book film genre, set the standard for superhero casting and gave the world the most under-rated and over-ambitious motion picture EVER made. Donner had the burden of making a film that would have global popularity, appeal to audience members of all ages, have the approval of comicbook fans, uphold an American legend, divert away from the campy Adam West Batman standard and not fail.

If Nicholas Ray sincerely believed that a formula for failure is trying to impress everyone, he obviously never lived to see Superman:The Movie, directed by Richard Donner.

J Caughie, Theories Of Authorship, (London: Routledge & Kegan,1981) P. 9-10