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By EDWARD GROSS, Starlog 1989 You never realise how big and impossible a job it is to tackle a picture, because if you did, you would probably never do it," proclaims director Richard Donner. "I knew I had a major picture with major problems, but you surround yourself with very talented people, you have an approach and you're going to correlate all of those suggestions and thoughts hopefully-into some sense of objectivity, and you go out and make it." The "impossible" picture in question is 1978's Ilya and Alexander Salkind-produced Superman, the motion picture that introduced modern audiences to the legend of the Man of Steel and, combined with The Omen, put Donner on the Hollywood map, establishing him as one of the hottest directors around. That streak has continued, with such box office hits as The Goonies, Lethal Weapon, Scrooged and Lethal Weapon 2. Donner was also supposed to have directed 1981's Superman II, and in fact did helm about a third of that film, but difficulties with the producers led to his dismissal and replacement by director Richard Lester. "My original [Superman] contract was to deliver two films," Donner explains, "so therefore everybody who signed was told that they were doing two films". We started both and shot everything with Marlon Brando, Gene Hackman, Ned Beatty and Valerie Perrine for both pictures, and then we realised that if we were going to deliver the first one by Christmas, we had to stop and put all our efforts into that. Having completed everything with those actors, we put Superman II on the side and put all our efforts into the first film. Superman was a success, and the Salkinds, for whatever reason, chose not to bring me back. After I waited to hear for six or eight weeks, I got a telegram that said, 'Your services are no longer needed.' "Things got so bad between the producers and I," Donner continues in a voice laced with disappointment, not bitterness, "that they wanted an arbiter, and they suggested [director] Dick Lester. I knew Dick, so it was just wonderful. The deal stipulated that he wasn't allowed to attend dailies or be on the set unless he was invited, and he turned out to be a charming, delightful guy, and we had a great time together. Anything Salkinds had to say to me, they would go through him and the same back from me. That was his function on the film, and we became great friends. But, that turned into him taking over Superman II without picking up a phone and calling me." What went so terribly wrong between Donner and the producers that this situation ever arose? "God knows," he sighs. "We had the task of making that film out of my office. I had a secretary, an assistant and a wonderful editor. Things were a mess throughout the making of the entire film. Every time we wanted to do something, their production department would cancel it, bills weren't paid, people wouldn't deliver products and we had to hustle, rob, beg, borrow and steal. Superman is a tribute to many dedicated folks, I'll tell you that. But, that's show biz!" In a sense, it was that predilection towards "show biz" on the Salkinds' part that may have led to Donner's involvement. "As was their custom, whoever was hot was who they used," offers the director. "The Omen had just come out and I got a call one morning and some guy said, 'This is Alexander Salkind.' I said, 'Yes...' 'You don't know who I am 'No.' 'Have you ever been to Cannes [film festival]?' 'No.' I thought it was someone trying to sell me a story or something. He said, ' I'm a film producer.' I said, 'Oh, really Who was this guy? So, he said, 'Did you see The Three and Four Musketeers?' I said, 'Yes,' and remembered what had happened on that. "They made one picture called The Three Musketeers," Donner explains, "but they shot enough footage to make The Four Musketeers, and they didn't want to pay the actors for the second picture. Now, there's a requirement I believe called 'The Salkind Clause ' that says you must declare how many pictures you're doing when you're shooting. Anyway, he said, 'We're doing Superman and we want you to do it. We'll pay you a lot of money.' 'Terrific, I like a lot of money, but I don't know anything about the film.' He said he would send me a script." Literally 30 minutes later, a messenger delivered a light-hearted 500 page screenplay written by Richard and Leslie Newman and Robert Benton based on Mario Puzo's more humorous story treatment which encompassed the stories of both Superman films. "It just didn't work for me," he admits. "So, I said I didn't want to do it. They called back and insisted, and suggested they fly me out to Europe to talk to them. "My agent and I flew over on the agreement that if I did the film, I could bring in a new writer. They resisted that idea, but ultimately agreed to it. I wanted to use Tom Mankiewicz [who discussed the film in STARLOG #69]. He has been a friend for 20 years, but we had never worked together. He's tops, so I agreed. Tom came on to the picture and we were off." Donner pauses for a moment, gathering his thoughts concerning those early days of the project. "The picture had been prepared for a year in Rome," he says. "When I came on, we had to throw out the entire preparation, because we couldn't use it. It was originally going to be directed by an Englishman [Guy Hamilton] and produced by two Russian-Frenchmen the Salkinds, and yet they were doing a classic American fable without an American eye looking at it. When I agreed, I decided that I really wanted to ... not altruistically, but I was concerned that Superman shouldn't get screwed up. So, I said, 'Yes, I'll do it.' I never realised the challenge I was taking on. " When I arrived at Shepperton Studios and saw the preparation, I asked them to show me the flying material. I watched it and was stunned to see a man walking along who's jerked off the ground by two wires, and then landing out of control. That was the first thing we had to correct. Then, we had to cast the role, and they wanted to use Robert Redford or something. I said, 'Redford is not Superman.' They had all these other names, including Muhammed Ali! We had lots of problems like that." Casting would have been a nightmare, Donner notes, if Christopher Reeve hadn't entered the picture. "We had seen just about every actor imaginable from television to motion pictures and everything else," he details. "Nobody fit the costume. Nobody could wear the 'S' and be believable. Nobody could fly. If you saw Bob Redford flying, it would be Bob Redford flying. "I met Christopher Reeve [CS#11 in New York]. I had gotten a call from someone who said, 'There's a kid who's terrific. Would you like to see him?' He was about 20 or 30 pounds lighter, his hair was a sandy colour and he had dressed in the burliest clothes he could find to make him look good. I gave him my glasses to wear, and he looked so much like the part it was unbelievable. Nobody wanted to go with Chris because he was an unknown, but the idea to me was that we should go with an unknown so that you could make it believable. It ended up just that." As pleased as Donner was that the role of Superman had finally been cast, he was equally as happy with the casting of Marlon Brando as Superman's father, Jor-El, and Gene Hackman as arch-villain Lex Luthor, both of whom had been signed prior to Donner's joining the film. "The interesting thing is that the Salkinds had tried to sell this project in Cannes for a couple of years, and every year there was a helicopter with a banner that said, 'The Salkinds Bring You Superman'," he says. "But, they had a tough time convincing the powers that be to give them the money, because no one was sure if they were going to deliver. Quite intelligently, they went to Mario Puzo and paid him a lot of money to write the story. So, they had Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather, now set to write Superman. Then, they went to Brando and Hackman, offered them a lot of money and gave them specific dates they would shoot, although they didn't know when, where or how. They ran a sign over Cannes that said, 'The Salkinds Bring You Superman ... Written by Mario Puzo... Starring Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman.' Overnight, they were accepted, so when I came on the picture, these two guys were going to do it. I was thrilled, because neither part could have been played better by anybody. We were also married to the dates that were promised to Brando and Hackman, and that was an awesome A" responsibility. "Once I signed, I replaced just about everyone who had been on it because we had a different attitude about how the picture should be made. It was like 11 weeks later, or even less, that we were shooting on Krypton with Brando. Unbelievable." Donner's intention was to bring a purist point-of-view to the film, keying in to the original Superman mythos, and avoiding the treatment given to the legend via the 1950s TV series. "I knew the Superman legend and grew up on it," he enthuses. "I knew I didn't want to do what television had done to it. Every kid remembers the TV show. This film was in its pure form, but on a grand scale, and as we got into it, I saw it as three separate films. It was a trilogy in our eyes. "One was Krypton," he elaborates, where we broke away from tradition, because when I came on to the project, their preparation for Krypton was exactly the way it looked in 1939 and I knew that was wrong. A very wondrous man, John Barry, who had done Star Wars and died shortly after making this film, came up with a 'modern' Krypton, which we felt was crystalline, like the inside of a stone. Then came the second part of the trilogy, which was Smallville. We didn't research the comic book all that much, but we did spend a lot of time in Norman Rockwell. We just wanted to make Smallville Kansas-America. When we got to Metropolis, we went back to the comic book. "You really don't realise how impossible things are, but you just blindly blunder ahead, hoping that the Great God of Cinema is going to lead you to it." Judging by Superman's critical commercial success, Donner did deed find that path, which makes fact that he didn't finish shooting sequel even more curious. "Let me put it this way," his "all the good parts of Superman 2 are mine. Everything with Hackman Brando-well, they cut Brando because he wanted more money, Beatty and Perrine was shot by me was going to be more in the tradition of the first one. The villains were going to be much more believable. I hated the stuff they did with the villains in the small town. It looked an Englishman's point-of-view what America would look like, with the Army, the jeeps, the people ... there was no sense of size to it. It lost its sense of importance." As fans are aware, Superman II focuses dually on the romantic relationship between Superman and Lois Lane, who discovers the truth about Clark Kent, as well as the three Kryptonian villains rampaging on Earth. Donner recalls several significant differences between what was actually shot by him, and what ended up in the film under the direction of Richard Lester. "My Superman II opens at the Daily Planet on the front page of a newspaper, 'Superman Saves So and So...' Lois is looking at the newspaper and her byline, and there is a photo of Superman in the newspaper, arms folded across his chest, in his typical pose. On the other side of the office, talking to Jimmy Olsen, is Clark Kent, sitting there with his arms folded in exactly the same pose. She looks at the newspaper, then at Clark and says, 'Oh my God!' She takes a pen and starts drawing, but we don't know what she's drawing. We cut back and we see that she's drawn a hat on Superman, a jacket and tie and glasses, and it's Clark Kent. just then, Perry White calls Clark into Lois' office and says, 'I'm sending the two of you on a honeymoon scam at Niagara Falls. You're going to pose as a married couple,' and he leaves. She goes over to Clark, gives him a nudge and says, "That'll be terrific, Clark. We can fly up there,' and gives him the eye. He doesn't know what she's talking about. "Then, she says, 'You're really Superman,
aren't you? And he tells her that that's ridiculous. So, she gives him
the newspaper, which he looks at and recognises as himself. Then, she
says, 'Before you say anything, I'll bet my life that you're Superman.'
He lowers the newspaper and sees that she has moved to an open window
and onto the ledge, 30 floors up. Then, she jumps out the window, and
in a millennia of a second-everyone freezes-he shoots through the office,
because he can't change, downstairs as a blur, with every loose piece
of paper being caught behind him. He appears as a blur on the street.
There's an awning, and he uses his vision to pop it out. Then, he blows
upward as she's coming down, causing her to float like a leaf. She hits
the awning, rolls off of it and onto a fruit stand, which we established
in front of the building. Then, he's back upstairs in this second, looks
down and calls out after her, 'Lois, are you all right? What did you do?
She looks up at him and faints deadaway. This was shot, but they chose to do that stupid opening scene with the terrorists in the Eiffel Tower. "Another change took place Niagara Falls. Superman saves the kid and that night in the hotel room Clark's talking to Lois, who says, "Isn't it amazing that Superman showed the way he did to save that kid" "Yes it is, isn't it?" "'I think it's too much of a coincidence, don't you?" "'I don't know, What do you mean?" " 'I think you're really Superman." "'Oh, Lois, isn't that silly, We went through this before and you almost killed yourself. Thank god you hit that awning. You jeopardised your own life." Lois says, "'This time Clark, I'm going to jeopardise yours." She reaches into a drawer and pulls out a gun. She says, "Clark, I believe that you're Superman so much that I'm going to take that chance!" Clark responds "Now put that gun down... Lois, it could be loaded!" She pulls the trigger, we hear the gun go off and he stands there. Clark stands up to his full height, takes his glasses off, his chest practically ripping through the jacket and his voice goes from Clark to Superman's. "Lois Lane, don't realise what a stupid thing you did? If I had not been Superman, you would have just killed Clark Kent." And she says, 'What? With a blank?" He falls down in his seat and moans looking like he's about to throw up. And that's how she found out he's Superman. It's really sickening, cause all of that was shot, and they it cut out." Some consolation did come the fact that ABC reinserted material, edited out of the original Superman when the film was first aired on TV. "The thing that got to me on film," he says, "and I wanted to do more of it, and I guess if I didn't have so much story I would have, is the idea of Superman appealing to our daydreams. How many of us have had a great desire to be Superman? To be impervious to pain and accomplish anything that you set out to do? Also, it seems like people are beginning help each other a little more, that's the whole point of Superman. He's there to help us, and wouldn't we all like to be him for one minute? It's a mythology that reaches what is real today. Most mythology, as you know, is period in its being. Superman just seems to have gone along with the time very well. "As for my personal feelings?" Richard Donner closes rhetorically. "I obviously have a tremendous affection for Superman and what he stands for in my life. I owe him everything."
Tom Mankiewicz finds one of the most humorous aspects
of the entire situation to have come from New York magazine's David Denby,
who, upon viewing Superman II, wrote, "Well, you can tell the difference
between Dick Donner and Richard Lester in terms of sophistication. Because
in this picture,Superman II, Gene Hackman really had something to do,
he's really wonderful, arch and so on as opposed to his performance in
the first one."
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