SUPERMAN III - GENERAL/MEDIA

STARLOG 73, AUGUST1983

David and Leslie Newman: Super-Screenwriters
It's up, up and away for this writing team that specializes in superheroes as diverse as Sheena and the Shadow, Santa Claus and "Superman III."

By Da Marie Boyer & Patrick Daniel O'Neill

One of the continuing threads in the Superman cinematic saga has been the husband-and-wife writing team of David and Leslie Newman. The duo arrived to doctor the first film's screenplay, then reworked and scripted the second and finally soloed on their own with Superman III. Waiting in the wings are two other superheroic projects: The Shadow and Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. And then, "the greatest legend of them all," Santa Claus.

LOVE AND "SUPERMAN III"

The Newmans promise two things to their audience: first, they have penned their last screenplay for the Kryptonian superstar, and secondly, the $35 million adventure is their "best" yet. Rather than concentrate on superpowered foes or fall into the time-honored cliché of Lois Lane trying to discover Superman's identity, the Newmans have opted for new approaches to the near-mythic characters.

The spotlight, this time, shines squarely on Clark Kent, the bumbling-but-well-meaning reporter for The Daily Planet. In Superman III, he returns to Smallville for the first time since his silver-haired mother died, to attend his high school reunion.

The Newmans are said to have psychoanalyzed the Man of Steel for their approach to the Jerry Siegel-Joe Shuster character. David Newman's assessment: "One of the things that has always fascinated us about the character is Superman's schizoid nature. Clark Kent was always the poor schlep who had to take a back seat to the exploits of Superman. We've always believed that in some kind of funny, crazy way, Clark Kent doesn't entirely like Superman. He resents the fact that only part of him gets all the plums in life."

The character's "split personality" is explored in Superman III, as Superman finally gets the chance to explore being Clark Kent. On his return to his small-town home, the Kryptonian's alter ego encounters the love of his teenage years, Lana Lang, played by Annette (Cat People) O'Toole.

Comic book readers will recognize the name but the Newmans warn that is all the two versions of the character really have in common. The screenwriters last read the Superman comics as children, and they say they are not familiar with the comic book Lana Lang's current personality and background. But David points out that their screen version of the decades-old character is now influencing the writing of the comics character. "Our Lana Lang is a woman with a child, among other differences. The comic book is going to try and adjust to it," he says.

David Newman is happy to show Clark as a worthwhile human being, "Lana Lang is not in love with Superman, she is in love with Clark," he says. "She has no idea that he's Superman, and couldn't care less. Lana does get to meet Superman; she thinks he's swell, but it's Clark who she really loves."

Despite widely publicized stories that Lois Lane was all but eliminated from Superman III because of a dispute between Margot Kidder and producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind, the Newmans maintain that Lois was never an important part of the screenplay. "We got the initial idea for Superman III during the shooting of II," reports David. "I remember vividly, we were sitting in Niagara Falls, having a drink, when Leslie and I went off into a corner. Suddenly, we had the beginnings of what the third film was going to be about.

"At that time, there wasn't anything with Lois in the movie because we all felt we had taken that love story as far as it could go."

Leslie comments, "The people who were so moved and touched and thrilled by Superman II's love story think, 'Oh no, I wanna see more of that.' When you actually bring them into the theater, after about two scenes of 'more', they die of boredom. Even if they think that's what they want to see, they don't, really."

One very touching scene in Superman II has Lois expressing to Clark her inability to deal with the knowledge of his dual identity. Handed a compliment for the dialogue, the Newmans respond selflessly. "Thank you, we both wrote it," says David.

"No, it could be you," Leslie interrupts. "We hand stuff back and forth so many times when we're writing that we really can't remember who wrote what."

"I think you’ll also find some moments like that in Superman III," David points out. "It gets very touching, and there's a great deal of sentiment."

Their comfortable professional relationship grew out of many years of working both apart and together, as well as with a third partner, director/writer Robert (Kramer vs. Kramer) Benton. All three wanted to make movies long before they got their shot with the 1967 hit Bonnie and Clyde.

David served as an editor at Esquire through the 60's while Leslie raised their two children and wrote her first novel, Gathering Force. David Newman and Benton teamed up for a decade to freelance articles, even writing the "Man Talk" column in Mademoiselle. The duo finally managed to sell a script, Bonnie and Clyde, and both Benton and the Newmans have paid the rent as screenwriters ever since.

During the 60's, Benton and David Newman penned the book for the Broadway musical, It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman, which starred Jack Cassidy and Linda (Alice) Lavin. This previous association with the Man of Steel led to the three being hired to revise Mario Puzo's mammoth original script for the first two Superman films. While working on the project, the Newmans decided to forward a script to Gene Hackman, who had starred in Bonnie and Clyde. Intrigued, Hackman signed on as the master villain, Lex Luthor.

Due to the long interval between Superman's cinematic flights, the Newmans gained the rare opportunity to rethink and rescript the sequel - some footage of which had already been shot by Superman I director Richard Donner - adding to its originality.

Comparing Superman II to III, David says, "We had three plots going simultaneously - the Lois/Clark story, the three villains from outer space, and the Lex Luthor story. We tried to do that as much as we could in the third film as well. There's a plot with the Richard Pryor character, Gus Gorman; then there's the main villain, Ross Webster, played by Robert Vaughn; and there's the Clark Kent/Superman-going-back-to-Smallville-and-meeting-Lana plot. What's interesting is that, bit-by-bit, all of these things gradually come together in a way you could not predict."

FUN AND RICHARD PRYOR

Richard Pryor's role as a "villain" in the third film has been well-publicized, but the Newmans say few people know that Pryor is a big fan of the super-sagas and had a tremendous ambition to be a part of Superman III.

Pryor's character, Gus Gorman, is described by David Newman as "not a bad guy, just a poor jerk." Leslie narrows it down even further: "He's a bit of a shmuck who's developed a knack as a con man."

As the screenwriters tell the tale, Gorman stumbles onto his own genius with computers; he can make them do anything. Unfortunately, he's blackmailed by his boss, Ross Webster (Vaughn), and joins in Webster's evil schemes.

Webster, described by David Newman as "the real villain of the piece," is first introduced as a recipient of the Daily Planet's "Humanitarian of the Year" award. In the course of the film, the audience discovers the suave millionaire's true, evil personality.

The Newman's say they wrote Gorman's character with Pryor in mind, expecting him to improvise around their script. They got a surprise. "We were fully prepared to accept some improvising from Pryor, because we think he's a genius," David explains.

"We adopted the attitude that certain people are able to ad lib around an idea," agrees Leslie, "but Richard stuck to the script."

But Pryor's improvisational ability did prove useful at one point in the movie. "There was a sequence that we spent forever trying to work out," David begins, "involving the destruction of Colombia's coffee crop by a natural storm.

"We were running over budget, and having trouble trying to figure out what stunts we could use, when we came up with this wonderful solution. We suddenly realized we had the world's greatest monologist - Richard Pryor! We wrote, essentially, a three-page stand-up routine in which Pryor acts out a news report of Superman saving the coffee crop."

"It was even better, and god knows more economical, than destroying an entire Colombian coffee crop."

Another major FX sequence is the films climactic battle between Superman and an 18-story-high computer, which takes on a life of its own. The Newmans say the script for this part was difficult to work out. But then, according to David Newman, all of Superman III was hard to do. Why? "We had to answer the question," he says, "which was asked right after the second picture opened: 'How are you going to top this one?'

"Well, considering all of the new elements that Superman III has, meaning Richard Pryor, the whole Smallville situation, and something else we're being cagey about - which is unexpected and involves Superman - I think we did top Superman II."

An additional worry, at least during the writing of the first draft, was the fact that Christopher Reeve had script approval for his third flight as the Metropolis Marvel. The writers say that Reeve has a very definite idea about who Superman is. Leslie comments, "He takes the part very seriously."

Davis says the problem was compounded by their close friendship with Reeve. "We see a great deal of him, and Chris was always saying, 'When do I get to see it?' And we kept saying, "Not till it's ready.' We knew he was very anxious, and when we felt the script was ready - I think legally and contractually he was the first person to see it after the producers."

And it turned out all the worrying was groundless.

David says, "Chris read the script was, if I may say so, thrilled. He called us immediately and said, 'Guys, you really did it.' He had one or two suggestions, which had very much to do with how Chris understands the character."

Over all, the Newmans are quite happy with Superman III, calling it "exactly the film we had written." Having worked closely with everyone involved in the production - much more closely than on the previous two movies - they feel very strongly that their association with the Man of Steel will end on the best possible note. But why drop out now? Leslie responds, "The reason for doing the third picture was not to keep capitalizing on something. We all felt [the Newmans, Lester and Reeve] that we would only be willing to do it if there was something really new that we had never gotten into before. At this point, we feel we've said what we have to say about the American myth of Superman.

SHEENA AND THE SHADOW

Having finished the Superman saga, the screenwriting couple have moved on to other projects, both separately and together. David's association with comic book characters continues with Colombia Pictures' Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. He crafted the screenplay for the adventure to be directed by John (The Towering Inferno) Guillerman with Tanya (Beastmaster) Roberts in the role.

According to David, Sheena, based on the Jerry Iger/Will Eisner-created heroine, will follow the character's life from the time "this little blonde goddess found herself in the jungle, and how she is raised with the animals by a magical witch-woman." Her mission is to protect the sacred land of Gudjara, embroiling Sheena in the struggles of an emerging African nation. "There's a great deal of political intrigue," says David, "and there's a love story, of course, involving an American reporter named Vic, who arrives in Africa to cover another story and suddenly finds himself face to face with this incredible lovely, ravishing figure, Sheena."

David is at some loss to explain just why the Sheena project has taken so long to get off the ground and into the jungle. He feels the character herself may be part of the problem. "When you first hear about it, there's something about Sheena that sounds silly. It was nothing more Than a Tarzan rip-off when it was a comic book and a TV series [with Irish McCalla]."

So why did David get involved with it? "What impelled me toward it," he explains, "was not any respect for the original material - because there's very little original material to respect there - but this whole notion of the 'white goddess.' I was interested in that idea which appears again and again in legend - this 'Miranda' or 'Eve-like' innocent creature who lives in perfect harmony with animals and with the land - a kind of ecological superperson. I wanted to explore how that kind of person would fare in today's Africa, an Africa with places like Uganda and people like Idi Amin."

Unfortunately, things are not going well for Leslie's solo project, a screen version of Walter Gibson's legendary crimefighter, The Shadow. "The producer, Martin Bregman, has been up to his ears in getting the Brian DePalma/Al Pacino Scarface film finished. We've made no moves on getting a director or casting, or anything, because he was simply so involved in Scarface."

Another project has hit the skids: David's version of a live-action Tom and Jerry, based on MGM animated characters created by William Hanna and Joe Barbera. David says the film bogged down on two fronts: "The first problem was the costuming. Our advisor, Chuck Jones [Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century] explained the importance of the eyeballs - that all characters in animated cartoons had to have great big eyeballs. So, then, if you dressed somebody up in a cat-suit, and put fake eyes on it, how much of the actor's face was going to be masked? In which case, why bother getting Chevy Chase and Dustin Hoffman, as originally planned, if they would be unrecognizable?

The second problem was the million kinds of effects which had to be written into the script by me in an imaginative, stupid, carefree way, thinking 'they'll find a way to do this effect. ' There were people getting squished into accordions, people breaking into 300 pieces when they fall off a roof, men's eyes bulging out on springs when a pretty girl walks by. So they discovered that shooting a 12-minute test reel, just to try out different effects and different looks for the costumes, would cost close to 500,000 dollars. At that point, MGM got cold feet."

David is disappointed that the Tom and Jerry script is in limbo, because he thinks it's possibly the best script he's ever written.

The much-ballyhooed Santa Claus is currently being written by David and Leslie as a team. The first draft was submitted in late June. The Newmans say the film is set for a Christmas 1984 release, which means lensing must start no later than February 1984.

After the Newmans complete Sheena, The Shadow and Santa Claus, both will then embark on projects unrelated to superheroes: Leslie will script a movie for Alan Alda, while David hopes to make his directing debut with Letters to Michael, a film he scripted more than a year ago. For now, David and Leslie Newman - together and apart - are two of Hollywood's hottest creative talents, super-screenwriters who'll be providing a great deal of cinematic entertainment for moviegoers for years to come.