Richard Donner -- the man who revolutionized the superhero movie genre with 1978's SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE, turned 80 on October 24th. And to celebrate, we're taking a look back at excerpts from an interview with Mr. Donner from the archives in which he talks about the making of the film.
THE CHALLENGE:
"You never realize how big and impossible a job it is to tackle a picture, because if you did you'd probably never do it. 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.
'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 a lot of dedicated filmmakers, I'll tell you that. But, hey, that's showbiz!"
ON MARIO PUZO'S ORIGINAL SCRIPT FOR THE FILM:
"It was a well-written script, but it was a ridiculous script. For one thing, here was this producer, a guy named Pierre Spengler, who was going to supervise making this film for the Salkinds, and he had a 550-page screenplay. Well, number one, I said, 'You can't shoot this screenplay because you'll be shooting for five years.' And he said, 'Oh, no. It's fine.' I said, 'That's totally asinine,' but that was literally a shooting script, and they planned to shoot all 550 pages. You know, 110 pages is plenty for a script, so even for two features that was too much.
"It was a parody to start with, in an odd sort of way, but they parodied a parody and kept compounding that felony all the way through until it became much like the BATMAN television series. They had things in it like Superman is looking for Lex Luthor; he flies down and taps a bald man on the shoulder. He turns around and it's Telly Savalas, who says, 'Who loves ya, baby?' I couldn't see going that way with it."
MORE CHALLENGES:
"When I agreed to do the film, I was concerned that Superman shouldn't get screwed up. I never realized what a 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. So 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."
"We had seen just about every actor imaginable from television to motion pictures to everything else. Nobody fit the costume. Nobody could fly. If you saw Bob Redford flying, it would be Bob Redford flying. There was no sense of reality. That was the key to it, the flying. You had to believe that a man could fly. I tested quite a few of the actors, but nothing worked. The producers even sent over their dentist. I swear to God that's true."
CASTING CHRISTOPHER REEVE:
"I met Christopher Reeve 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 color, and he had dressed in the burliest clothes he could find to make him look good. He just had this great look, and I gave him my glasses to wear, and he looked so much like the part it was unbelievable. Nobody wanted to go with him 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.
"I still have photos from his screen-test. He was this stringbag, this skinny, skinny kid in blue leotards with an 'S' cut into the front of it, sweat pouring out from his arms, and black shoe polish on his hair to give it a black look. But he swore to me he was an athlete and that he could put on weight and build up, so we hired him. We gave him a given amount of time, set him up with this Olympic body trainer and poured all kinds of protein into him, and one day he flew in to our office and was perfect."
HIS APPROACH
"I knew the Superman legend and grew up on it. I knew I didn't want to do what television had done to it. Every kid remembers the TV show. My biggest responsibility to the project, I felt, was somehow having to find some sort of objectivity in visualizing Superman, because everybody has seen him in their own way--either in the reality of a drawing or in the fantasy of their own mind. So I had this tremendous responsibility of trying to find some sort of middle road. Also of jumping the time lap from 1938 to 1978. That was the most difficult flight of them all: not just making him fly, but making him fly through that time warp to be accepted today.
"As we got into it, I saw it as three separate films. It was a trilogy in our eyes. One was Krypton, 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 just knew that was wrong. Then a very wondrous man, John Barry, who had also 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 it Kansas-Americana. When we got to Metropolis, we wanted to go back to the comic book."
FINAL THOUGHTS
"The thing that got to me on the film and that I wanted to do much more of--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 to help each other a little more, and that's the whole point of Superman. He's there to help us, and wouldn't we all like to be him for one goddamned minute? It's a mythology that reaches what is real today. Most mythology, as you know, is period in its being. He just seems to have gone along with time so very well.
"As for my personal feelings? I obviously have a tremendous affection for Superman and what he stands for in my life. I owe him everything."
Happy Birthday, Richard Donner. And thank you!
ON MARIO PUZO'S ORIGINAL SCRIPT FOR THE FILM:
"It was a well-written script, but it was a ridiculous script. For one thing, here was this producer, a guy named Pierre Spengler, who was going to supervise making this film for the Salkinds, and he had a 550-page screenplay. Well, number one, I said, 'You can't shoot this screenplay because you'll be shooting for five years.' And he said, 'Oh, no. It's fine.' I said, 'That's totally asinine,' but that was literally a shooting script, and they planned to shoot all 550 pages. You know, 110 pages is plenty for a script, so even for two features that was too much.
"It was a parody to start with, in an odd sort of way, but they parodied a parody and kept compounding that felony all the way through until it became much like the BATMAN television series. They had things in it like Superman is looking for Lex Luthor; he flies down and taps a bald man on the shoulder. He turns around and it's Telly Savalas, who says, 'Who loves ya, baby?' I couldn't see going that way with it."
MORE CHALLENGES:
"When I agreed to do the film, I was concerned that Superman shouldn't get screwed up. I never realized what a 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. So 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."
"We had seen just about every actor imaginable from television to motion pictures to everything else. Nobody fit the costume. Nobody could fly. If you saw Bob Redford flying, it would be Bob Redford flying. There was no sense of reality. That was the key to it, the flying. You had to believe that a man could fly. I tested quite a few of the actors, but nothing worked. The producers even sent over their dentist. I swear to God that's true."
CASTING CHRISTOPHER REEVE:
"I met Christopher Reeve 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 color, and he had dressed in the burliest clothes he could find to make him look good. He just had this great look, and I gave him my glasses to wear, and he looked so much like the part it was unbelievable. Nobody wanted to go with him 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.
"I still have photos from his screen-test. He was this stringbag, this skinny, skinny kid in blue leotards with an 'S' cut into the front of it, sweat pouring out from his arms, and black shoe polish on his hair to give it a black look. But he swore to me he was an athlete and that he could put on weight and build up, so we hired him. We gave him a given amount of time, set him up with this Olympic body trainer and poured all kinds of protein into him, and one day he flew in to our office and was perfect."
HIS APPROACH
"I knew the Superman legend and grew up on it. I knew I didn't want to do what television had done to it. Every kid remembers the TV show. My biggest responsibility to the project, I felt, was somehow having to find some sort of objectivity in visualizing Superman, because everybody has seen him in their own way--either in the reality of a drawing or in the fantasy of their own mind. So I had this tremendous responsibility of trying to find some sort of middle road. Also of jumping the time lap from 1938 to 1978. That was the most difficult flight of them all: not just making him fly, but making him fly through that time warp to be accepted today.
"As we got into it, I saw it as three separate films. It was a trilogy in our eyes. One was Krypton, 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 just knew that was wrong. Then a very wondrous man, John Barry, who had also 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 it Kansas-Americana. When we got to Metropolis, we wanted to go back to the comic book."
FINAL THOUGHTS
"The thing that got to me on the film and that I wanted to do much more of--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 to help each other a little more, and that's the whole point of Superman. He's there to help us, and wouldn't we all like to be him for one goddamned minute? It's a mythology that reaches what is real today. Most mythology, as you know, is period in its being. He just seems to have gone along with time so very well.
"As for my personal feelings? I obviously have a tremendous affection for Superman and what he stands for in my life. I owe him everything."
Happy Birthday, Richard Donner. And thank you!
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