HOW SUPERMAN NEARLY CRASHED DOWN TO EARTH
Despite endless production calamities, the film soared to great heights
It's now considered a classic, but the 1978 Superman film, directed by Richard Donner, who died July 5 at the age of 91, was one of the most fraught productions in Hollywood history. It could be ranked alongside Titanic, Jaws and Gone with the Wind as a test-case triumph over the received wisdom that “troubled productions” tend to sink at the box office.
Donner was a proven commercial entity when he was given the project, having just had success with the first Omen (1976). So it was that the producers — Ilya Salkind, his father Alexander and their partner Pierre Spengler — handed him a 550-page monster of a script by Godfather writer Mario Puzo, and assigned him the job of directing not only Superman, but Superman II, meant to be filmed at the same time.
Donner insisted on going back to the drawing board, bringing in a fresh writer, Tom Mankiewicz. “Not one word of the Puzo script was used,” claimed Mankiewicz, but the Writers Guild of America refused to allow him a credit for the rewrites.
In the end, the opening credits proclaimed “Story by” Puzo and the “Screenplay by” four people: Puzo; the husband-and-wife writing team of David and Leslie Newman; and Robert Benton, and credited Mankiewicz simply as a “creative consultant.” Nevertheless, Puzo sued the Salkinds for a greater share of the profits; Ilya was served with the lawsuit
as he walked into the Superman première.
Before Christopher Reeve was hired, Robert Redford and Burt Reynolds were both in the frame, and Sylvester Stallone was certainly interested, as was Arnold Schwarzenegger. Paul Newman was offered his choice of Superman, Superman's father Jor-el or villain Lex Luthor at $4 million a pop, but turned down all three parts. Even James Caan, Christopher Walken, Nick Nolte and Jon Voight were considered. But casting director Lynn Stalmaster kept coaxing them to look at Reeve. Then 25 years old, Reeve, despite the large sweat patches emanating from his costumed armpits, aced his screen tests and prevailed. (Padding and industrial-strength
deodorant would take care of the sweat.) Millions were lost on testing different ways to make Superman fly before a frame was shot; Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor wardrobe and wigs alone cost $52,000 a day; and the production had to endure outright mockery from top-billed Marlon Brando, who played Jor-el. Brando's total takings amounted to some $19 million, but this didn't stop him proposing to the Salkinds that Jor-el ought to be depicted as either a bagel or “a green suitcase” with his voice coming out of it, to spare him the bother of turning up.
Brando agreed to 12 days of shooting, but had his dialogue laid out on cue cards and placed sometimes on his co-stars' forehead, so he didn't have to learn it.
Somewhere along the line, panic struck. The budget and schedule became so stretched the producers decided to forget about Superman II, and asked Donner to finish the first one. Donner protested he'd shot as much as 80 per cent of the sequel. It's a miracle the movie was as successful as it was, not to mention as good. Thanks particularly to the fizzing chemistry between Reeve and Margot Kidder, who played Lois Lane, the ingenious designs on Krypton, and John Williams's rambunctiously mythic score, it remains a delight. The gamble to postpone completion of Superman II allowed anticipation to reach fever pitch.
But Donner refused to have anything to do with it if Spengler was still going to be attached as producer. The conflict between Donner and his producers survives visibly if you buy the DVD of Superman II, which includes a “Richard Donner cut” that's radically different from the “official” Richard Lester one, (who was hired to direct all new material as required).
Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap logistically nightmarish production obstacles in a single bound, the Man of Steel survives to this day, most recently in Zack Snyder's Justice League. Snyder's grave-voiced seriousness sucks the joy out of the Superman brand, but the Man of Steel has overcome worse threats to his existence.
His continued immortality feels assured.