Filmmaker Donner celebrated for kindness

Richard Donner may have created the modern superhero movie with 1978’s “Superman” and revitalized the buddy comedy with “Lethal Weapon,” but his colleagues say his big-hearted kindness is what truly sets him apart.

Actor Corey Feldman said Donner paid for his rehab years after they worked together on “The Goonies.” Another “Goonies” star revealed Donner covered his college tuition. Other entertainers, including Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Rene Russo and Carol Kane, lauded the filmmaker’s magnanimity at a film academy tribute this week to the 87-year-old Donner.

Kane, who starred with Bill Murray in 1988’s “Scrooged,” called Donner “a creative guidance counsellor in the most nourishing way.”

“You were charming and funny and witty and all these amazing (things), but the thing that killed me is you were kind,” Russo told the director. “You were so kind, and that’s what makes you the sexiest man in the world.”

The filmmaker’s wife and collaborator, Lauren Shuler Donner, also referred to him as “the sexiest man alive.” She said his personality shows in his movies, describing her husband as “fun, larger than life, loud, strong, with a big mushy heart.”

She said they met while making 1985’s “Ladyhawke,” when she was an aspiring producer fresh off a divorce.

“I was 33. I was trying to get respect and didn’t want to be sleeping with the director,” she said, adding that they’ve now been together for 34 years.

Warm personal anecdotes dominated the nearly 2 1/2-hour program at the film academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater, punctuated by clips from “The Goonies,” “Scrooged,” “The Omen,” “Radio Flyer” and, of course, “Superman.”

Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige and DC Entertainment president Geoff Johns, the two men responsible for the last decade of superhero blockbusters, both worked for Donner when they were starting out in Hollywood.

Video tributes came from Jodie Foster and Martha Plimpton, who introduced herself as “Plimpy.” She was among many actors who said Donner had changed her life. Gibson and Glover said the same.