I said, “Jesus Christ, Donner, it's five in the morning.”
“I know. I'm doing Superman, and so are you.”
“No, no, no. I'm not doing Superman. What is it, the Superman comics?”
“Absolutely, and you're going to do it, and there's a lady on her way to your house right now with the scripts. Superman and Superman II. It's two scripts. Two movies. And you're too nice a guy. I told her you'll come down and open the door.”
I said, “Oh, shit.”
The doorbell rang. I hung up on Dick and went downstairs. Here was this nice lady. The two scripts, which anyone can see in the “Making of Superman” featurette on the DVD, were between five hundred and six hundred pages long. I just looked at them and put them down on the hall table. I went upstairs and the phone rang again. It was Dick. “Are you reading?”
I said, “No, they're too heavy to get upstairs, Dick.”
He said, “I'll be back home tomorrow. Read them.”
I read them and they were very campy, although there was some wonderful stuff too. Mario Puzo had written a first draft. He was not a good screenwriter. But then the producers got Robert Benton and David Newman with Mrs. Leslie Newman. They're very smart writers. Benton is a wonderful writer. But the script went on forever. No comic-book character had ever been out on the screen successfully in the history of movies. And here I was rewriting again. I was taking somebody else's script.
When Dick got back, I called him and I said, “Look, I'd love to work with you, we're friends, but this is not the—”
He said, “Come over to my house,” which was very close. “Come over.”
I went over, rang the doorbell, and there was no answer. I went around the side of the house. I knew his house very well. There was Dick, standing in his garden, looking out at a view of Los Angeles, dressed in a Superman suit that they'd given him. He turned around and looked at me. I couldn't believe it. He said, “Just try the suit on and you'll do it.” He started running at me, the cape was billowing out, and I was laughing. Dick has got that infectious enthusiasm. He said, “If we can get the love story right, it'll work.” It was not stunts or flying, it was if we can get Lois and Clark and Superman right, and make them real, we'll really have a picture.
We had to work for the Salkinds. Alexander Salkind was the old man, and his son, Ilya, was the nominal producer, along with a kind of a hit man they had, named Pierre Spengler. The Salkinds weren't really producers; they were promoters. They had the idea to do Superman. Warners thought it was a lousy idea and let them have it for a negative pickup, which means, you go make the movie and we'll distribute it. As promoters, the Salkinds asked, “Who is the most famous writer in the world?” It was Mario Puzo at the time, because of The Godfather. They got him, and they went out and got Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman to commit by paying them a lot of money: Brando was guaranteed $3 million, Hackman was guaranteed $2 million. This was 1977. At the Cannes Film Festival, they had helicopters with banners saying, “Superman, Puzo, Brando, Hackman.” I got to know Hackman fairly well during Superman. We talked about it one night. He said, “You know, I came from New York from the stage. I don't know how I ever became a leading man. I was just going to be a supporting actor for my whole life, and I was happy as a clam.” But then, two films were released: The French Connection, where he isn't playing a romantic lead, but he was the lead and he was fuckin' great; and The Poseidon Adventure, where again, he was the lead but he wasn't a romantic lead. All of a sudden, he was a movie star.
Gene was delighted with the pages I was writing. Benton and Newman wrote some good stuff for him, but some of it was silly—not that Lex Luthor's part isn't silly. Gene had a mustache when Dick met him in L.A. Dick said, “You've got to lose the mustache, Gene.”
Gene said, “I don't want to lose the mustache. I love the mustache.”
Dick said, “Yeah, but here's the whole thing about Lex Luthor: he doesn't have any hair.”
Gene said, “You're just going to have to live with that,” and Dick said okay.
So the first day of makeup tests, Dick walked in wearing a mustache. It was the first time Gene had seen him in London. Dick said, “If you can't lick ‘em, join ‘em.”
Gene said, “You look great with that mustache.”
Dick said, “I'll tell you what, Gene; I'll shave mine if you shave yours.” Gene said okay. They put some lather on it and they shaved Gene's mustache, and Dick pulled his off. It was a fake mustache. Gene was fucking furious. Furious! And then he laughed because Dick really got him. He knew it was best for the part.
The picture started with Guy Hamilton as the director. They figured they'd get a Bond director. Guy would have been disastrous casting for Superman because he was a cynic. That's what made him so wonderful for Bond. He was also rather snobby; exactly wrong for Superman. But this is what I mean about the Salkinds being promoters as opposed to producers. They had no idea how to cast a director for it. They were going to shoot the picture in Italy, but all of a sudden the lira got more expensive and the pound was collapsing, so they decided to move to England. They figured they were going to save millions. They said to Guy Hamilton, “You'll be very happy, Guy; we're shooting this movie in England now, so you can be home.”
Guy said, “I'm sorry, but I'm a tax exile from England. I'm only allowed ninety days a year in the United Kingdom.” He was officially a citizen of Malta.
They said, “Okay, good-bye.” So Guy was paid off.
The reason they went to Donner was that The Omen was a smash, and it was opening in Europe and he was right there. When Dick came on, they'd already spent $5 or $6 million. I don't think the Salkinds ever raised more than $16 million, and they were going to do two movies, plus pay Dick and me a lot of money. It is the only film I've ever worked on or ever heard of where the director was never shown a budget or a schedule. They couldn't show him a budget because they couldn't tell him how much money they actually didn't have. There was a sequence from Superman II where the three super villains come through the ceiling of the White House to take over and there's a gun battle with marines. That was scheduled for a day and a half. Dick said, “Are you crazy? If they come through the ceiling of the White House wrong, that's going to be a whole day to put that back. You can't shoot this in a day and a half. I'll tell you what: Why don't you schedule the rest of the film for four days, and I'll be nine months over? It doesn't really matter. This is all fucking fiction.” The Salkinds had no idea how to make a movie. They'd been very lucky with Three and Four Musketeers because Dick Lester, the director, did know how to make a movie.
Donner liked to smoke marijuana. It was all very careful. The house he had on Floor Street—and I eventually moved into that house—was next door to Margaret Thatcher. She was the head of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition at the time, as the Labor Party was in power. She had cops in front of her house. We were asked over to a big Tory party at Mrs. Thatcher's. We went and met her.
It was the seventies, and people weren't drinking, they were smoking grass. One night we were out with John Standing, an actor friend of mine who was in The Eagle Has Landed. Dick rented the house that we were in from John's ex-wife. At the end of the evening, John gave us each a Thai stick as a gift. I was never a big drug taker, I was a big drinker. The next morning, Dick and I are up at six thirty. We're taking a flight to Zurich so we can have breakfast with Salkind, who didn't fly. We're at Heathrow, Dick's going through the metal detectors, and I'm waiting to put my briefcase on the conveyor belt. I open it up, and there's the Thai stick, right on top. And I know Stacy Keach is doing two years in prison. I snap the briefcase down and start coughing. I'm playing like I'm not feeling well. I open the briefcase, snatch the Thai stick, and stuff it in my sock; I don't know what to do. Dick is saying, “What's going on? Will you come on, we're going to miss the plane.”
I go through security and say to Dick, “There's a Thai stick in my sock,” as we're getting on the plane.
Dick says, “Oh, Jesus.
Switzerland is worse than England. It's in your sock?”
I said, “Yeah.” And I did one of the shittiest things I've ever done in my life. We were in first class. It was a small first class, eight seats. Across the aisle from me was a little old guy in his seventies. At one point during the flight, he got up to take a leak and I took the Thai stick and jammed it in the back of his seat. He looked like such an honorable man. I thought, when they're cleaning the plane, if they do find it, they'll blame it on this guy. So maybe he gets arrested, but he looks like an honorable guy, so I'm sure he can get out of it, whereas I look like an absolute asshole in my thirties.
I told Dick, “I jammed it in his seat.” I hated that.
He said, “Oh, you prick.”
I said, “What am I supposed to do, try and get through Swiss customs?”
Alexander Salkind lived in the Grand Dolder Hotel in Zurich. He looked like a little gnome. He was about four foot eleven with flowing white hair. I used to call him Margaret Rutherford. He was married to this Mexican woman named Bertha. Bertha was nuts. She told Dick and me at the beginning, “You know, my son, Ilya, is a god.”
We didn't like Ilya too much. I said, “A god, Mrs. Salkind, really?”
She said, “Yes, he was the product of my first lovemaking. And in Mexico, we believe that the product of your first lovemaking is a god.”
Dick said, “Well, tell God to watch out or he's going to get kicked in the nuts on this picture.”
We started from scratch. Dick threw out everything that Guy had. He signed a new production designer, a genius named John Barry. Not the composer. He designed Star Wars. Obviously, Brando and Hackman were going to stay. And we set about trying to start this movie. We wanted Miss Teschmacher, Lex Luthor's girlfriend, to be Goldie Hawn. But Goldie was a big star, and she said, “I want two million dollars just like Gene. I'm as big a star as Gene Hackman.”
The Salkinds didn't have the $2 million. Goldie Hawn would have been so wonderful as the loopy Miss Teschmacher. The Salkinds said, “She's too expensive.” So Dick and I went to see Ann-Margret, who was our second choice. She was delightful and terrific, and we thought, okay, she's going to be great. And Ann-Margret only wanted $1 million for the two movies. So that's half the price. We were having preproduction meetings at the Grand Dolder Hotel. Pierre Spengler came into the bar where we're sitting and said, “I just got off the phone. Congratulations, we just signed Ann-Margret for Miss Teschmacher.”
Dick and I said, “Thank you, Alex,” to the old man.
He said, “You see, Mr. Donner, what you make me do? The things you make me pay for?”
So we were having a drink and talking about other elements of the movie. Suddenly, Pierre came back in and said, “We've just signed Valerie Perrine for Miss Teschmacher.”
I said, “Excuse me? We just signed Ann-Margret.”
He said, “Yes, but Valerie Perrine is brilliant.” And she was. Wonderful actress. Spengler said, “And, she's willing to do it for five hundred thousand for the two pictures.”
I said, “But I thought you just closed with Ann-Margret.”
And the old man said, “She can sue.” I thought, boy, these are the people we're doing business with.
Then we had to go up and see Brando. This was one of the most memorable meetings we'd ever had. It was in Los Angeles in the late summer, but it was one of those weeks where it was a hundred degrees. Dick had a little Porsche with no air conditioning. The top was down. We got up to Mulholland Drive to Brando's house. He shared a driveway with Jack Nicholson. There was a gate, and we got onto the motor court. The front door opened, and all of a sudden, four Dobermans and Rottweilers ran out. We were pulling up the top on the car, and they're “Arr, arr.” In the doorway appeared Marlon Brando in a caftan. He clapped his hands and the dogs came running to him. I said, “Dick, I think there's a power imbalance going on here.”
I hadn't seen Marlon since I was a little kid and he'd done two films for my father: Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Guys and Dolls. We had called Marlon's best friend, Jay Cantor, who had been an executive with Universal, MCA. He'd been Marlon's agent, and was really close to Dick. I knew him well too. We had said, “Tell us about Marlon.” Cantor said, “On every picture, Marlon's either at your feet or at your balls. So just be yourself, because if he senses fear…”
So Marlon was sitting there. We all had coffee or a drink. He said, “You know, I've been thinking. We're up there on Krypton. Maybe we don't look like people.” Dick and I sneaked a glance at each other. He said, “Maybe we look like bagels or green suitcases.” Oh, God. We just signed Marlon Brando for $3 million and he's a green suitcase. He said, “And maybe we don't speak.” To say this to a writer. He said, “Maybe we just make electronic sounds, and there are subtitles on the bottom of the screen.” We were sitting there dying. He said, “They're paying me a lot of money, and my kids really want me to do this. They want me to be Jor-El. It's funny, because when you tell a kid a story—they all know the story of Superman. You tell a kid a story, and you say the fox was behind the wall, and then he went and hid behind the tree. The next night, the kid says, ‘Tell me the story about the fox, Daddy.' Well, the fox is behind the tree. The kid says, ‘No, no, Daddy, the fox is behind the wall. Then he went behind the tree.' Kids remember everything.”
Dick suddenly burst in and said, “That's why you can't look like a green suitcase and you can't make electronic sounds, because everybody knows Jor-El was on Krypton.”
Marlon started to roar with laughter. He had been testing us. He just wanted to see who he was working with. He wanted to see if we were two assholes saying, “Yes, that's very interesting. Electronic sounds, hmm, and what would they sound like, Marlon?” He wanted to see if we were that kind of guy or the other kind of guy. He laughed so hard when Dick yelled at him because it had all been a huge put-on.
Dick and I were coming back from the studio one night—this was still in prep. We knew we were dealing with the Salkinds. We didn't know how much money they had or didn't have. We didn't have a Superman at that time. We didn't have Lois Lane. We had a start date with Brando and Hackman. We thought both films would cost $30 million, and this is back in the seventies. Dick had a driver named Brian. I'd had a few Jack Daniel's. Dick had had a couple of joints. We were driving in silence in the car. Dick said to me, “Penny for your thoughts.”
I said, “I'm thinking we could be presiding over the greatest financial disaster in the history of film. That's what I'm thinking.” And we just went on in silence.
The car dropped Dick off at his place, which I later moved into. Brian dropped me off at the Connaught Hotel, and as I got out of the car, I asked him, “Brian, would you give the two guys who were just in the back of your car thirty-five million dollars to do two movies?”
He said, “No, sir, I wouldn't.”
I said, “Thank you, Brian.” I went upstairs, called Dick, and said, “Even Brian wouldn't give us the money. We're in a lot of trouble.”
So now we're casting in New York. Dick had seen Chris Reeve. He had a small part in a play with Katharine Hepburn called A Matter of Gravity. We couldn't find anybody to play Superman. We found either wonderful actors who didn't look remotely like Superman, or really great-looking guys who just couldn't act. We got so desperate at one point that Skye Aubrey, who was married to Ilya Salkind at the time, said, “You know who could do this and who is so handsome and great? My dentist in Beverly Hills.” To make a long story short, we flew the dentist over to London. We had him work with Jeff Corey, a well-known acting coach, for a week, and we tested him. And you know what? He wasn't bad. He wasn't very good, but he wasn't bad. Dick and I were watching the screen test the next morning in the screening room at Pinewood, and I said, “You know, the guy's not all that bad.”
Dick said, “You want to put thirty-five million bucks behind this dentist?”
I said, “No.”
And he said, “Okay.”
We tested some of the most be
autiful women for Lois Lane: Anne Archer, Deborah Raffin. We approached Jessica Lange, but she didn't test. Candy Bergen came to London to meet with us. She wasn't going to test either. Susie Blakely, who was a big TV star, tested. Lesley Ann Warren tested. Anne Archer and Deborah Raffin were so beautiful. Of those two tests, Dick said, “As the mother of my children, yes. As Lois Lane, no.”
It got down to a tie between Margot Kidder and Stockard Channing. They had a sense of comedy about them. I had written the scene where Superman lands on Lois's balcony. They sit down and she interviews him. That was one of the test scenes. In the Benton and Newman version, it was about two pages long, and I turned it into eight pages. It really became a scene of courtship. It was a wonderful test scene to have, and it was in the picture. Both Margot and Stockard just nailed that part so well. The reason we hired Margot was that she paired better with Chris Reeve when we found him. He was so young looking, and there was a kind of goofy quality to Margot, whereas Stockard looked like she could have had Chris for lunch. The ideal Lois Lane would have been a young Natalie Wood. She would have been great, but she was too old at the time for Chris.
We had now tested the dentist, and Jon Voight was in the wings if we couldn't find anybody. He was willing to play Superman for another $2 million. But Dick and I were determined, very much like Cubby with Bond saying, “I don't want to have a Mel Gibson movie, I want to have a James Bond movie.” Dick and I agreed with him 100 percent. Superman was going to be Superman. It wasn't going to be Burt Reynolds in the Superman suit. He was going to come on the screen as Superman. We had Brando, we had Hackman. So there would be enough for a big marquis. Chris Reeve was, I don't know, seventeenth on the list. It had been a while since Dick had seen him. He said, “Today's your lucky day. You're coming over to test for Superman.”
My Life as a Mankiewicz Page 26