It’s not a particularly pointed question, even from someone like David Letterman, who could certainly get pointed: “Has anything interesting come of that relationship?”
It was 1982, and the “Late Night” host was asking his guest, Christopher Reeve, in his first appearance on the show, about his relationship with Marlon Brando on the set of Richard Donner’s 1978 hit “Superman.” Reeve, shockingly, instead of just saying something like, “He’s a legend” and moving on, decided to give an honest answer.
“I must say,” he responded, in that mannered yet serious tone only Reeve could really pull off. “I don’t say this to be vicious: I don’t worship at the altar of Marlon Brando, because I feel that he’s copped out, in a certain way.” Reeve went on to explain: “He doesn’t care anymore.”
Letterman, stunned, stumbled over a few lines, then recovered to get a huge laugh, joking that Brando was dropped by the studio. Reeve wasn’t finished. Letterman offered up another pretty easy question, asking if it was exciting to work with Brando at all. “Not really. No,” Reeve said in a half-joking, half-serious tone.
Then he got very serious: “I had a wonderful time, but the man didn’t care. He took the $2 million and ran. … I just care so much, and it hurts when someone is phoning it in.” It’s a short clip, but one that encapsulates the charm of Christopher Reeve. He couldn’t help but be honest about his feelings. And it came from a place of loving what he did so much, that he couldn’t understand how anyone could take that for granted. To not care.
The filmmakers behind ”Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story” — Peter Ettedgui and Ian Bonhôte, whose film is being distributed by Warner Bros., but, importantly, was not produced by Warner Bros. (we’ll get into all that later) — were smart to include that moment of Reeve on Letterman. The reason so many people gravitated toward Reeve as Superman, then later, after his life-changing accident, was not just because he seemed like such a nice guy (which he certainly did) but because he was principled.
He had a point of view, and it was a just point of view.
“He’s honest,” Bonhôte told IndieWire during a recent interview about that moment on Letterman. “He was extremely intelligent, extremely analytical, extremely serious in everything. I think, right now, there’s a lot of false information and people throwing things out and saying certain things that are untrue. Making this film, we knew we would being light on an aspect of someone who doesn’t take his role un-seriously. Every time he walked on stage, or anytime he wheeled on stage after the accident, he took it really seriously. Everything was serious with him.”
“Christopher is this young, Method actor with this massive role no one else is taking seriously,” added Ettedgui. “He makes you believe not just a man can fly, but a man can have all these superpowers and can be two different people, despite the fact it’s just a pair of glasses going on and off. He treated it with real respect. I think he found a real moral purpose deep down in the part.”
Some real talk here: Due to the nature of the story being told in the film, that tragic accident, then the death of not just Christopher Reeve, but also his wife Dana Reeve’s illness and death at a young age, it’s an often sad and pretty emotional film to watch. (I counted at least five times I began to tear up.) Ettedgui and Bonhôte were smart not to make this a linear story. Instead, it bounces back and forth between events that happened before Reeve’s horseback-riding accident that would leave him paralyzed from the neck down, and then after.
“We laid it out, initially, in a very linear way,” Ettedgui said. “We had before the accident, then after the accident. But then what we realized was there were all these strange mirrors and counterpoints between the two stories.”
He continued, “What kind of movie are you going watch if you do it in a linear way? The first half is going to be all action, bright colors, and it’s going to be so uplifting. Then, the second half, you’re going to be watching somebody who can’t move a muscle … it’s too much. Visually, it’s, perhaps also, very difficult for that to work. So, it became pretty obvious to us, quite early on, that we needed to interweave between narratives.”
The film is filled with contemporary interviews from people who knew Reeve best, most notably his three children: Matthew, Alexandra, and Will. (Will, who is Christopher and Dana Reeve’s only child, has some particularly heart-wrenching moments.) And the film is also partially narrated by Christopher Reeve himself, using audio narration from his two books, ”Still Me” and ”Nothing Is Impossible.”
“We had the audio versions of those books available to us,” said Ettedgui. (It’s at this moment, Bonhôte is very quick to point out, that the voiceover inclusions of Reeve’s voice are absolutely not AI.) “Once we had that, it’s a delicate balance. You want to feel that it’s from his point of view. But you also, very much, want it to feel like it’s from the kids’ point of view and the other people that we interviewed.”
Bonhôte added of the interviews with Reeve’s children: “They were so willing to go places they haven’t shared with anyone. For us, it was a great privilege, but it was a great responsibility. Those questions are their life. This is their father we’re talking about. It’s their mother. It’s not easy for them.”
“Super/Man” also, surprisingly, serves as a great Robin Williams film. Reeve and Williams were roommates at Julliard and lifelong friends. In a new interview with Glenn Close in the film, she says she believes if Reeve were still around today, she truly thinks Williams would be, too.
For anyone under the impression ”Super/Man” is propaganda made by Warner Bros. ahead of its own upcoming ”Superman” reboot, this notion is false. Yes, Warner Bros. is distributing the film, but they bought the completed film out of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, just like any other distributor could have.
“I won’t lie to you,” said Bonhôte, “we were always worried about Warner Bros. Would they want this film to come out? We already knew that DC Films was [being re-]started, and they wanted to restart a new Superman. Would they see it as a competition?”
Ettedgui said, “When we started on it, we decided we wanted to make the film independently, because we had a very personal way [of] how we wanted to unfold the story. We must have pitched to about 15 potential financiers. And to our amazement, we couldn’t quite do it. So, we partnered up with Words + Pictures, a New York-based production company, and they financed the film, and we worked with them. They really allowed us to make the film we wanted to make.”
Bonhôte added, “It’s a decision as filmmakers, when do you bring the distribution in to integrate? If you do actually get the money ahead and you partner with a distributor or streamer, then there might be a certain editorial intention that works for them that might influence you. If you keep it in the hands of filmmakers, then you can actually really do a special film.”
Since Warner Bros. didn’t produce the film, how were Ettedgui and Bonhôte able to get so much footage from Richard Donner’s 1978 ”Superman,” including John Williams’ iconic score?
“We kind of thought Warner Bros. might be interested in it,” admitted Ettedgui, “but we were also worried. So we approached the studio as a licensor. Whether it be images of Superman, the iconography of Superman, the music of ’Superman.’ We felt we had to create all of this within our independent budget before we present the film at Sundance. And that also necessitated certain compromises, because the studio was unwilling to license too much of the music, for example.”
Speaking of the music, the iconic theme plays such a large role in the film. When watching a film based on Reeve’s life, it’s impossible not to get emotional when hearing it. Ettedgui explained that they used a little bit of musical wizardry to bridge the limited amount of original score they were able to use: “Our composer, Ilan Eshkeri — who did the most beautiful job on the film — he actually created these segues between original score and John Williams’ score. It’s almost like his score is in conversation with John Williams’ score the same way Christopher Reeve is in a conversation with Superman during the film.”
A “conversation” might be the best way to think of the film as a whole, as Bonhôte does not want their audience to view the film as a documentary. “We would love people to not think it’s a documentary. You’re going to go in and see a movie. This is a very immersive, emotional experience,” he said.
He’s right. This is a truly remarkable story about an actor who took on a role that could have easily been perceived as a joke and touched the hearts of millions of people through his iconic portrayal. Later, of course, Reeve became a galvanizing force for spinal cord research, something only he could do because he was Superman. And as DC gets ready to bring us a brand new Superman, it’s truly a great thing to take a look back at Reeve’s true north version of that character and the man he turned out to be.
“He was constantly trying to run away from it,” said Ettedgui. “And then in the second part of the story, he realizes he is cherished and beloved as Superman. And he can use that in his life to do what was really important to him. To galvanize science. To look for cures for spinal cord injuries. To be a voice for people with disability.”
Bonhôte added, “Before the accident, it’s not like his life was perfect. He had struggles with his partnership. He had a difficult upbringing as a child. He sometimes struggled with making the right decision, because he could have made ’American Gigolo’ and so many films, and he turned them down. Some of the films he did after ‘Superman’ were really, really good, but they didn’t explode like ’Superman.’ I truly believe it helped him post-accident. He wasn’t just ‘an actor,’ he was Superman.” (Speaking of those post-“Superman” films: If you haven’t seen ”Deathtrap” or ”Somewhere in Time,” you are missing two great Christopher Reeve performances.)
So why does ”Super/Man” seem to hit so many people so hard, right now, in this moment? Bonhôte has a clear answer: “What he did and what he achieved and what he stood for is extremely meaningful. And in a completely divided world, good people and good causes and good opinions and good visions are very, very much needed.”
Presented by Warner Bros. Pictures and Fathom Events, ”Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story” will be in select theaters on Saturday, September 21, followed by an encore presentation on Reeve’s Birthday, Wednesday, September 25.
