Richard Donner put me on the path I'm on today and I'll be forever grateful

Richard Donner's SUPERMAN was the first movie I can remember falling in love with. It wasn't my introduction to Superman - Super Friends, SUPERMAN FROM THE 30s TO THE 70s, and a few stray comics had taken care of that - but it was my first experience with a living, breathing Superman who looked like he could have stepped right off the pages of the comics.

As a kid, I remember first knowing the film only in segments, as my bedtime meant I never saw the regular ABC broadcasts to completion. At first, the movie ended for me after Superman saved the helicopter. The next time, I saw all the way to just after Superman and Lois's flight together. The first time I saw the complete movie was around the time of my sixth birthday.

This seems impossible to fathom now, but my family didn't yet own a VCR. We had to rent one along with two movies that were selected to show at my party. My parents knew I wanted to see SUPERMAN but they also knew that another movie was likely to go over bigger with my friends. They agreed to let me put it to a vote - my film versus the other one.

STAR WARS won. And so it was with some slight bitterness that I experienced my first viewing of another film that would eventually become an obsession of my childhood.

Of course I finally saw SUPERMAN in full, and soon after that my family got their own VCR and I rented all of the SUPERMAN films obsessively. For some people of my generation, STAR WARS is the movie that made them want to be storytellers. For me, it was always SUPERMAN. 

I began to learn what visual and special effects were by studying that film and the making of it. Donner's dedication to "verisimilitude" opened my eyes to WHY certain stories work. Around the same time I discovered reruns of the old BATMAN series, which could not have taken a more different approach to how it adapted a beloved comic book character. Where that show played up how absurd Batman and his villains were within their world, Donner's movie was reverent. It somehow gave us a Superman who was true to his comic depiction and set him in an approximation of the real world.

Richard Donner showed us that you could make a good, optimistic Superman without compromising the character or the world he was set in. The post-Watergate era was a cynical one, and Donner ran right at that. He showed us that while the world was becoming more jaded, Superman's continued purity in the face of that made him an even more aspirational hero than ever.

That's one of those great things you learn about writing Superman. You don't "update" him so much as you change the world around him and much of your conflict comes out of his reaction to that. For instance, KINGDOM COME is a wonderful story about how the world seems to pass Superman's values behind and then when he returns, it's more apparent than ever that his brand of heroism is necessary.

Donner's Superman is the North Star for many Superman writers across multiple generations. Obviously, a lot of that comes from Christopher Reeve's iconic performance, which I paid tribute to long ago here. And much of the power of that film's script comes from Donner's brilliant collaborator, Tom Mankiewicz, honored here. But it was Dick Donner who was the conductor of it all, the steward of that vision. The theatrical cut of SUPERMAN II (a patchwork of production by Donner and his replacement Richard Lester) and especially SUPERMAN III make it clear how much was lost when Donner's voice was out of the conversation.

Without Richard Donner’s SUPERMAN, there would be no modern superhero films as we know them. Every successful superhero franchise since has built on his work. It was the CITIZEN KANE of comic book adaptations. He was as much a legend as the character he curated.

Earlier this year I showed my five year old son Donner’s SUPERMAN. I was worried that after SPIDER-VERSE and LEGO BATMAN he’d find it slow and boring. He was enthralled the entire time, barely even asking questions (usually the more questions, the less interested he is.) 43 years after release, it hasn't lost its magic.

Something I had suspected but didn't realize until yesterday was that Donner's SUPERMAN is the most commercially successful film adaptation of the character. Per this THR article, in 2016 dollars, the film made $1.09 billion. That makes it not only the most successful film to feature Superman, but more successful than any DCEU film except for AQUAMAN. That's rarified air up there with the last two Nolan Batman films.

Richard Donner’s Superman obviously was massively influential on SUPERMAN & LOIS and an inspiration to those who make it. Our Superman is drawn from a lot of eras, but I think it's fair to say that our Superman compass very often points to Donner's vision.

Dick Donner made me a Superman fan, a filmmaker and a storyteller. He's as much responsible for where I am today as anyone. And that's why it was especially sad to get the news the same week I'm about to walk into the SUPERMAN & LOIS room as a full Staff Writer.

Yes, I'm burying the lede. I almost made that announcement its own post, but it seemed fitting to say that here. You can draw a straight line from Richard Donner's work to where I am today, the path I've been on most of my life, and it is so bittersweet to have this personal achievement in tandem with his passing.

91 years is a long time to be on this planet, but that doesn't make it any less sad to lose him. I'm sorry I never got the chance to meet him and my condolences to everyone who was blessed enough to know him and love him in life.

Tuesday Talkback - Most obvious studio tinkering

I can still remember the first time I was abundantly aware that a feature film must have been released with an ending other than the one the shooting draft was commissioned with. The offender in question was Conspiracy Theory, a 1997 release starring Mel Gibson as a taxi driver who's obsessed with conspiracy theories. His other fixation - a State Department official played by Julia Roberts. He tries to convince her that NASA is going to pull off a presidential assassination by causing an earthquake.

Well, some government baddies led by Patrick Stewart come after Gibson's character, and Gibson and Roberts are led to believe that it's in response to the conspiracy theories presented in Gibson's latest newsletter. When they check the subscription list, everyone but one subscriber has been killed. This leads to a lot of running and chasing, and I admit I don't remember the rest of the film that well.

What I do remember is that the movie was striving for a dark and almost ambiguous tone that it never quite hit. Even at the time, I mostly blamed Gibson, thinking that someone a little off-kilter and unbalanced would have been better. I'd seen Steve Buschemi play such a character in a relatively recent episode of Homicide and figured he'd have been a better fit for the film's attempted weirdness. Gibson's performance is less Cohen Brothers-quirky and more "USA Original Series - Characters welcome" quirky.

Anyway, I've drifted from my point, which is that near the end of the film, Gibson's character is shot and seems to bleed to death right in front of Roberts and medics rush to his aide. Later, we see Roberts visit Jerry's grave... and then she walks away and the film cuts to Gibson and two agents in a van, watching her. There's some hamfisted dialogue about how she has to think he's dead and he's going to help them bring down the remaining players in the conspriacy. There's even a silly feel-good moment involving the three men singing along to a Frankie Valli song featured earlier in the film. This is followed by a coda where Roberts' character finds an object that belongs to Gibson on her horse's saddle.

So everyone's happy - Gibson's alive, Roberts knows he's alive, and we go out on a high note.

I remember walking out of that film thinking "Bullshit! He should have died!" What's more, it really felt like the movie was intended to end with that beat of her at his grave. The two reveals of "Gibson lives" and "She knows" seemed tacked on for an audience that wanted to walk out with a "Happy ending."

It completely ruined the film for me, and to this day I haven't watched it again (hence the hazily-recalled recap above.) Several years later I saw a Richard Donner interview that referenced the reshot ending and had my suspicions confirmed.

This ever happen to you?

Tom Mankiewicz (1942-2010)

For whatever reason, August seems to be the month I end up doing a lot of obituaries on this blog. It was just about a year ago that we lost John Hughes and Blake Snyder. Then, last weekend screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz left us at the age of 68. As I told Twitter, Mankiewicz was the screenwriter who worked most closely with Richard Donner on Superman (and the portions of Superman II that Donner shot during the original phase of production.) Superman just happens to be one of my favorite films and the movie that made me want to be a filmmaker, so this was a sad lost for me and many other Superman fans.

There have been a number of other eulogies for "Mank" over the past few days so you want an overview of his career, go here.

Instead, I'd rather use his life to pass on some knowledge. Mank was brought onto Superman to rewrite a script that began life as a 300-page behemoth penned by Mario Puzo. Even allowing for the fact that this was intended to be two movies, that was an extremely long script. This in turn was rewritten by Robert Benton and David & Leslie Newman. Their efforts reportedly caused the script to swell to a full 500 pages, at least according to one Donner interview.

When Donner was brought on board he appealed to his old friend to make the script more manageable, not only in length but to remove a great deal of silly, campy humor that didn't fit Donner's vision. In interviews, Mank would often recount the story of being awakened by an early morning phone call from Dick Donner, who refused to take no for an answer. When Tom finally gave in and came over to Donner's house, he found the director running across the lawn wearing a Superman costume that had been sent to him with the script.

Superman was not an easy production by any account. Indeed, the behind the scenes clashes are somewhat legendary, as Donner and the producers rarely saw eye-to-eye during the long shoot. After all, they weren't just shooting Superman, but were also in simultaneous production on the sequel. In fact, Donner had shot 75% of the shooting script for Superman II before they decided to concentrate entirely on finishing the first feature. (The released Superman II only featured about 30% Donner footage, as much was rewritten and reshot under the guidance of director Richard Lester.)

If there's one thing that comes across in the many behind the scenes DVD featureettes, commentaries and "making of" books besides the chaotic nature of the production, it's the great friendship that existed between Donner and Mankiewicz. The two men quickly settled on their approach to the material, which ran counter to the vision reflected in the earlier scripts.

Donner explained, "Both (Tom) and I decided that we would treat the picture as reality ... 'larger than life,' but still reality. This was in perfect keeping with the producers' viewpoint. The key to the whole concept of the film is verisimilitude. We've treated it as truth. And the minute you are unfaithful to the truth ... to the dignity of the legend ... the minute you screw around with it or make fun of it or parody and make it into a spoof, then you destroy its innocence and honesty." (http://supermancinema.co.uk/superman1/general/scripts/evolution_of_a_screenplay/s1evol4.htm)
Mankiewicz was Donner's right-hand during production, pretty much acting as a defacto producer. Donner regularly clashed with producers Alexander and Ilya Salkand and their hatchet man, producer Pierre Spangler. Before long, the Salkind camp wasn't speaking to the Donner camp.

Every great filmmaker seems to face a baptism of fire, often during a difficult film that becomes their calling card. Think of Stephen Spielberg on Jaws, or George Lucas on Star Wars. Great films resulted, but not easily, as those films ran over schedule and over budget. Superman was similarly troubled, perhaps more so because the director was dealing with producers who didn't have his back.

Any interview with Tom and Dick can't help but offer a glimpse at the great friendship that must have existed between the two men. On the commentary, they almost sound like two old war buddies who were in a foxhole together and couldn't depend on anyone but each other. "Old war stories" about sums up the content of their two Superman commentaries, recounting anecdotes such as the time their driver said that even he wouldn't have trusted them with $25 million to make a movie.

Without Tom Mankiewicz at his side, who knows if Donner would have had the endurance or the support to keep up the fight for his vision for so long. And who knows what might have resulted if he'd been forced to work with a writer who had a less harmonious interpretation of Donner's vision?

I don't want to take anything away from Richard Donner - as he was the man who truly defined Superman for the silver screen. Without that film, there might not have been any other comic book films. Indeed, even Christopher Nolan cited Donner's Superman as an influence on Batman Begins. At the same time, we can't forget that every general relies on his sergeants to follow through for him, a great director needs to be backed by a good screenwriter and (one hopes) good producers.

So remember this as you try to build your careers in the entertainment industry - you can't do it alone. The auteur theory only works when the auteur in question has backup to help him follow-through. I've never seen a director who's truly a one-man band, have you?

I've been lucky enough to work with some great people on my own projects. I know how much easier it is when you've got a team full of people who can manage their department and give their all to bringing the director's vision to life. It also helps to have the emotional support of friends throughout production. In Tom Mankiewicz, Richard Donner had both.

It's fortunate that before died, Mankiewicz participated in the restoration of Richard Donner's cut of Superman II. He gave creative input to the filmmakers on that project and at last got to see many scenes he wrote for the sequel (including some crucial moments with Marlon Brando as Jor-El) released in this alternate cut.

Farewell Mank. You will be missed and millions of Superman fans mourn your loss.