BEFORE: Monday night I worked at a screening of a new PBS doc titled "Caregiving", which will be airing in a few days. The crowd consisted of a group of people who work as caregivers, you know, give them a sneak peek because they may be too busy to watch the show when it airs. That seemed like a very good introduction to tonight's documentary at home, which is partially about Christopher Reeve being cared for by his wife, Dana, for years after his horse riding accident. It's always nice when my work life kind of lines up with my personal movie-viewing.
A number of actors carry over from "Faye" via archive footage, but let's just point out Gene Hackman, who was in "Bonnie & Clyde" in addition to playing Lex Luthor in the first "Superman" movie. Hackman, of course, passed away a few months ago, they think on February 18, but part of the problem was that his wife died unexpectedly, and she was his caregiver. So they think he died a few days later, possibly without understanding why he hadn't seen his wife in a while. And so it goes, I guess.
THE PLOT: Reeve's rise to becoming a film star is followed by a near-fatal horse-riding accident in 1995 that left him paralyzed from the neck down. After the accident, he became an activist for spinal cord injury treatments and disability rights.
AFTER: Well, DC Comics is already calling this the "Summer of Superman", they're selling extra issues of Superman comics because of the upcoming reboot movie, which is due in theaters on July 11. I'm going to be deep into the Doc Block by then, so I fear that I'm going to miss out on "Superman" and "Fantastic Four: First Steps" this year and I'm just going to have to catch up with them later. Honestly, I was fine with Henry Cavill as Superman, hell I was fine with Tom Welling as Superman on "Smallville" and I don't quite see the need to start over with the origin story AGAIN every few years. At this point I think the DC Movie-verse may have re-booted itself more times than the comic books have, which is saying something. I went through the same damn thing with Spider-Man, just PLEASE don't make me watch another superhero origin story that I've seen four times already.
I always think back to 1983, when my favorite comic-book author/writer at the time, John Byrne, tackled Superman in a miniseries called "The Man of Steel", and he started, as most writers tend to do, on Krypton, with the doomed planet and the rocket launch and Jor-El and his wife trying to save their baby, who would be the ONLY survivor of their world, except of course for Supergirl and Krypto the Super-Dog and the Phantom Zone criminals and the bottled city of Kandor and Superman's second cousin twice removed and of course Beppo the Super-Monkey. (not kidding) But then a few months later, Byrne regretted starting the story we all know on Krypton, and thought that maybe he just should have started the story with a teenage Clark Kent, who didn't yet know he came from another planet, and then we'd find out his origin the same time that he did - it's a much more powerful way of organizing the story, using flashbacks and enabling the story to start in the exciting middle, rather than way back in the boring past.
This "Super/Man" doc kind of does something similar to a comic book "splash page", it starts in the middle of Christopher Reeve's life, with the news about his accident and subsequent paralysis. (Yes, that seems a bit exploitative, but sure, start in the exciting middle.). His wife and kids talk about not knowing at first whether he was going to live, and then came figuring out what kind of life he was going to have, and how was that all going to work. Fans wondered if he would ever act again, and people couldn't help but note the irony of seeing someone who played a powerful superhero suddenly reduced to the polar opposite of that, someone who could not move or speak, and we hoped that even if his body was broken, perhaps some piece of his spirit could still be there.
Then the movie goes back, again comic-book style, to show us the origin story of Christopher Reeve, born to a father who was a noted poet, and after he divorced Christopher's mother, they both managed to get re-married twice. Which meant Christopher had a bunch of half-sisters and half-brothers out there, though it perhaps was one big blended family, long before that was even fashionable. We learn how there was difficulty in casting what was essentially the first big-budget superhero movie, they'd considered everyone from Bruce Jenner to Arnold Schwarzenegger to Neil Diamond to play Superman, but then decided that since they already had signed Gene Hackman and Marlon Brando for the film and that was most of the budget spent already, maybe it was better to hire an unknown. Someone who fit the suit, tall and muscular, and would maybe resemble the character seen in the comic books. Being a classically trained actor was a bonus, but that's what they got in Reeve, someone who LOOKED like he could stop a locomotive, but also someone who could act next to Gene Hackman and be a corny goody-two-shoes as Superman, but also believable.
The film bounces back and forth between the two timelines, pre-accident and post-accident. It's not too hard to figure out the reason for this, if you told Reeve's story chronologically, the beginning part might seem unremarkable, the middle part where he played Superman FOUR times would be very exciting, and then the inability to play any other roles successfully, combined with the accident, would make that last third of the film very depressing, even bleak. Sure, we can find moments in Reeve's later life that matter, and finding joy in spending time with his (second) wife and children means that it wasn't all so bad, but overall, the story arc just might not be perceived as entertaining or uplifting, so yeah, the split timeline was probably the way to go. But hey, they do that all the time in comic books, too, they intercut between two storylines, or two timelines, to show the similarities between them, or the effect that the past has on the present or the present has on the future.
We understand, of course, that Superman is a fictional character, he (almost) always wins because he's got a moral code, he believes in "truth, justice and the American way" but I don't know if the American way has maybe changed over time, but the Superman comics don't really go for all that "America First" stuff any more, of course it's a different time, we're not fighting Nazis and Communists any more, and the enemy is often within our own borders. Marvel faces a similar problem with Captain America sometimes, like does he represent the U.S. policy, right or wrong, or is there some wiggle room there? DC did an alt-reality story once called "Red Son", in which Superman's rocket landed in the Soviet Union instead of the U.S., and what did that mean for the character, if you take the "American way" out of the equation, what does he stand for then?
I'm getting off track, because we're here to discuss Christopher Reeve, not Superman. After the accident Reeve still had the support of his wife, and friends such as Robin Williams, who he'd met when they both attended Juilliard at the same time. This was helpful knowledge when it came time for me to burn this documentary to DVD, which happened shortly after I got the new DVR that allowed me to record films from HBO for the first time. So naturally I paired this doc with "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind" as a double-feature, the two men appear in each other's docs, of course. They were maybe an odd pair, something like two sides of the same coin, by contrast the tall, hunky optimist and the short, manic pessimist, but I can kind of see how that friendship worked. They're both gone know, as that tends to happen - Glenn Close, a mutual friend, however posits that Robin Williams might still be here if Christopher Reeve hadn't died when he did. Who can say?
Reeve made an appearance at the Academy Awards in March of 1996, and received a standing ovation from all the Hollywood elite (many are listed below, even if the IMDB won't recognize their appearances in archive footage). Robin Williams and his wife had bought a large van, and Reeve traveled across the country to make his appearance at the Oscars - I doubt that took the six months that he said it did, but that doesn't really matter. Reeve and his wife created a foundation to advocate for stem cell research and push for legislation to help the disabled, and basicially spent the rest of his life trying to make social change on behalf of other paralyzed people. Perhaps the only real mistake was allowing that Super Bowl commercial that used CGI animation to show him walking in the future, and while his heart was in the right place, I remember that there were disability advocates who did not approve of that ad at all, feeling that it sent the wrong message about their condition.
The other time this film felt very exploitative was in interviewing all three children about the death of their father, and then the death of their mother/step-mother just two years later. Like, maybe there was a better way to do this than to make them all relive the worst moments of their lives? Just a thought. Anyway, we also get to see Reeve's first screen-tests as Superman (before the final casting of Lois Lane) and thanks to clips from his audiobooks, this doc is essentially narrated by Reeve himself, post mortem. I'm not sure why it took 18 years after Reeve's death to get this movie released, maybe documentaries just take a long time.
Some people talk about the "curse of Superman" because of what happened to Christopher Reeve, and George Reeves, who shot himself in 1959. Then of course there's Marlon Brando, Margot Kidder and Gene Hackman, who are now all deceased, too. But you have to realize that the life expectancy of everyone and everything over enough time is ZERO, like everyone who appeared in "Gone With the Wind" and "The Wizard of Oz" is dead too, but you never hear about any curses associated with those movies. Anyway, Dean Cain and Tom Welling and Brandon Routh and Henry Cavill and Tyler Hoechlin are all still alive and doing fine, so that's proof that any curse is just a load of hooey. So get yourself ready for the next "Superman" reboot because, well, here we go again.
Directed by Ian Bonhote & Peter Ettedgul (producer of "Kinky Boots")
Also starring Glenn Close (last seen in "Brothers"), Jeff Daniels (last seen in "Allegiant"), Brooke Ellison, Gae Exton, Alexandra Reeve Givens, Whoopi Goldberg (last seen in "Ezra"), Laurie Hawkins, Kevin Johnson, John Kerry (last seen in "The Report"), Steven Kirshblum, Michael Manganiello, Matthew Reeve, Will Reeve, Susan Sarandon (last seen in "Nonnas"), Pierre Spengler,
with archive footage of Christopher Reeve (last seen in "The Flash"), Dana Reeve (last heard in "Everyone's Hero"), Muhammad Ali (last seen in "Sly"), Bill Boggs (last seen in "Little Richard: I Am Everything"), Marlon Brando (last seen in "The Bikeriders"), Carol Burnett (last seen in "Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed"), George H.W. Bush (last seen in "The Special Relationship"), Al Gore (ditto), Nicolas Cage (last seen in "Army of Thieves"), Michael Caine (also carrying over from "Faye"), Jack Nicholson (ditto), Robert Redford (ditto), Dinah Shore (ditto), Sharon Stone (ditto), Jim Carrey (last seen in "Kevin Hart & Chris Rock: Headliners Only"), Johnny Carson (ditto), Jimmy Carter (last seen in "Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did for Love"), Barack Obama (ditto), Nancy Reagan (ditto), Lacey Chabert (last seen in "Daddy Day Care"), Bill Clinton (last seen in "Stan Lee"), Hillary Clinton (ditto), Jackie Cooper (last seen in "Superman IV: The Quest for Peace"), Katie Couric (last seen in "Dark Waters"), Tom Cruise (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One"), Laura Dern (last seen in "Citizen Ruth"), Neil Diamond (last seen in "The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart"), Richard Donner, Sarah Douglas (last seen in "Conan the Destroyer"), Harrison Ford (last seen in "Captain America: Brave New World"), Morgan Freeman (last seen in "57 Seconds"), Jeff Goldblum (last seen in "Deep Cover"), Mark Hamill (last heard in "The Wild Robot"), Tom Hanks (last seen in "Bros"), David Hartman (last seen in "Mike Wallace Is Here"), David Letterman (ditto), Goldie Hawn (last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), Anthony Hopkins (last seen in "The Son"), John Houseman (last seen in "The Fog"), Ron Howard (last seen in "Ira & Abby"), William Hurt (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Jay Leno (ditto), Meryl Streep (ditto), Caitlyn / Bruce Jenner (last seen in "Butterfly in the Sky"), Barbara Johnson, Margot Kidder (last seen in "Elstree 1976"), Nicole Kidman (last heard in "Spellbound"), Richard Kiel (last seen in "Force 10 from Navarone"), Matt Lauer (last seen in "Venus and Serena"), Marc McClure (last seen in "Coach Carter"), Bette Midler, (last seen in "The Greatest Night in Pop"), Holly Palance (last seen in "The Best of Times"), Mandy Patinkin (last seen in "An American Pickle"), Gwyneth Paltrow (last seen in "Hard Eight"), Brad Pitt (last seen in "I Am Burt Reynolds"), David Prowse (last seen in "I Am Your Father"), Queen Elizabeth II (last seen in "Jim Henson: Idea Man"), Ronald Reagan (last seen in "The Apprentice"), Franklin Reeve, Tim Robbins (last seen in "Dark Waters"), Kurt Russell (last seen in "What If"), Winona Ryder (last seen in "A Scanner Darkly"), Arnold Schwarzenegger (last seen in "Stay Hungry"), Jane Seymour (last seen in "Love, Wedding, Marriage"), Will Smith (last seen in "Bad Boys: Ride or Die"), Terence Stamp (last seen in "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert"), Quentin Tarantino (also last seen in "Sly"), John Travolta (last seen in "Basic"), Andy Warhol (last seen in "Famous Nathan"), Marsha Williams, Robin Williams (last seen in "Yogi Berra: It Ain't Over"), Rita Wilson (last seen in "Asteroid City"), Oprah Winfrey (last seen in "Nyad")
RATING: 7 out of 10 attempts to star in a successful non-Superman movie (sorry...)
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