My Life as a Mankiewicz (34 page)

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 beautiful 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.”

Chris said, “Oh, jeez guys, I'd love to, but I'm in an off-Broadway play.”

Dick said, “Get your understudy to go on.”

And Chris said, “I don't have an understudy.” It was a ninety-nine-seat house. In the late seventies, it was three dollars a ticket. So we bought the house for two nights to fly him to London.

There was just something wonderful about Chris. He put on the Superman suit, and he was so nervous. He was sweating, and the sweat came through his Superman suit, his armpits, and Dick said to Yvonne Blake, the costume designer, “We'll have to take care of that. If he shoots on a hot day…”

Chris hopped off onto the balcony and said, “Good evening, Miss Lane.” The minute he said, “Good evening, Miss Lane,” Geoffrey Unsworth, the cinematographer, turned and looked at me like, is this the man? Then Chris sat down and said, “I suppose you'd like to know a lot about me.” There was this wonderfully shy quality about him. He was testing with Holly Palance, Jack Palance's daughter. She lived in London and was a good actress. She helped us out by doing Lois Lane.

At the end of the test, Dick and I looked at each other like, this is the guy. Dick said, “Okay, Chris, just hang in there for a second. Boy, this is really good. Chris, you're staying here for a while.”

He said, “I can't do that because I've got an apartment in New York.”

Dick said, “We'll bring your apartment here. We'll bring your girlfriend here, we'll buy out the rest of the run of the show. Where's your plane ticket?” He said it was in his jacket, and Dick ripped it up and said, “You're not going anywhere.”

We sent the test back to Terry Semel at Warner Brothers and said, “This is the guy we want,” and they looked at it and said, “Great, go with him.”

For General Zod, the villain, our first choice was Albert Finney. Finney was a star. We could work it out so that he could work for fifty days and not eight months. We met with Finney at Tramps, the big discotheque in London. They had a private room where you could hear the music but you could talk. Finney said he'd love to do it, and we said great. He said, “But here's the thing: I have to be off by five o'clock.” He was doing the British equivalent of summer stock in a town like Birmingham. He said, “I told them I would do it. They're doing eight plays, so the curtain goes up at eight o'clock, but to get there, I should leave by five or five thirty.”

And Dick said, “I can't do that. I can't guarantee you. If we're going late one night, I can't let you go.” So he couldn't do it.

Second choice was Christopher Plummer, who was the leading man at the National Theatre that year. I knew Chris. I got him over to the Connaught to meet with Dick. Chris had the same problem. He would do it but he was in the National Theatre. Dick and I didn't realize that that meant he was in almost every play that year. He was the leading man. Terence Stamp was our third choice. He had played Billy Budd onscreen, then he had gone a little cuckoo and gone to India to seek inner peace, but he'd come back. He was a terrific guy. Anybody's first choice. Valerie Perrine was signed and Ned Beatty, one of the most versatile actors in the world. In
Network
, he plays the head of the corporation. “You are fooling with the forces of nature!” And he could play the little guy who got buggered in
Deliverance
, and he could play a dummy like Otis. He could play anything.

And then, there was the editor of the
Daily Planet
, Perry White.

I knew Jason Robards had just won the Oscar for playing Ben Bradlee, editor of the
Washington Post
, in
All the President's Men.
I said to Dick, “You know who'd be a great idea for Perry White: Jason Robards. He's gruff like Perry White, and it would be a wonderful thing to go from Ben Bradlee to Perry White.”

He said, “Great idea.”

I called Jason up. I said, “I'm doing
Superman
, and I don't know if you're familiar with the comic strip, but there's a newspaper, the
Daily Planet
, and there's an editor.”

Jason said, “You're doing
Superman
, the guy with the cape from the comic book?”

“Yeah.”

“Why are you doing that?”

“Well, Jason, it's going to be a terrific picture.”

“You're doing the guy with the big
S
on his chest.”

“That's right.”

“And you're actually doing a film. This is a feature film.”

“That's right, Jason. Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman are doing it.”

He said, “Well, that's their problem.”

I said to Dick, “I don't think Jason is going to do it.” There was that attitude, that this could only be a turkey.