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Interview with Directors Ian Bonhôte & Peter Ettedgui (Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story)

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What’s your favourite superhero memory? Maybe it’s the portals scene from Avengers: Endgame, a euphoric culmination for eleven years of MCU’s storytelling when our heroes returned from the snap to defeat Thanos. Perhaps it’s Michael Keaton’s iconic entrance and line delivery in Tim Burton’s Batman. For others – including myself – it will be the beat in Superman: The Movie where Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent/Superman seamlessly switches between Clark and the Man of Steel. The immediate change in body language, his voice and even his glasses, which Clark briefly takes off whilst showcasing the two different personalities in a conversation with Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) after her night flight with Superman, will never lose Reeve’s playful charm or delight. It perfectly sums up the duality of a character and, like many of my generation, you believed a man could fly. You believed in his fighting motto: truth, justice and a better tomorrow. You believed he was Superman. It’s no wonder why Richard Donner’s 1978 classic is always highly regarded as the OG of modern-day superheroism.

The role launched Reeve into the stratosphere of fame and celebrity. But, in 1995, his life took a tragic turn which sent shockwaves across the world. I still remember like it was yesterday. A near-fatal fall during an equestrian event left Reeve paralysed from the neck down, breaking his first and second vertebrae and unable to breathe without the use of a ventilator. As a child, it was hard to wrap my head around the idea of someone who had this on-screen, larger-than-life invincibility suddenly forced to wrestle with the realities of vulnerability. This person who was to remain a paraplegic for the rest of his life, ended up becoming more than just a superhero. He became a human being.  

30 years since his death, Reeve’s life has now been immortalised in Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui’s documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, the first film under the new DC Studios banner.  The directors – famous for McQueen and Rising Phoenix – weave together never-before-seen home video footage, Reeve’s audio biography, recollections from his children Matthew, Will and Alexandra, as well as celebrity friends Susan Surandon, Glenn Close and Jeff Daniels. They’ve crafted a powerful, emotional, and sincere film that goes beyond the lens of his iconic role. Screening at this year’s London Film Festival, the primary viewing response was unanimous: bring the tissues! It’s at this point of the festival, just ahead of its gala screening, where I joined the directors for a roundtable interview to discuss the ins and outs of creating this incredible doc. 

A number of more recent documentaries have felt like marketing “puff pieces”, serving light-hearted, paint-by-the-numbers, uncontroversial entries that steer away from revealing too many of their subject’s flaws, lest they disrupt the public’s perception or, worse, the estate’s potential marketability revenue. Elton John: Never Too Late and the LEGO-inspired Pharrell Williams documentary, Piece By Piece (which both screened at the festival), don’t escape those accusations, whilst Ezra Edelman’s “dead in the water” Prince documentary, that purportedly didn’t shy away from musician’s less-flattering moments, shows what happens when battle with the estate sees the documentarian lose out. 

Thankfully, Bonhôte and Ettedgui’s doc does not take a page out of that book. The directors – who made Super/Man independently before it was acquired by Warner Bros after premiering at Sundance – were not interested in presenting a clean version of events. “From the very beginning, we wanted to avoid a typical biopic, cradle to grave, episodic structure, because we felt that that wouldn’t do any favours,” Ettedgui says. “That wouldn’t let the story breathe in any way that would let an audience really be able to experience the emotions that we wanted them to feel.”

It’s worth pointing out that Super/Man was never going to be about how the actor got cast as Superman, nor the groundbreaking adventure in making the landmark 1978 film. Those wanting that would be better served watching the several ‘Making Of’ featurettes located on the Superman Blu-ray collection instead. While Super/Man shares some fun discoveries, such as the actors who didn’t land the titular role (including Neil Diamond, Robert Redford and comically enough, Arnold Schwarzenegger), the filmmakers wanted to capture the man behind the suit. By choosing to include footage of Reeve’s other roles in films such as Anna Karenina and Rear Window, they provide an important recognition of his on-screen work ethic, personality and, most notably, his subsequent image perception battles from playing the legendary hero.

“When we were researching, we watched a lot of Christopher in different productions, from great films like Deathtrap, to TV Movies of the Week which were not so great. But he had to pay the bills!” says Ettedgui. “You’ve got a sense of a real working actor’s career and that was very important for us. We wanted to show some of his other work in the context of the fact that once he made Superman, that was it, that was the top of his career and he constantly fought against that. He felt trapped by Superman. Whether it was working in the theatre, whether it was taking smaller parts in films, he wanted to break free of Superman – and I don’t think he ever really did. That was the context in which we wanted to depict his other work and it’s really important for the themes of the film.”

In the modern-age of comic book superheroes, actors can easily shift between their alter-egos. Chris Hemsworth’s Thor can escape into the apocalyptic wastelands to play teddy bear-wearing Dementus in Furiosa: A Mad Max Story. Florence Pugh can swap her Black Widow credentials for heartfelt indie drama We Live in Time alongside former Spider-Man Andrew Garfield. Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man can get a hero’s send-off in the MCU, secure Oscar glory in Oppenheimer as Lewis Strauss, before crashing the Comic Con stage to announce himself as Doctor Doom. For Reeve, he wasn’t afforded such acting luxury. “It was a risk at the time, because there was nothing done before,” acknowledges Bonhôte, and that sentiment sadly rings true. The world didn’t stop seeing him as Superman, a price to pay for being a pioneer. 

Ultimately, that dual thematic mindset plays into the documentary’s strengths. Similar to his Clark Kent/Superman on-screen persona (and the film’s title), the filmmakers reconciled with the complexities of Reeve’s life. On the surface, he had conquered the celebrity mountain and was able to enjoy his success with long-time friend Robin Williams. Beneath it, the documentary doesn’t shy away from Reeve’s fractured relationship with his father, F.D. Reeve, or how Reeve’s belief that disability needed to be “fixed” incited major controversy. Nor does it neglect the breakdown of his first relationship with Gae Exton, the British model whom he met on the set of Superman and later became the mother of his two eldest children. Yet by using Reeve’s equestrian accident as the film’s focal point, it paints his life as an ebb and flow, a before-and-after incident where feelings and emotions became callbacks to significant moments in his life. As the doc would have it, it was as if he was reliving the past and present simultaneously. Such a creative decision allowed the documentary to evolve in surprising ways, especially when it came to the involvement of Reeve’s three children, who became the centre of the story. 

“The fact that we ended up making the film more about the family, and that Dana [Christopher Reeve’s wife] took such a massive role into the film, is something I wasn’t expecting at the start,” cites Bonhôte. “We were approached to make a film about Christopher Reeve so you start digging into his life story. And then you start meeting the children and realise, ‘Oh, my God, they’re amazing’. The impact of the accident, and later his death, was so massive on the family. We are not dogmatic when we start a film. We have a vision of what we want to do, but we are always ready to adapt to something that one of our contributors says. We always try to make a film about the story’s really important people and, very quickly, we realised the family were its three most important people.” 

That willingness to change and adapt to the story is the reason why the Super/Man works so effectively. Through an incredible amount of intimate details (including the intentional usage of Reeve’s audiobook), we witness a profound account of the actor’s life through his family. Through their eyes comes a natural sense of grief. When we see images of Reeve skiing, swimming, or playing tennis or hockey, we’re watching an actor who embodied ‘Carpe Diem’ as if it was written in his veins. So to witness the counterbalance where that enthusiasm disappears, and his reliance on his family to live through the next nine years of his life, is a heartbreaking watch. Through his children, we see the struggles and the fears in knowing their father was never going to be the same again. Through Dana, her integral impact was her devoted love and support to get her husband living again – right until her passing in 2006. There’s no question on the tragic underbelly surrounding the documentary. But at its heart, Super/Man is also a cathartic story filled with hope and resilience, something befitting of Superman’s iconic ‘S’ symbol. With such unlimited access to these behind the scenes footage, it would be hard to find a dry eye in the cinema.

The reality of Reeve’s disability becomes more apparent when he makes his first post-accident public appearance during the 1996 Oscars. Publicly, a moment of triumph, courage and bravery. Behind the scenes, the anxiety of getting him to the stage, sorting his health insurance, acquiring his medication, organising round-the-clock care, and ensuring his transportation is wheelchair-compliant. Even when Reeves eventually returned to work both in acting and directing, he would later describe the industry as “not being disability-friendly,” knowing the levels it takes to make an accommodating environment. When prompted on how the film changed their perspective on disability in the industry, Ettedgui was more than forthcoming: “We already knew that from Rising Phoenix. We had a lot of extraordinary stories, and we had also made a commitment on that film to have people with disabilities working with us on the team. And we took that into Super/Man.” 

Bonhôte mentions the story of Ella Beaumont, a researcher on Rising Phoenix who was brought on to Super/Man. The challenges of her travelling to their production office in Tottenham Court Road required planning and coordination, especially when stations didn’t have lifts or trains were cancelled. As to how to make it better, Bonhôte delivered a straightforward answer: “The shift is how we need to keep our society accountable for many things about inclusion in general. Inclusion means you get a bigger perspective, in a sense you broaden your horizon as an individual.”

Yet despite the challenges, it’s clear how much Reeve is still an inspiration to many within the industry, so much so that he crosses the MCU and DC divide. “We found this bit of footage I was determined to get in the film despite having nothing to do with the film that we were making,” Ettedgui remembers. “Kevin Fiege, who runs the MCU – before they make any Marvel film, they sit down and they watch Christopher Reeve’s performance in the first Superman film. Because that’s the superhero. I think it’s also very true for James Gunn who moved over from Marvel to DC.” Bonhôte echoes the same sentiment: “It must be because of the excitement of restarting something magical about Superman. A lot of the other superheroes, they mix them up with other superhero rules. Superman is Superman. He’s his own kind of thing. The way James is going back to the original Superman, I think he’s made the right choice.”

While the filmmakers are out of the loop on Gunn’s Superman: Legacy (on track for a July 2025 release), their documentary did travel to its film set in Atlanta where Warner Bros. screened it to the cast and crew.  There’s no bigger endorsement than that, further illustrating the legacy of Christopher Reeve. A fitting tribute to an extraordinary life, going beyond skin-deep to redefine what a hero is. 

The interview has been edited for consistency and clarity.

SUPER/MAN: THE CHRISTOPHER REEVE STORY is in cinemas from November 1

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