The Extras - RESTORED VISION: The Fascinating Story Behind "SUPERMAN II: The Richard Donner Cut"

Episode Date: May 31, 2023

SUPERMAN II: The Richard Donner Cut is one of the most interesting Home Entertainment stories in film history.  Released in 2006, this version of the movie captures the original vision director Dick Donner had for the second of his two Superman movies.  In part 2 of our Superman podcasts, we go into the origins of the "Richard Donner Cut" starting with the unauthorized superfan cut and Michael Thau's initial conversations with the studio and their interest in a Donner Cut.  Then we dive into the behind-the-scenes stories of the editing, production, and marketing of the film, including insights into how Dick Donner felt about the film and the fan reception.  And  we wrap up the discussion by looking at the impact of this film on the Home Entertainment industry and its love of "extended editions" and "director's cuts." The Guests:Michael Thau first worked with director Richard Donner on "Ladyhawk." He led the restoration of Superman and was the driving force behind "Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut".Derek Hoffman was Dick Donner's assistant then, following in the footsteps of Geoff Johns (DC) and Kevin Feige (Marvel).  He is currently a VP at The Donners' Company. Jonathan Gaines is a pioneer extras content creator going back to the days of Laserdisc. He worked with Michael on both the restoration and produced the Extras content.Purchase on Amazon:SUPERMAN 4K 5-FILM COLLECTION BOX SETSUPERMAN: THE MOVIE 4K SUPERMAN II: THE RICHARD DONNER CUT BLU-RAYThe Sitcom StudyWelcome to the Sitcom Study, where we contemplate the TV shows we grew up with and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify Warner Archive Store on Amazon Support the podcast by shopping with our Amazon Affiliate linkDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm film historian and author John Fricke. I've written books about Judy Garland and the Wizard of Oz movie, and you're listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies, and animation, and their release on digital, DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Millard, your host. As many regular listeners know, I really enjoy it when I get to highlight unique home entertainment

stories. We've done that in the past with our episode on the 1999 release of The Matrix, which was the first DVD to sell over a million copies and really took the DVD market and the creation of DVD extras to another level. We also discussed the first Harry Potter film, which led the way for one of the most beloved and highest-grossing home entertainment franchises ever. And recently we talked about the original 1978 Superman and the unique restoration story for the 2001 DVD release. In today's episode, we're going to continue the Superman discussion

with Superman II, The Richard Donner Cut. This story is so unique that I'm not going to try and summarize any of it now. Let's just say that what you're going to hear is not something you hear about too many other films, let alone one of this magnitude or importance to DC and Warner Brothers. And to tell that story, I have three very special guests returning from our previous Superman podcast. Jonathan Gaines was most recently vice president creative content at Warner Brothers Home Entertainment, where he worked for 15 years. And he has been

a producer of extras since the days of Laserdisc. Eric Hoffman is currently VP of development and production at the Donner's Company and has worked with The Donner Company in various roles since 2000. Michael Thaw is a producer, director, and editor who has worked on The Goonies and The Lethal Weapon series. He restored Superman the movie for the initial DVD release, and he produced and edited Superman II, The Richard Donner Cut. So here's part two of our conversation. Well, Jonathan, Derek, Michael, it's good to have you back on for another Superman podcast. Thanks for having us back. Great to be here. Yeah.

So we should know what today is, the importance of today's date. Derek, why don't you tell everybody what today is? Well, we are recording this on April the 24th, which is Richard Donner's birthday. So it's a heavenly birthday podcast for the big guy. Happy birthday, Dick. Yeah, happy birthday, Dick. That was unplanned, but just one of those really cool things when that happens. Well, in this podcast, I wanted to talk about Superman II, the Richard Donner cut.

I wanted to talk about Superman II, the Richard Donner cut. And for the listeners, if you have not listened to the first podcast about the original movie Superman, I recommend you go back and listen to it. But you by no means need to have listened to that first to join our discussion today. end of that podcast, we did talk about just a huge success of that DVD release and the extended version that you did, Michael, and how happy Dick was with the results of that. So when did you start the discussion or when did the thoughts about Superman 2 and that release on DVD come about, 2 and that release on DVD come about? Michael? So I get this call from the same gentleman that I work with closely in Warner Brothers post-production feature side. And he said, they're thinking about doing a Superman 2 Donner cut. And I said, okay, have you talked to Dick? And I forgot what they said, if they had talked to him. I think I ended up having to call him. And what he said was,

kid, are they going to pay you? I said, yeah. He said, okay, go do it. I was like, Dick, I can't do this without you. Well, I'm in the middle of posting on 16 blocks. Just have at it. I was like, Dick, I can't do this without you. Well, I'm in the middle of posting on 16 blocks. Just have at it. I'm like, okay. And so then there was the whole thing about Brando. They cut Brando out of the second film, The Salkinds, because they didn't want to pay him his profit participation, which ended up being like $18 million for the first one on a starting salary of $2.3 million for 11 days worth of work. Anyway, so they were just finishing Superman Returns and Bryan Singer had wanted to use Brando's voice or his image or something in that.

And Brando had passed away at that point. And the estate, you know, wanted income. So they licensed the rights to use it in Superman Returns, Brando's voice at least, and maybe his image. So at the same time, they kind of asked about doing a recon Superman 2 and then when I started on the project and we were up and running

I get a call from one of the lawyers saying is this going to be anything if we can't get Brando's estate to agree to it and I said I don't think so if it doesn't have himo's estate to agree to it? And I said, I don't think so. If it doesn't have him in it, then you're not really doing it justice. So they went and got it, and they might have paid a little extra money for it.

So it was Brando's estate and his involvement that actually allowed this to go forward. That was the domino that fell that allowed it to happen. But Michael, I think you're leaving out a little bit of the role that you played because as Dick always said, and this could be his perspective, but he said you had put that idea in his head and you had pushed it a long time and that you had brought up... Because they called me. I never came up with the idea of doing it. Well, his version is that you pushed it and you made it happen

and that you are the grand instigator of the whole thing. Okay. That's not the way it happened, but I'll take any credit Dick gives me. I'll take anything Dick gives me. Dick has given me my whole career. So then, Derek, what was Dick's response when the ball started to kind of get in motion? He was working on another film, right?

Yeah, we were, we were deep in 16 blocks and you know, having had the experience of what Michael and Jonathan did on the, you know, the Superman, the movie DVD, he had that faith and that trust in the process,

but didn't really know what it meant and didn't really trust, honestly, that this was really going to happen in a meaningful way and what that would mean. And along the way, as Michael would educate him on what he was able to do and how much of the stuff that they were able to find and how much, you know, Michael's research was exhaustive. And they had, you know, they had the continuity reports. They had all the editing. They knew they could go back in and find everything. And the reality of it eventually came to him. Yeah, the paperwork.

Not necessarily the film. No, but that idea that he – I had most of what I needed. And the fact that you could bring Dick back to a place that he had blocked off in his memory and get back to that place creatively, even though that was difficult for him to do, and allow himself to be open to the process, took a while. I think it was a gradual process that won him over, but you really showed him what was possible.

He said, go ahead and try. So 16 Blocks had a lot of posts done on the Warner Brothers lot. So whenever he came, I would put a cookie crumb of a trail to come to my cutting room so I could get him to look at stuff. At first, he was, no, no, no, no, no, no, kid. Then, as he warmed up to it a little bit, because he really hated the way that it ended. because he really hated the way that it ended. I don't even think we talked about this as much in the first podcast, but he really hated the way he was let go of the first one and couldn't finish the film the way he wanted to.

It was hard to get him back in. Derek was there, though, this whole time straddling many projects. I think he was also working on X-Men projects at the same time. So he's doing all these kinds of things. Why don't you have an X-Men poster behind you? This is a Superman podcast. Yeah, that's for the next podcast. Why don't we clarify that a little bit?

Derek, maybe you can summarize that for the fans. It's a complex story, but what happened? Why wasn't Richard Donner allowed to finish Superman 2? And what were his feelings? a myriad of reasons, but a lot of it had to do with the business of being able to shoot two movies at the same time. And the producers wanted to be able to save money. And, you know, you had people like Hackman and Brando, who it was very difficult to schedule. So they were in both films too. Right. So, and Tom and Dick's story was big enough that they knew that they, if these guys were going to let them do two, they'll let him do two. They had pushed their first release date. They were racing to meet what was now the second release date. And that cost them money every day that they weren't in the theater. So they stopped finishing Superman II. They moved the ending, which they had already done for superman 2 and they put it into superman 1

and closed that movie it came out it did fantastic the salkinds were then faced with uh the terrible thing that happens to producers when you have a hit movie uh and you were going to make a lot of money so then you have to share it with the people that you worked with and they did not want to do that all the way. It's not terrible. It's a deal they made. If you're, if you're, if you are listening to an audio podcast, you're going to pay Brando. If you listen to the audio version of the podcast, go to the YouTube version and you can see the smirk on my face as I say that.

They, they, they did not bring Dick back to finish his film. There's different perspectives on it. They brought in a gentleman named Richard Lester, who they had done a movie called The Three Musketeers, which they shot so much on that movie, they decided to release a second movie, The Four Musketeers, but without paying anybody for doing a second movie, which became with the same kind clause.

Now, in any contract you sign, you have to state how many films you are making for something so that you can't you can't do that same sort of a thing. And they went off and they they finished that film with a different director who, you know, had to make his movie and had to do his thing. But it very clearly, I think when you see Dick's cut, it's just not the same. It didn't have the same, didn't have the same tone, didn't have the same perspective, and didn't have the same, as he would say, verisimilitude to it. And that was very difficult for him. He was to see it go on and be a successful film, but not be the one that they had started and not be the one that they had created these relationships with people for. And, you know, to have somebody else finish out Chris's scenes in that movie was exceedingly difficult for him.

that film and then to be known because some people would confuse it and think that he did too and and to not have the control over that as was very difficult for him and it was it was a vulnerable thing for him to go back and revisit that part because it it hurt him a lot stay with us we'll be right back hi this is tim millard The Extras Podcast. And I wanted to let you know that we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers Catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes. And I've read about it. But wasn't there like he didn't he shoot like 70% of Superman II? I mean, they were deep into it. It's not like they just shot 20, 30% of the film.

I have the editing script and the script supervisor, Elaine, she was so thorough that she wrote down the lens and the focal length and the filters on every shot so that it could be reproduced, which I used because even though the lords above don't want me to say this, I had to shoot some extra material to just complete what I could with Superman 2. I think, you know, the Superman 2 that was released in theaters did contain a lot of footage that Dick shot. But Richard Lester went back and shot additional material for that theatrical version. back and shot additional material for that theatrical version. So there was a lot of material that Dick had shot on Superman 2 that had never seen the light of day.

And that's what was so exciting about this new version. And then Lester cut and reshot certain angles in scenes that Dick had already directed. And Dick had always envisioned, which is a really cool idea, especially from today's perspective, is that Zod was psychotic. So I tried to remove the luster cuts out of some of those scenes, like in The Daily Planet, when they break in at the end,

or towards the end, and return Dick's version of this guy that was just out of his mind and wanted to control the world. We'll go into a big story about what we could and could have not done with Superman II, with Dick on board. But for now, I'm going to tell you that there was a story that I read. I don't know if it's true. Derek might know. But when Dick was still under contract to Warner Brothers, so I guess this was maybe around the time that Superman 1 DVD came out. Terry Semel

said, we'd love for you to finish your version of Superman 2, and we'll give you the budget to do it. And he didn't want to go back there. If we had had that budget now, when I did this film, wow, you would have seen Dick's version of it. But we didn't have Chris at that point. In 2005, he was, I think, at best. For your question, Tim, an easy visual marker is that everything with Gene Hackman or Marlon Brando was directed by Dick. Again, it was one of the reasons that they did the movies at the same time. In order to get them out, they had so much time, so they had already done all of their things with them.

Yeah, that's just smart scheduling. Also Valerie Prine, also Ned Beatty. Right. The two cheap actors were Chris and Margo because they were— Relative unknowns, as they say. Unknowns, right. And they were signed for two pictures. Michael, before we get too deep in some of the specifics, because we do want to do that on the cut and what you did, I did want to go back and kind of reference for the listeners

and maybe we can figure it out as well, but wasn't there kind of a fan wave of interest in seeing a Richard Donner cut? I mean, didn't I read about some kind of a bootleg version that fans had cobbled together? And how much of that, Derek, was Dick aware of? Or did he just want to put it out of his mind and then what did you hold up it may or may not be the bootleg uh version why somebody made at some point this bootleg version of superman 2 restored international cut you didn't have access to the donald footage so well no it's it's not exactly it's not it's not what you were able to go back and do. But people, to your point, Tim, people had tried to cobble together things to see. He said, the way to say there's a big want to see for this, which was in his mind, incredibly difficult to comprehend because he couldn't actually finish the movie. So what did they want to see? But it was that notion that people wanted to see how those two movies would have worked together had he been able to do it. Jonathan, I want to get your perspective on this, having worked in the home entertainment field.

When a studio executive hears about a fan bootleg cut of something, tell me what's probably going through their mind and how that played into what that phone call was that Michael received from somebody at the studio saying, hey, we have interest in a Richard Donner cut. I mean, I can only imagine the heads of lawyers that were exploding. There was a bootleg version of this film out there and that someone was potentially making money off of their IP. I'm sure that they were scrambling to get cease and desist letters out to whomever they can find. But I think going back to the work on the first film, you know, we, I think for the first time on that release in the documentary really shed some light on the pain and the tragedy of Dick not finishing the second film. And I think that, yes. And I think that that started a little bit of a

groundswell and a re-interest. And when you really learn just how much Dick had shot of the second film while making the first film, people started to wonder, well, could you do something? And I think along with all the material that we found for the first film, we also found this key screen test that Chris and Margo did, which was a scene from Dick's version of Superman II that was eventually reshot and done differently in the Lester version of it, which was the scene in the Pink Hotel room at Niagara Falls, where Yeah, in the pink hotel room at Niagara Falls, where Clark trips over the, you know, the bearskin rug on the floor, and that she discovers that Clark is indeed Superman. That scene was totally different in Dick's version. And we found that was a screen test, one of the scenes that the two of them read together

and was filmed. So that was, you know, another piece of the puzzle that went into the realization that, hey, wait a minute, I think there might be some opportunity here. And then the idea, Superman was about to have a resurgence theatrically with Superman Returns coming out, which was an homage to Dick's film and its aesthetic and style of approach and linear storytelling, the studio saw an opportunity to capitalize on it. And with DVD, the business being so hot at the time, the idea of doing a never before seen Richard Donner cut of Superman II was too good of an opportunity to pass up, which

is why this time around it got traction. So the guy that okayed the starting of the film left Warner Brothers Home Video relatively early, and someone else came in, and they inherited the project. I ran into that guy at a restaurant, you know, months into the making of this, and I forgot his name. And I said, oh, you know, hello, I'm Michael Thaw. Thank you for allowing me to. And I said, you know, maybe it already had come out. And I said, do you like it?

He said, I didn't like the budget. It was always designed to be a low-budget thing. If we had more of a budget, if they were really down with what Terry Semel, who had left the studio way before that, had wanted to let Dick do, had wanted to let Dick do. We would have found lookalikes for Chris and Margot. We would have reshot some things with Terrence Stamp in the middle of the film instead of using the Lester footage for the destroying of some back country town into what the script said, which was he destroyed Tokyo.

They destroyed the Washington monument, which I got in with stock footage from a few good men and other things. It was a whole sequence that ended up with them being in the white house, which is Dick's stuff. I don't think I touched that scene. They left that scene alone. Why? Richard Lester doesn't want to fuck with one of Dick's scenes anyway.

He left that one alone. I didn't touch it, except for the sound. We did the whole sound for this film again, like I did the first one. Every sound effect, every tree break, every hit over the head. Every time a Kryptonian makes a souffle with heat vision. It's all redone.

So the beginning of this, though, Michael, is you have to now get the assets, don't you? For Superman 2, which maybe were still in the UK. Yeah, they didn't come over. They were still at that warehouse. So they, again, put it on a ship because it would have cost too much money to send another six tons on a plane. So I'm sitting there six tons on a plane. So I'm sitting there using the work print, which I could get them to send over fast, to sketch out an idea of what it was going to be like. And then it was

always a discovery process with the tireless negative vault at Warner Brothers going through unmarked negative because the Salkinds never paid Technicolor their bills. So Technicolor said, fuck it, we're not going to mark what scene and take everyone is. And they went through. And the way you put negatives together on a reel is you splice it at the beginning and the end so that when it comes off the reel, it's all one long thing, but Technicolor didn't do that because they weren't getting paid. So when a tape would come off, it would just fall on the floor, and the poor negative guys had to go through every single thing.

The guy that did Superman 1 was named Joe Watano in negative. And then I forgot the gentleman's name on Superman 2, who worked for Joe on the first one. So he knew the routine. I was fighting for their time in negative because they were also trying to finish Superman Returns, but that was just, you know, 8K videotapes that they were moving back and forth. It wasn't time consuming film. Reels. So then, Mike, you're going through that. What was kind of the decision making on, because I know you did have to keep or you did keep

some of the Richard Lester footage, didn't you? Oh, yeah. have to keep or you did keep some of the the richard lester footage didn't you oh yeah and again we had to put the same ending on the end of superman 2 which was the original ending for it i use alternate angles and takes on a lot of this stuff just to give it a new perspective. And to go back to your original question, so Dick shot 75% of his script for Superman II with all the cast and characters and some of Lois and Clark. When it came out, it was only 35% of his footage, I think, on the original Superman 2 Richard Lester cut that came out. When I finished with it, it was 80% of Donner's footage. So you say to yourself, hey, wait a second, you said 75%. Well, the extra 5% was I had to do a recap at the beginning to bring you up to speed of where we left Superman,

Dick's version, Superman 1, to the first scene in Superman 2 that Dick shot, which was in the day of the planet, not the Eiffel Tower, where Lois decides to challenge Clark and she jumps out the window, making him either save her life or she dies. And of course, he figures out a way to not reveal himself and make her look like an idiot, which just perfect for Margo, as far as Dick's concerned. So did you add more of Dick's original footage, or did you just basically restore and remaster what he had done? Perry White, his toothpaste is going backwards in his thing because the world's spinning backwards.

And then the whole end scene in the office with her asking him to get a pizza. But all the Jor-El stuff, you went back and put in Brando's performance instead of Susanna York's. And a lot of the stuff that was in the Fortress. Now, there's a note that i have about special effects i was given a certain amount of budget to do new special effects that went beyond the original budget and it's because the people that budgeted my original budget did not read the script and did not see that there was all these scenes that Marlon Brando had to be added back into that were special effects. So I had only so much time to finish special effects, which were being done at the end of my process. So I was jumping seven days a week between color timing, conforming,

looking at special effects on a little monitor this size because that's all they could send to me. And when I finally saw it all cut together, there was many changes that I wanted to make to special effects that I could have told the effects company that they needed to do this because they were incorrect in some things that needed to be massaged and looked better. But I didn't have time. So they cut me off.

They started printing DVDs. The lawyers looked at the credit for the composer for Superman II, the second composer, and decided they needed to change his credit. So they threw away all those discs and redid the end titles without telling me. And if I had had that time, all the special effects would have looked much, much better in Superman 2. Well, you just brought up, Michael, the music. And I thought that was one of the big things too about the Richard Donner cut, that special.

And that is that you went back and you added in the John Williams music. Now, he wasn't available, right, to do anything additional. So you had to go back and... They weren't willing to pay for any of that anyway, so it doesn't matter. Okay. They barely made their money back on the release, I've been told. Maybe over the years they've made more, but...

What about the John Williams music? Because in the Richard Lester cut, don't they have another composer? And then in the Richard Donner cut, John Williams gets the credit for composer in the Richard Donner cut, right? Because it has more than 50% of his music. John, what was the other guy's name? Do you remember? No. Derek? No. I'm looking it up. I don't remember. I had to use some of his music because, but yes, we tracked a lot of the original score for Superman 2, and especially some of the alternate takes, which were also available. Alternate takes were also available on the Superman 1 DVD.

So you could hear the real score that they used for the final and then you could hear alternate takes and where they made cuts into the music because at the last second on Superman 1 they took like 15 minutes out at the last second and that's mostly what was added back into

Superman 1 to make the extended cut. Ken Thorne. Ken Thorne. Ken Thorne. Ken Thorne, that's right. Ken Thorne. In a creative way, I mean, there's the thing that the tone of the movie, the tone of the story is so much different.

And John Williams' music went with Richard Donner's version of the story. I'm sure Ken Thorne's went with Richard Lester's. So when you went back and you were retelling the story, I mean, the reason in my mind, the reason that makes it evident of why you do an experiment like this is in the story of Lois figuring out that Clark is Superman. And it starts with the scene that Michael just talked about, which is a great setup for the fact that she has this hunch. She does this thing. She actually puts her life in jeopardy in order to prove it. That's how we all know what a tenacious and bulldog reporter she is.

That's how much she believes in this. She jumps off. When you get to the screen test and you go and it shows how Tom and Dick always talked about until you figured out the love triangle between Lois, Clark, and Superman, that's when the movie became the movie. That's when the story makes sense. So to have Lois be an equal to, if not smarter than, Superman and trick him into revealing his secret identity to her after she keeps trying and trying and then she figures it out and she puts it in the most in-your-face way possible, that's a much different story than the guy that can fly clumsily trips, puts his hand into a fire, and then the

greatest reporter we've ever seen on film. A constant throughout all of these films is the intelligent woman that has it up on the guy. When you're restoring that heart to the film,

you have to restore the music. The Williams music goes with that. And so you have to, I don't think that there's any version where you could have not married those two back. Superman 1 and 2 were not sequels. two back the superman one and two were not sequels they were one story part of a long story cut into two that's why the first scene in superman two is the set the day script wise set the day after the last scene in superman one in donna superman one It just continues on. And then Luther and

Ned Beatty break out and on and on and on and on. And Zod, of course, was supposed to be really psychotic and when I cut that scene at the end and I took out the Lester-Jean Hackman

double stuff and put Hackman back in there with his original lines and I showed it to Dick. All he could say is exactly what he says in every film. Make it move faster, make it move faster, make it move faster. I want every line on top of each other.

I said, Dick, you need to leave a little gravity between make it move faster and make it move faster making the best Dick. So Jonathan mentioned the screen test, which is hugely important. And I don't know, I mean, are there other movies where they've inserted the screen test into the actual film? I mean, this was a unique idea. Do any of you recall, like, who came up with, yes, we should put that in the movie? And what was

dick's response to having it added i mean i can't think of any other films that have done that before use a screen test to insert it into a completed film or into a film to round out a story and michael it had to have been your idea. I mean, I said, look, we have this footage. Chris is like 40 pounds lighter and different hair. It's not even the same screen test. Like you cut two different screen tests. The highlights don't match. The wardrobe doesn't match.

So Chris read against some ladies in that scene, read against some ladies in that scene, this shitty set that they had put together just to sell the studio. Because Warner Brothers was now more involved, so everything had to go to John Kelly to get approved. We're talking about at the beginning of Superman 1 and 2. So after they cast Chris, who read against a gal that was in The Omen, which is on the Superman 1 DVD,

the full-cut screen test, he shot that Superman 2 scene against Leslie Ann Warren and Ann Archer. God, they were gorgeous women back then. But he didn't want gorgeous. He wanted spunky. And so when he found Margot, he clung on to that. And that's, you know,

any of you who watch the special features, you'll hear him talk about. And so I think it was one, because he shot two cameras. So one was Chris, 40 pounds lighter. And the other was Ann Archer, I think. And then Marco had already done one as well, too. But maybe it was against a voice actor. It wasn't against Chris. So I cut the two together. a voice actor. It wasn't against Chris. So I cut the two together. And he was just so happy when I showed it to him. He couldn't believe it. And I was like, Dick, it doesn't match. He doesn't look the same. I don't care. It's so much better than the tripping over the

polar bear. Well, it was the point. point by doing that the audience could see and dick understood early on and michael you always did a very good job of reminding him that like you know we're not saying this is your completed movie we're not selling this as this is exactly i think we put the thing in the front this it represents how it was originally conceived and intended to be and there was the that notion but i remember him him saying like he was like that's that's the relationship mank wrote that by the way as originally conceived and intended you don't need both adjectives, just one. Or you wrote it. I wrote that and the Chris Reeve dedication, and they were both in the office, and Dick said,

Mank had written something much longer, and Dick said, write something that people will want to listen to and pretend Mank wrote it. And I wrote it, and I gave it to Mankank and Mank went, yeah, that's good. We're going to have a conversation about this afternoon. Well, I mean, I thought that scene, it's unique in so many ways. And I know that fans talk about it as well, but it's such a unique thing and just to think about using it and to put it in. And then the way you framed it

this is as the movie was originally envisioned this is not the final title when you hit that scene saying ignore the continuity we tried to make it i i mean i just re-watched it and it didn't bother me much at all and i watched watch films all the time and it does bother me. But I'm caught up in the relationship, as you said, Duke. It works. Get in and get out if you're doing it cheap. And then I watched the other. But the audience wants that relationship.

That's what you've been doing. And because you set it up with the scene in the beginning and everything, and you're going and then the little kid falls and she makes the you're wanting lois to see through that thing that's keeping her from which the person she really loves and all that stuff it's why the entire both movies work because of the love triangle and dick and meg figure that out early on and and this again to me it's the whole reason to do this experiment, because it shows that that's the heart that make the movie what it is. And I mean that for both of them. said we have to use lester's ending where she comes into the office the next day and she knows and she's disappointed and it's kind of a sad scene and manc was in the room at the time and he said you can't use that and i went okay why we don't have any other endings. He says, because Lois was never in love with Clark.

She was in love with Superman. So this scene doesn't make any sense. And Dick said, yeah, he's right. Because he always steals from the best. A good director listens to everyone's comments and takes the best ones. And guess what? Who gets credit for it at the end of the day? He does. He's been directing for so long that he'll listen to anyone's ideas. And most of the time, he'll probably use them because they're because they're better than what

he had come up with or they had come up with or whatever anyway so i said okay so now all we have is spinning the world backwards again we just did that with Dick and says, we can't use the same ending again. And Dick says to him, if you want my name on the film, you have to do it my way. And he went, all right. And that's why it's called the richard donald trip so then derrick what was dick's take when he saw this final cut put together do you recall well i remember first going in and go one of my favorite memories was i think michael was like one of the first times that we actually went in cutting room and we uh you let me hit the button to delete the uh throwing of the cellophane s

there was that was i will always be indebted to you for that because that was so cathartic um i seeing seeing the the final thing for dick was really kind of interesting to see because there was a governor on how elated he could be because it showed what should have been. And it showed the promise. And he was exceedingly grateful. And he's always very proud of what it is and what Michael did for him, he would say, giving him that experience to see that and for other people to be able to see what they were intending to do this and then what could have gone on next? And the, the entirety of, um, as it was getting ready to come out and we started seeing the art for the first time, I'll never forget. He saw the art and he saw how big his name was on it. And he said, oh shit, they're like, really, they like really they're selling this as like

this is the Richard Donner cut and I said yeah why we're doing it the original artwork was like a cartoon and it was supposed to be a box set of the documentary that this big long documentary they shot on Superman Returns

that was one disc and then Superman 1, 2, the Richard Donner cut, and 3, and 4. Was there a 5? Nope. Okay, so 4. And they were all like this cartoony

drawings. And I said, Dick, this is horrible. This is a new cut. It needs to have power. It needs to show that this is something completely different. And that's what's behind Derek right now is what we got them to do. And they were very happy with it at the end of the day. They had that poster on the front of Warner Brothers, and they left it up there for nine months, ten months.

But what was interesting in a sort of time is a flat circle kind of a thing, Dick was getting very excited about the entire process and the entire thing. And then he said to somebody hey don't you think we should talk about you know if i'm going to get paid what's this going to be and everything he said if you're good if you're going to literally market it on my name i'm not going i'm not going there you can though no because he's told the story that he said um and somebody's response was you should have thought of that before. Somebody said that.

And Dick was put in a real spot where he was hurt again. And that he would go through this, put all this out and do the thing. And that that would be the response. And then he was like, look, I could do a cease and desist and say, you can't put this thing out. I haven't signed a contract on anything. We haven't done, there was no, it was all sort of whatever. But he, he said, I can't do that to the fans. He said, so many people have wanted to see this. And they, they pushed so hard for all this and all these years, all those letters I saw and all the things

that, you know, I'd been told about how much people want to see this and he was truly hurt that that would be you know the the response he would get from people who were his creative partners for so long and everything and it was another version of every time he got close to the end and would feel great about Superman, something would happen and slap him in the face. And we talk a lot about how, but then the people would see it and the reaction you'd get off of that. And that's why he did it. That's why it drove him.

And he would be, again, buoyed by that. But it was an interesting parallel on his never-ending Superman journey. So then once the cut was done, Michael, and you got Dick's feedback, did the studio have anything that they asked for changes or anything, or were they pretty happy with it? No, just that interchange with trying to convince him not to use the same ending. Everything else was fine.

And then we redid the whole title sequence over again in the same style as the first one. That was another seven minutes that Dick probably thought should have gone at the end of the film. Dick was one of the first filmmakers. I don't know, Derek, you might know, on Lethal 2, he was one of the first filmmakers that took the main title sequence and put it at the end.

So the only thing at the beginning of the film of Lethal 2 is the Warner Brothers logo that Michael Kamen wrote this Warner Brothers logo that Michael Kamen wrote this Warner Brothers cartoon. And then slam, you're in the middle of this chase and Mel is pounding on the roof going, and Danny's sick of it already. Patience was not one of Dick's things, so if you could do the credits at the end, he was all for it. I learned two important lessons, more than two,

but the two that are most prominent for me that served me well in later years in my career from Dick. One was the meaning of the word verisimilitude. When what you see on screen feels as though it's actually happening, that's when you have verisimilitude. And then the other thing he taught me was the power of brevity. I remember he gave me a note on Timeline. He's like, got to cut it, kid. Got to cut it. It's too long. It goes to what Michael was saying, brevity. And I'd never heard the word brevity before. It's always long. It goes to where Michael was saying brevity. And I'd never heard the word

brevity before. It's always edited or shorted and all that, and brevity. And then I continue to remember and recall that lesson that I learned. And to this day, whenever I'm cutting pieces of content, it's always like, let's get to it. Let's get to it faster, faster brevity. Let's do it. And I have Dick to thank for that very valuable and important lesson creatively i loved when you're sitting on set with him and he's shooting and the the as you mentioned the the script supervisor you know they usually have to have a pretty good uh rapport with him because he sits there and as it's going as the scene's going he's all right this means this is what we're going to use now i'm cutting everything they're saying now i'm cutting

everything like he's editing as they're acting as the shot is going on and he was doing it and some people would get very confused by it but it was just him and the script supervisor at that moment he was editing while he was filming i thought it was one of the most unique things I'd ever seen. And that was really apparent on 16 Blocks? Oh, yeah. Actually, Bruce Willis talks about it in – they did the HBO behind-the-scenes thing, and he was like, one of the things I knew I was –

he said, I knew I was in good hands because I watched the guy edit a scene that I wasn't in. He said, I watched him edit it while they were shooting it. And he said, I'd never seen this done before. He was on the set. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

That was his last film, 16 Blocks, right? Yep. I mean, I think two minutes came out afterwards. So the one thing we haven't really talked about are some of the extras that were on the Richard Donner cut. Derek, what do you recall of those extras? And I think you recorded, what, a commentary again with Tom and Dick for that as well. I remember we worked with, I think it was New Wave or New Lot, New Wave. A gentleman named Constantine Nasser was our producer, I believe.

And they were great. named Constantine Nasser was our producer, I believe. And they were great. And they were very, you know, everybody always wants to do as much as they can and more that we're given the budget to. And I'm pretty sure Constantine was with me the day that Tom and Dick sat down to do the commentary. And I don't, I'll have to watch it again

because I don't know how much actually made it onto the Dicks because they, whenever it would get to the lesser parts, they were honest, I'll say. And I'll never forget the moment you're watching the scene where they're blowing up the little town and Dick, who is deadpan as anybody could ever be just was like stop stop hold on wait stop you you accidentally you're showing us this is like a tv show i think this is the a team i think i think we're watching the a team now and the poor guy running it is going no no and dick's like well this can't this isn't this can't be in our movie this is and and i get a call, and I have to take out like seven minutes of that scene.

At the very last second, we're cutting it out. They would go through, and they would not attack anybody personally, but they would have the experience of the two of them watching some of those scenes for the first time. And they were just gassing each other up and there was a catharsis to the moment of the two of them being able to see what they had envisioned and be part of this new moment but they did not care who was going to hear it it was just for the two of them they were having i would say one of the best times and it was hilarious and also very sort of heartwarming to watch the two of them just needle each other and tom who could give as

good as he could take it would sit there and some of the lesser stuff he would try to convince dick that he had directed it and tell him that he had a much better, a much inflated image of his prowess as a director. I just remember seeing Constantine's face through the thing. There was a bead of sweat on that guy's head that I'll never forget. Well, now I have to go listen to it because probably most of it got cut. But if any of it got left in, I want to hear it. first film, when Dick took the work print, probably with or without Williams' score, probably with, to show it to John Calley here in Southern California, who was the head of Warner Brothers at the time.

Calley loved it. And he told marketing and publicity, spend all the money you can. This is going to be a huge hit. And Dick said, I think it's too long. Let me take stuff out. And Callie said, do anything you want with this film. It is masterful. Just go do it.

And so that's a lot of the stuff that I put in for the extended version, is these things that they cut out at the last second. It created yet another generation of audio degrading. So that's why if you ever get a LaserDisc of the original release, no one has Lasererdisc players anymore, but if you do, you can hear how just grainy and distorted all the sounds are because it was so many generations down.

And when we remastered the sound, when we remixed, completely remixed the sound for the first one it's jet clear now i went back and got some of the original audio recordings of dialogue on the set that they had screwed around with and replaced that as well too on superman 2 i could i could start the wheel from the beginning so i always had access to all that stuff. So we didn't have to do all that at the very end. So then the fans have been clamoring for this.

Dick's happy with it. The studio's happy with it. It gets released. What was the response? Do you guys recall? I remember being really well received. Obviously, they don't, you know, they didn't tell us sort of how much it sold and whatnot. But I remember it being there were there was like, some weekly ratings, and it did pretty well. But mostly it was, it was very well received. And it started a conversation. And people got it that, Hey, this is really cool to see. This is not the complete movie.

This is like, what an interesting experiment. It's an experiment. And it's interesting filmmakers. I remember Guillermo del Toro telling Dick about watching it. Yeah. And I mean, a lot of people would, would telling Dick about watching it. Yeah. And I mean, a lot of people would talk to him about it. We did a conversation that Christopher Nolan asked for on his,

the Dark Knight trilogy, the Nolan box set. And we went to the Stephen Ross theater and, you know, they had the two logos up on the thing and the two of them had a conversation, which was interesting in that Dick didn't really understand what... He kind of thought it was like an interview. He was like, what is happening? But Nolan just wanted to talk to him

about their experiences in doing it and it broke free when Christopher Nolan told him that he had been, as a kid, he had been on the Fortress of Solitude set in England. And that he had picked up an iceberg and he could pick it up because it was styrofoam and how that engendered his love for practical effects. And that began a conversation between the two of them. And then Dick sort of understood what the, what the end was and what,

what the conversation really was. And, and I remember Nolan talking to him about, and talking to him really as someone who could understand what's that like to see your, you know, not quite fruition, but kind of,

and go back and visit and it always made a lot of interesting conversations and it was a lot sometimes he was very guarded about it but if if he thought you could relate to it it was a really interesting conversation starter for dick and other filmmakers uh many filmmakers have said that they always look at Superman one as a guiding light, Sam Raimi for Spider-Man known for the dark night. Uh, there's,

huh? John Favreau on a Iron Man. Iron Man. Really? So they all, they all Man, really? Yep. So they all look to that. And I would love to see that interview that you just talked about. I would love to see that.

I'll tell you one of the great things about you watching. They have a conversation about music. And Nolan is from a family of accomplished musicians and is technically proficient and I believe plays some instruments and everything. Dick is famously not and doesn't know anything about music except for what he likes or what he doesn't. And they have a conversation about their approach to music and how Dick was like, he said, you know, John Williams would, it would be frustrating because he said, I couldn't tell you what's wrong with it, but that's not right. And then when you find right, I can go, oh, that's the thing. And that's, and these weird layman terms tell him how to push it out where Nolan would get all the stems from all the different pieces of music and he would actually lay them in and deconstruct the music and reconstruct it and everything. And he told Dick, Man of Steel was going to be coming out, which he produced, and he said,

we knew we couldn't do William's score. He said, so Zimmer wrote their score as a duet. He said, if you lay them on top of each other, it's a duet. And in the quiet parts of john's theirs is a bombastic and in the classic parts of john's there's this quieter thing and i i've done it and it's pretty fascinating so on the scoring stage when they went where uh london philharmonics was probably in london and London. And John Williams conducts the opening credits for Shootin' Man. And Stewart pulls Dick over and says,

my God, that's Star Wars. We can't have Star Wars. And he said, forget it, kid. This is great. This is great. This is great. And it went on to become one of the most iconic scores of all times, including Star Wars.

I think the Empire Strikes Back score is even better than the original Star Wars, but that's a better film. Well, Dick always tells a thing where he says the first time he heard it, he said, when it goes, Dick always says that's it, the song singing, Superman. Jonathan, with your career during that time working in home entertainment and since, where does this Richard Donner cut kind of sit in terms of almost like home entertainment history? Because it really broke new ground and people still, I think, look at that as something very unique. And I think we've just mentioned that other directors have referenced this whole story of this kind of completion of the Donner cut. What are your thoughts? I mean, I think it, um, and I may be wrong in my, um, timeline here, but I think it helped spur on other filmmakers to take another look at their films again, like Coppola with Apocalypse Now or.

I heard they might do one of Blade Runner. I think, I think they might be interested in that. That's right. I think, yeah. I mean, that's a good point. All these other guys you're talking about are extending their cuts. Now look at Lord of the Rings. It came out two hours 40.

Then he releases it at three. Then he releases it at 325. And then now it's close to four. The first one, just the first film, he made three other times bilking the studio for extra cash to feed into Weta, which I was just in a... So cynical, Michael. So cynical.

I went to Weta. I happened to get a personal tour by Hapstance. And I sat in Peter Jackson's chair in the dubbing stage where he sits and listens to the mixes and gives comments and stuff like that. I'll send you that picture as well too. Did you just sit there and say, longer, bilk the studio? Well, to get back to the point though, Jonathan, is that, I mean, this came out in 2006, is that right? And I came into the group around 2007. I mean, it was just a big thing. If we could ever get an extended cut from the director or a director's cut, I mean, it seemed like we would go back and sometimes the answer would be, no, pretty much everything was used that they want to use. There's, there's, there's no chance for that. If there was ever a, yeah, we think we could get at least, you know, five to 10 more minutes out of this so that you could, you know, legitimize calling it a director's cut or extended

or something. There was always a huge business interest. Yes, I think that to no small part of the success of this endeavor, people started realizing the value and the marketability in having extended cuts or director's cuts, alternate versions of films, because it gave the marketing team something new to market. It wasn't the same movie that was out in theaters. It was something new and a different version that you could only get on DVD. And I think that this release certainly helped to explode further the value and additional special edition or extended cuts. the value and, and for an additional special edition or extended cuts. And you're right, Tim, whenever we, you know, embarked on a theatrical new release home entertainment product,

it was always the question, well, let's ask the director if there's a potential extended cut that we can do. And often times the answer was a hard no. Sometimes it was, there's a little few things that we can do that we trimmed for ratings purposes. But then there were other filmmakers that really embraced it and saw it as an opportunity to not necessarily say that this extended version was better. It was more about an opportunity to have another creative conversation, another conversation with the fans,

with film fans. And Zack Snyder fans and zack snyder was famously very very supportive and always came to the table after the you know with with an extended version and in some cases those those extended versions were just as enjoyable as the theatrical version so there was always that um superman to the donner was really one big special feature that's the way i feel it it was a special feature the little doc that they made i wanted to make a real documentary at the same time they they wouldn't let me. I wanted to interview Richard Lester. I would have gone after him hard to get him. I would have wanted to hear both sides of the story. When we did the first Superman one, I wanted to hear the Salkind side of the story. They didn't

want to be involved, but the studio wouldn't let me do it. But I insisted on certain things that are in that documentary, which was that gorgeous shot of the truck pulling up with all the new six tons of footage. I think me going through a couple cans, but also the technical parts of how Superman II, the Donner Cut, was done, which is the baking of the old reel-to-reel pornography stuff so that they could actually unwind it. And coincidentally, back then, the tape-to-tape, if it sat for a while, something that was on one wind of the tape would bleed through to the other one, so you would hear double sounds. Anyway, and then they tell a scenic guy, by the way, Superman 2 was always only finished on HD. I tried to finish a film version for them. I'm not sure if they actually completed all the special effects and cut them into that negative.

It looked horrible. The negative was in really bad shape. When I saw prints of it, I'm not sure what they could do to fix it. They could in post, but the cut was only ever HD. It wasn't 4K. It wasn't on film unless they went back and fixed it. It is a fascinating thing because it exists on so many levels. There's the story of the movie that didn't get to get done

and the drama between Salkinds and Dick and all that kind of stuff. Then there's the actual creative in-world story reasons that the movie is different. And then it is a thing that, and I didn't know a lot of this stuff. I wasn't, but you would see the quite Herculean task that Michael went through of, of restoring all of this and going through and finding somebody's notes from 30 years earlier and putting them together and everything, and then running that through the personal filters of himself, but also Dick and the things of the sheer filmmaking aspect of it is, I think, unparalleled in any of these other versions of doing this

because most of the time when they're doing it the things are preserved to a place where they can because people know they're going to do it now you know maybe like the citizen kane one that they kind of went back and redid or not citizen kane but the other orson wells one the wind thing but to go back and find the stuff which was never, as you documented earlier, the neglect, and there was never any intention for this to see the light of day. There was quite literal scraps on the floor. And to get it back and to be able to see this, I think is truly magnificent. Thank you, Jerry. me of something. Thank you, Jerry. Well, it's an extremely unique story. And I think it's a unique home entertainment story because if there wasn't DVD, I mean, yes, it was Laserdisc, but the DVD format and the popularity of that format also allowed for the studios to find a business justification to do this Richard Donner cut. And it fits right

into that story, which is terrific for Jonathan and I, since we worked in that industry for so many years. And there's so many elements to that besides just filmmaking. But then the whole thing of just the importance of Superman 1 in terms of just the whole popularity of superheroes. I mean, just what it kicked off in that and how much influence you mentioned earlier it's had on other directors. And then the whole popularity of director's cuts and extended cuts and everything that it was also a part of really doing.

And yet it stands alone because as you said, Michael, it was really one story and extended cuts are not one story. They're just a little more footage you shot or a few more scenes or something, or even a director's cut. It's just a different version of, of a contained story. This is really unique because two films, one story always meant to be shot. And then, I mean, it's just such a a terrifically interesting

bit of film history and having you guys on to talk about it i mean i found it fascinating and if if they had given dick some more money we could have done a real superman too that would have because manc was around He could have written the end. We could have reshot some things. You know, Terrence Stamp was still there. Sarah, Douglas, Jack Halleran, they're still all around. We could have done and have Mank create a proper ending to this because they always intended to go back and think of a new ending to it it's it's a shame

but i i think derek's last bit is a good button to our to to this podcast well thanks you guys for coming on i know there's like even more stories and this could go on and there's just so much we actually didn't touch on, but I think it's pretty interesting for the fans to hear and revisit. And some, some people have never heard these stories. Some people have heard some of these stories or partial stories, and we just gave them a little bit more backfill on those stories from people who were there and who worked on it. So I really want to thank you guys for coming on. And if you want to do a Goonies thing, I know there's no release.

I don't know why we're doing this right now. There's no new releases you've been to, right? Oh, yeah, they're doing the... It's coming out in the 4K packet. I only finished in HD. So either they finished... They hired somebody better. They hired somebody better to do it.

Don't worry. Warner Brothers is doing merchandise with the original logo, like the crystal of Superman, the movie. For the first time, they have hats that, you know, the crystalline logo from the poster. They never did branded Superman, the movie merchandise. It was always like the Superman, the DCine logo from the poster. They never did branded Superman the movie merchandise. It was always like the Superman, the DC Comics logo, but that one

from the original poster, they have a hat with that on it and it says 78. I want to get one. With a rainbow going through it? Yeah, but it's just the S. But it's a 78 on the side and it's sort of like embossed and then they have t-shirts of the original artwork from the poster.

Not the poster, but like the original artwork. They went back to the original, and I think they come with the set. I want to see the set. I think it looks cool. Cool. Anyway, so if you want to do a Goonies, one of these things, Tim. I definitely want to do a Goonies, one of these things, Tim. I definitely want to do a Goonies. So we'll have to revisit that.

But well, guys, this has been a lot of fun. Thanks for coming on the podcast. I think it's going to be really enjoyable for the fans to hear these stories. Thanks, Tim. Thanks for giving us a place to tell them. Yeah. Well, I hope you enjoyed today's conversation as much as I did. The behind the scenes story to Superman and Superman 2, the Richard Donner cut is just so compelling.

And hearing it from those who knew director Dick Donner and produced the restoration is as good as it gets. For those who would like to purchase the new 4K 5 film superman box set or the individual 4k release of superman there are links in the podcast show notes and on our website at www.theextras.tv so be sure and check those out if you're on social media be sure and follow the show on facebook or twitter at the extras tv or instagram at the extras.tv to continue the conversation and to be a part of our community. And you're invited to our Facebook group for fans of Warner Brothers films called The Warner Archive and Warner Brothers Catalog Group.

So look for that link on the Facebook page or in the podcast show notes. Until next time, you've been listening to Tim Millard. Stay slightly obsessed. The Extras is a production of Otaku Media, producers of podcasts, behind the scenes extras, and media that connects creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals at www.otakumedia.tv or look for the link in the show notes.