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Hollywood Spin
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Casting Superman
In announcing this week that he intends to go with an unknown, director Bryan Singer stays true to the Superman tradition as well as the memory of the late Christopher Reeve.
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
By Richard Horgan
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In an interview published yesterday on Ain’t It Cool News, director Bryan Singer tried to put a stop to the Internet parlor game known as which-Hollywood-A-lister-is-going-to-play-the-next-Superman. “I’m committed to casting an unknown,” he maintained, discounting the latest electronic rumors swirling around The Passion of the Christ’s man of zeal Jim Caviezel.
And so, instead of such highly touted permutations as Tim Burton directing Nicolas Cage or Brett Ratner pulling the CGI strings for Josh Hartnett, the long gestating Warner Brothers project Superman Returns finds itself re-aligned with the superhero comic book stars. Namely, that casting a famous actor in the role of The Man of Steel is the equivalent of cinematic kryptonite. Far better to go with a new or relatively new face and, if needed, surround him with famous actors in support.
Still, Singer and his X2: X-Men United casting director Roger Mussenden have their work cut out for them in trying to match the uncanny success of Richard Donner and Lynn Stalmaster three decades hence. Stalmaster, as is often the case when unknowns suddenly make a gigantic Hollywood leap, had been a longtime booster of the late Christopher Reeve. He caught the actor’s Broadway debut at age 21 opposite Katherine Hepburn in A Matter of Gravity in the early 1970’s, and later went on to cast him in his first movie, Gray Lady Down, which Stalmaster worked on right before Superman.
Nevertheless, it was an uphill battle for Stalmaster to convince Donner and producer Illya Salkind, even just to bring Reeve in for an audition. He had to repeatedly scoop up Reeve’s headshot from the bottom of the pile where it had been discarded and return it slyly to the top for further consideration. Finally, in January of 1977, Donner and Salkind relented, and after a brief meeting in New York, Reeve was on his way to London for a full screen test and was told he had the part before he even boarded the plane back to the U.S.
In a sense, Stalmaster was the true Superman of Superman The Movie. As Stalmaster remembered it in an interview in The Hollywood Reporter published in January of this year, “When I cast Superman, it hit me like a bolt of lightning. [Because of his sensitive turn on Broadway and his action role in Gray Lady Down], he could play the two aspects of Superman, the superhero and Clark Kent.”
Like Christopher Reeve, Smallville’s Tom Welling was no big fan of the comic book series when he came late to the casting process for the WB series, about a year after they had started looking for their own Clark Kent. But like Reeve, once he got in the door, things happened with the swiftness of a speeding bullet – three quick auditions in succession for the casting director (Deedee Bradley), network and studio executives, followed shortly thereafter by the shooting of the pilot in Vancouver. In Welling’s case, his equivalent to Reeve’s Broadway and Gray Lady Down credits was a recurring role on the TV show Judging Amy.
When the breakdown went out a decade earlier to agents and managers from casting director Lorna Johnson for Warner Brothers’ previous stab at a Superman TV series, Lois and Clark, it stated that the producers were looking for an actor six feet two or taller, with blue eyes and somewhere in the range of 32 to 34 years old. This being Hollywood, where actors rarely let physical specs get in the way of a talent submission, one of headshots that came in was for a six-foot tall, one quarter Japanese 26-year-old named Dean Cain.
At the time, Cain’s resume consisted of credits such as: Going Under (1990) – Guy in a Bar; Charlie and the Talking Buzzard - Joe, a.k.a. Buzzard; Miracle Beach - Volleyball Player #1; and Beverly Hills 90210 - Rick. But since Lois and Clark was basically envisioned as “Moonlighting with a cape,” it all came down to the chemistry between the two leads.
Despite reading opposite Teri Hatcher dead last during the final stage of auditions, Cain beat out other perceived favorites such as Kevin Sorbo. Moreso, during the filming of the pilot in the spring of 1993, it became obvious to people such as producer Deborah Joy Levine and pilot director Robert Butler that, for whatever reason, Cain and Hatcher on-screen had some of the Cybill Shepherd-Bruce Willis magic.
And if you want to talk about the so-called Curse of Superman, forget about George Reeves, Margot Kidder, Christopher Reeve and cartoon voiceover man Bud Collyer. Instead, consider casting director Harold Chiles. The Adventures of Superman, the 1952 TV series starring Reeves, is his only credit as a casting director. It’s as if he never existed except for that brief period in the early 1950’s when he helped steer Reeves to bittersweet success.
[CLARIFICATION 10/15/04: A reader, Michael, points out: 'Chiles had nothing to do with the hiring of George Reeves in the title role. That responsibility fell to the show's producers, Robert J. Maxwell and Bernard Luber, with a strong assist from director Thomas Carr. The three also handled the interviewing and hiring of the other series regulars. Chiles simply handled booking the day players.]
Ironically, the new Superman director Bryan Singer almost opted in 2002 for the other long gestating Hollywood Man of Steel project - Truth, Justice and the American Way - with Hugh Jackman starring as George Reeves and Benicio del Toro playing the detective investigating the actor’s mysterious death in 1959. The plan initially was to shoot the movie in-between Jackman’s commitments to Van Helsing and his Broadway show The Boy from Oz, but just a few weeks ago, it was confirmed instead that Adrien Brody will play the detective and shoot it next year, post-King Kong - under the direction of TV veteran Allen Coulter (The Sopranos, Six Feet Under.).
At this stage, no word on anyone being considered for the role of George Reeves. Although it’s sure to be an intriguing casting opportunity, it’s a little different than most of the Superman slots that have preceded it.
Because it is not a full frontal leotard turn per se, but rather the role of the actor who played him and a co-starring one at that, it may be able to attract some famous names to the table since it would seem to exist outside the actor’s equivalent to kryptonite – typecasting. In Donner’s Superman, the specter of that terrible curse appeared in the form of Kirk Alyn, the former dancer who was the first to play the Man of Steel in the movie serials Superman (1948) and Atom Man vs. Superman (1950). For Donner, he appeared as a young Lois Lane’s father.
In a 1988 interview with Associated Press, Alyn – who passed away in 1999 - recalled how playing Superman basically kibboshed his film career. After some theater and commercials back in New York, he retired to Arizona and, amazingly, his turn in Donner’s film was his first credited film work since Atom Man vs. Superman. Meanwhile, George Reeves’ alleged and much more well-known downward trajectory began when he was cast in the 1951 movie Superman and the Mole Men and transplanted a year later along with the rest of his co-stars into a six-year TV series run.
During an online chat following her appearance on ABC-TV’s 20/20, actress Noel Neil, who worked with both Alyn and Reeves as Superman, seemed to give the informal casting nod to the former. However, in real life, she was said to prefer working with Reeves. “I think that Kirk was a little more athletic, and a little hammier,” she said. “He really exaggerated the role. George tended to be more intellectual, more of an actor.”
In the same session, another Reeves co-star – Jack Larson - recalled the Superman typecasting effect could trickle down even to the level of Jimmy Olsen. “The Fox casting man got me a very good part in a film; the director wanted me, Pat Boone and me,” he explained. “Then Mervin LeRoy came and wanted to meet the cast. He turned and absolutely attacked the casting man – ‘Why do you embarrass me with Jimmy Olsen in this film?’ and that was the end of that.”
| “I was humiliated and felt terrible for the casting man. I decided I wasn't going to try to act anymore. You were embarrassed for being popular.”
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So perhaps you can’t blame Brendan Fraser, Paul Walker and all those other name actors for politely saying no to the new Warner Brothers Superman project before Singer came on board. Meanwhile, one of the few relative unknowns who got ink for auditioning at one point for Brett Ratner – soap opera star Mathew Bomer (All My Children, The Guiding Light) – has moved on to the series Tru Calling and a role in next year’s Jodie Foster thriller that is ironically, at least in this context, titled Flightplan.
But to all those lucky aspiring actors now in Bryan Singer’s sights, here are some indirect words of advice from Christopher Reeve via a 2001 AOL chat session: “When you see my screen test [as a Superman DVD extra], you'll see that the creative team made quite a leap of faith in casting me in the part. But I think one of the reasons that I got the part was because I thought it was so impossible, that I didn't get nervous.”
| “That actually ended up helping me."
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[UPDATE 10/18/2004: Singer may have simply been playfully holding the cards close to his vest when he talked to AICN last week. Because according to LatinoReview.com, at the time the filmmaker already knew he was going with unknown Brandon Routh.]
[Every Wednesday, Richard Horgan’s FilmStew.com opinion column “Hollywood Spin” takes a look at a notable entertainment industry media, PR or marketing-driven topic. To reach the author, please email rhorgan@filmstew.com. To comment on this week’s topic, please go to our Hollywood Spin Discussion Board.]
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