There’s an iconic scene in 1978’s “Superman” of Clark Kent, played by Christopher Reeve, spying Lois Lane dangling from a helicopter. He
locates a revolving door, emerges as the Man of Steel, and soars
upward and catches a falling/Lane.

“Easy, miss, I’ve got you,” says Superman. Lane is still
panicking./“You’ve got me? Who’s got you?”

Superman smiles, offers a casual goodbye and flies off into the night,
his forelock perfect. It’s the image the world held of Reeve until
1995. And that’s where Ian Bonhote and Peter Ettedgui’s new
documentary, “Super/Man,” picks up a very different version of the
hero’s journey.

Reeve is now paralyzed from the neck down after a fall from/his
horse. He cannot move, he cannot soar. His wife, Dana, tends to him
and then talks of seeking out towels fresh from the dryer so she can
get some of the warmth that she no longer can receive from her
husband. The couple’s young son, Will, celebrates/his third
birthday party at his father’s hospital.

Remarkably, less than a year later, Reeve is on stage at the Oscars
receiving a standing ovation. He teaches Will how to ride his bike,
moving along with him and offering encouragement from his motorized
wheelchair. In a way, Reeve became a superhero again.

Bonhote and Ettedgui’s film, premiering at the Sundance Film Festival,
makes it clear that Reeve’s comeback came at a tremendous price. “His
morning routine from waking up to being able to roll out the door was
about two hours,” says Will Reeve, speaking to Variety via Zoom with
his siblings Matthew and Alexandra. “We’d all wake up every morning
and think anything could happen. But he would wake up and then
remember all over again that he couldn’t move.”

Before his accident, Reeve wasn’t unkind, but he did his own thing.
(In the film, Matthew notes his dad left to ski in France the day
after he was born.) The actor had a cold poet father who didn’t
approve of his movies and — legend has it — bought him Champagne
mistakenly thinking he had been cast not as the superhero but in
George Bernard Shaw’s “Man and Superman.” Reeve showed his love for
his kids by taking them skiing and schussing to the bottom ahead of
them. That all changed after his accident.

“Our love language was activity before,” says Alexandra. “Suddenly,
you’re spending time just hanging out in dad’s office looking each
other in the eye and talking for two hours.”

Neither Reeve’s children nor the filmmakers shy away from the fact
that Reeve’s accident made him a better man.

“I think he was very conscious of that irony and the legacy of
‘Superman’ when people viewed his story and thought about him after
the accident,” says Alexandra. “He talked about redefining what it is
to be a hero… it’s an everyday person who survives despite
overwhelming obstacles.”

Reeve didn’t just thrive; he became a mensch./He created, with
Dana, a foundation that has raised hundreds of millions for research.
And it wasn’t done alone — the documentary makes it clear that Reeve
had financial resources available that others do not, but stresses it
was his blended family of Dana, his ex-partner Gae and his three
children that made his post-accident life possible. (Dana died of
cancer in 2006.)/

“Things came easily to him early in his life,” says Bonhote. “Then, as Christopher said, ‘The one minority anyone can become part of in an
instant, is disability.’ I think that there was a genuine opening to
the world around him on a different level. It would be facile to say,
‘Oh, this is a triumph over adversity story,’ but it is turning
adversity into opportunity.”

Bonhote and Ettedgui, who collaborated on the 2018 critically
acclaimed “McQueen,” had become tuned into the world of the physically challenged while making “Rising Phoenix” about the Paralympics
games./ They wanted to make a film about the terrible roadblocks
that even a well-funded American legend faces when they find
themselves disabled.

“Christopher said the one minority anyone can become part of in an
instant is disability,” says Bonhote. “We’re not trying to
re-write/Superman but telling a story on how to approach an
issue that society has turned its back on.” A quarter century after
Reeve’s fall, opportunities and acceptance for the disabled have
increased exponentially. Still, there is much more to do. “I am
optimistic, but there’s still a long, long way to go,” says Ettedgui.

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In article <KBudnSMZe_lyKT_4nZ2dnZfqn_GdnZ2d@giganews.com>, MummyChunk <mummycullen@gmail-dot-com.no-spam.invalid> wrote:

(In the film, Matthew notes his dad left to ski in France the day
after he was born.) The actor had a cold poet father who didn’t
approve of his movies and — legend has it — bought him Champagne
mistakenly thinking he had been cast not as the superhero but in
George Bernard Shaw’s “Man and Superman.”

I knew a gal a long time ago who lived next door to the Reeve family at whatever school it was that Reeve's father taught at. Christopher
would swim in the backyard pool, and the gal (then about nine or ten
years old) would just watch him from her bedroom window, endlessly.

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In article <KBudnSMZe_lyKT_4nZ2dnZfqn_GdnZ2d>, MummyChunk
<mummycullen> wrote:

(In the film, Matthew notes his dad left to ski in France the

day

after he was born.) The actor had a cold poet father who didnt
approve of his movies and legend has it bought him Champagne
mistakenly thinking he had been cast not as the superhero but in
George Bernard Shaws Man and Superman.

Super-Menace wrote:

I knew a gal a long time ago who lived next door to the Reeve

family at

whatever school it was that Reeve's father taught at. Christopher
would swim in the backyard pool, and the gal (then about nine or

ten

years old) would just watch him from her bedroom window,

endlessly.

You mentioned that someone you knew lived next door to the Reeve
family at the school where his father taught. Christopher Reeve had a
difficult relationship with his father, Franklin. He wrote in his
autobiography that his father’s “love for his children always seemed
tied to performance” and he put pressure on himself to act older than
he actually was in order to gain his father’s approval. His father was
also absent for much of his childhood, as he divorced his mother when Christopher was four and remarried several times. Christopher Reeve
later reconciled with his father and forgave him, but he also said
that he never felt close to him.

Christopher Reeve had a different kind of relationship with his son,
Will. He was very involved in his son’s life and supported his
interests and passions. He also taught him the values of courage,
compassion, and perseverance. Will Reeve wrote a touching tribute to
his father on Father’s Day, saying that "in our short time
together, my dad gave me everything: his love and attention, his
values and passions". He also said that he felt his father’s
spirit with him when he saw whales in Alaska, something that his
father loved.


This is a response to the post seen at: http://www.jlaforums.com/viewtopic.php?p=658909501#658909501

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