All this talk about the new movie Superman, Brandon Routh, and his super-suit here on Buzzscope.com got me thinking about Supes in general, and Richard Donner's Superman: the Movie, in particular.

Thanks to my friend Mark Esposito, who knew director Richard Donner, I was lucky enough to witness a part of that classic super-hero film being shot. It was the scene in which Clark Kent exits the Daily Planet building and sees that Lois Lane is hanging from a helicopter which itself is hanging off the top of the building, and realizing that rescuing Lois is a job for you know who.

They were filming on location, at the perfectly cast Daily New Building in Manhattan. I got my first peek at Christopher Reeves as Clark Kent, and it seemed quite surreal. It's weird to seem comicbook characters in real life.

Anyway, they blocked out the scene, and had to cut a little bit of business with Clark's hat being blown off by the wind from the helicopter that was to be added to the top of the building. The hat just wasn't cooperating. Nowadays it would be added digitally, right, Sandy?

Finally, they were ready to shoot for real. Forty-second Street was blocked off, the street hosed down and lit, and extras called in. If that wasn't impressive enough, before the director could shout "Action," the lights in the skyscraper across the street started going off, floor by floor. Then the same happened at another adjoining building. I remember thinking, "This movie must have some budget!" When the lights in every building around us continued to flicker off, I realized New York City was having its second major blackout. But I wasn't worried - I was with Superman. Or at least, thanks to the film crew's portable power generators, I wasn't in the dark.

There's a great paperback behind-the-scenes book that told the whole story of the making of Superman: the Movie, and it's one of the best such books ever written. Probably because so many things went wrong on that film, it makes a terrific story. For example, on another location shoot, in a desert, there was a freak snowstorm. This was in a desert, where there hadn't been any snow for over a hundred years. The book's long out of print, but it's worth reading if you can find a copy. Or check out the newly released special edition DVD of Superman: the Movie.

If you do watch the movie again, or for the first time, here's a little theory of mine I'd like to share with you, the highly attentive and sophisticated Buzzscope.com community member. I maintain that in Superman: the Movie, the characterization of Lex Luthor is inspired by none other than Marvel's Stan (the Man) Lee.

Now, before Stan Lee disowns me, I'm in no way implying that he's an evil criminal mastermind. Just that his well-known and well-loved persona was the basis for the personality of Lex Luthor as portrayed by the great Gene Hackman.

Look at Lex before Superman: the Movie. For years, he was portrayed in comics and cartoons as the ultimate cornball criminal genius. His main asset was his superior intellect, which he endlessly pitted against the Man of Steel's superior strength -- the ultimate battle of brains versus brawn. There was also some Dr. Doom-like nonsense about Lex blaming Superman for his lack of hair, but that's neither here nor there, nor nair. Basically, Lex Luthor was Superman's bald Big Bad.

Yet when Lex Luthor made his big screen debut he wasn't bald. The comicbook Lex didn't wear a hairpiece - he was hairless and proud. The still-successful producers of the James Bond movies never had a problem casting the bald Bond baddie, Blofeld. 'Tis truly a puzzlement!

Leaving aside for a moment Lex's skinhead status, let's take another look at the whole tone and feel of Superman: the Movie. While the first half of the film is justly praised for the mythic qualities of Superman's origins, there's also a bit of Stan Lee's influence in humanizing the Kents that's not that far from his treatment of Peter Parker's surrogate parents, Uncle Ben and Aunt May. The sophisticated handling of George and Martha Kent is something you'd be hard pressed to find in any of the pre-movie Superman Family of comics. There's a slight Marvelization of Superman feel to the second half of the film as well. While still maintaining classic bits from the comics, such as Lois Lane desperately seeking to uncover Superman's true identity, much of the film's humor comes from playing up how people would really react to a real-life Superman - a Marvel trademark back in the 60s. Not to mention focusing such attention on the human cast of characters and their interactions, certainly much more of a Marvel approach. But the real Marvel make-over moment is when we meet Lex Luthor, and stunningly he's been remade in Stan Lee's image.

One of the screenwriters on Superman: the Movie was the late Mario Puzo, the world-famous Godfather author, but also a one-time employee of Martin Goodman's Magazine Management, the company that originally owned Marvel Comics. Back when Mario Puzo was churning out short stories about the Mafia for Goodman's line of men's adventure magazines, he worked in the very same offices as Stan Lee and the Marvel bullpen. There's even a story, which may or not be true, about Mario once wanting to earn a little extra money by writing comics. It didn't work out. Either Mario's samples weren't up to Stan's standards, or it may've been a case of Mario not being able to adapt from his traditional pulpish prose style to the unorthodox Marvel-style of comics writing, in which an artist would draw pages from the writer's plot outline and the writer would add dialogue and captions after the pages were penciled.

By the time Mario Puzo was involved with Superman: the Movie, he'd already achieved mega-success with his best-selling Godfather novel, and his work on the Godfather screenplay with Francis Ford Coppola, so it's highly unlikely that he harbored any kind of grudge against Stan for not letting him write comics. Although, he may have for all I know - the guy sure knew about vendettas. But, the irony of a writer, once turned down for writing comics, to be brought in to work on the screenplay for the most famous comicbook super hero of all, could not have been lost on Super Mario.

The Godfather, a film classic, is also slightly notorious for "humanizing," and some say "romanticizing," characters that are essentially murderers. With such a celebrated approach toward writing gangsters, what might Mario have thought of the clichéd criminal mastermind, Lex Luthor? He must've believed that there was simply no way to make a faithful version of the comicbook incarnation of Luthor believable. Lex was too corny. In order to make Clark Kent/Superman believable, it was crucial to have the audience accept Luthor as well. But a Luthor faithful to his comicbook roots, and presented totally seriously, would be too laughable and would undermine the integrity of the rest of the movie. One answer then was not to take Lex all that seriously (another was to totally revamp the character, which was eventually done in the comics). The idea would be to write him so over-the-top that he'd actually be funny, but still have him still be smart enough to be a formidable threat.

It was probably during this process of re-thinking Lex Luthor that an irresistible thought might've occurred to Mario. What if… Superman's greatest enemy was based on Stan Lee, the public face of Marvel Comics, DC Comics's greatest rival?

The scene that gave it away, is when Lex, in his underground lair's library, uncovers Superman's secret weakness, kryptonite, and says something like, "Doesn't it give you a thrill to be in the same room as a man of my genius?"

This wouldn't be the first time Stan was lampooned in such a fashion. There were fairly innocuous Stan spoofs in the pages of DC's humor titles, such as the Inferior 5 and Angel and the Ape. Stan's most famous collaborator, Jack (King) Kirby, after he left Marvel in the early 70s, created a thinly disguised faux Stan called Funky Flashman in the pages of his DC hero, Mister Miracle. Steve Gerber had also spoofed Stan in his Winky Man story in Howard the Duck # 4 (Or so I thought. Gerber himself says, "The weird thing is, the character wasn't meant to parody Stan. It was read that way because of the 'bald guy' joke, and I could never convince people otherwise." Way to debunk my theory, Steve!) And what do each of these Stan parodies have in common? Well, see for yourself…

Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor

Funky Flashman, Mister Miracle #6 (click for full-page)

Winky Man, Howard the Duck #4

In case you haven't guessed, one of The Secrets Behind the Comics you won't find in Stan's self-published How-to book is that Stan was bald. In fact, one of my earliest tasks when I first started working for Marvel in '72 as a gofer (now I'd be called an intern) was to pick up Stan's hairpiece. I remember having it handed to me in a box, with a plain brown wrapper and tied with string, through an opening in a door. One of those doors you only see in old movies, either as the entrance to a speakeasy or to Oz.

So, there you have it. It's quite possible Puzo meant it as a compliment. That he's saying Stan is a genius and one of the few humans able to give Superman, the comics in this case, a run for their money. Or not. Watch Superman: the Movie and decide for yourself.

I'll be back next week with another crackpot theory about another possible Superman movie.

Addicted to Comics is © Copyright 2005 by Jim Salicrup. All rights reserved.