Having long been preparing to direct Hollywoodland as his first feature, Allen Coulter reports, “When I came on the set every day, I knew every shot, start to finish. That didn’t mean it didn’t change – constantly!”
Screenwriter Paul Bernbaum says, “The choice of Allen to direct was one that I was thrilled about – even more so, after we met. We kept in touch throughout the filming, and I spent a few days on the set with him. He’s smart as hell, very thoughtful, and a terrific director.”
Producer Glenn Williamson adds, “Having worked on this project for so long, I couldn’t be happier to see things come together the way they did. I’ve worked with a lot of filmmakers, and Allen knew what he wanted – but he also knew how important it was that he create an atmosphere on the set where people are comfortable and feel like they can do their best work possible. This was especially true of our gifted group of actors.”
Coulter says, “I like the process of trying to figure out together with the actors who the characters are, and how we can make them believable.
“I started sending Ben Affleck materials on George Reeves as soon as he agreed to do the film. He watched a hell of a lot more of the Adventures of Superman episodes than I did. We found a tape of Reeves speaking as himself, not in-character. Ben was fascinated by that, and would listen on-set to that tape or to excerpts from Reeves’ movies or television shows. He’d do that right before we’d start shooting. He learned Reeves’ voice, posture, and manner.”
Affleck admits, “I did more research for this movie than any I’ve ever done, and spent a lot of time preparing. I put on about 20 pounds; there was a lot of, ‘I’ll go to bed in a minute, but just let me eat this pizza first...’ Now, in making a movie, you get start-of-production gifts, and on this shoot we fortunately got iPods, so I was able to create an audio database of clips of George’s voice. This was to try to immerse myself in listening to George. I also watched all 104 episodes of Adventures of Superman, and his movie work. It was all so inspiring to see because he was such a good actor, very natural and winning.
“He played Clark Kent and Superman so well and with such enthusiasm, because he understood that the show was about the audience being in on the secret identity with his character that the other characters weren’t in on. While George felt undignified wearing the costume, for me, working with Allen on re-creating the Superman scenes was a lot of fun.”
Coulter confirms, “Ben loved wearing the costume, dressing as Clark Kent, and improvising in-character as Reeves in those scenes; we knew from talking to Jack Larson that Reeves was a big cut-up on the set.”
Stunt coordinator Matt Birman adds, “Ben did all his own wire work, including on our re-creation of the true-life incident on the set when the wires snapped at either the rigging or his harness, and Reeves fell 8-10 feet to the ground. He was okay – but he never got on the wires again.”
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