Jenn Dolari @dolari@driveinsaturday.org

@socketwench

@socketwench - please excuse the typos. This was written on my phone over a of ice cream and apple pie.

@socketwench - Superman is one of the movies that made me a movie big buff. Mind you, I was six.

It's also one of the movies I have the most preproduction info on.

Superman's production history is super weird, no pun intended. The producers weren't so much big on making the best movie, as they were getting the most impressive people they could get and hope they'd make a monster movie to their liking.

They got Mario Puzo to write it, fresh off the Godfather. Paid Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman a load of cash to star in it and didn't care who got what role.

Mario Puzos is a bit off a mess. The opening on Krypton and the Smallville stuff is mostly the same. But once it's in New York it's completely different.

It takes place at a television station. Clark is a TV anchor, Lois a weather girl, and they'd another character who does sports. I found out later this was actually how the comics had Superman at the time.

The rest of the movie is less a Superman movie as it's a comic book movie featuring Superman. The script was a collection of mini stories featuring Lois, Clark and the sports guy across the globe, occasionally punctuated by Lex Luthor showing up now and again. The last mini story involves four kryptonian prisoners taking over earth.

The script was fairly unusable, so the entire New York segment was gutted and focused more on Lex and his real estate scheme. And here's where the producers mis-stepped. They decided the tone of the movie would be 1960s Batman. Luthor munched on Kleenex. Telly Savalas cameos as himself. Superman was very much a daddy's boy. It was... not good.

When it came time to film the movie the producers then made their best decision, hiring Richard Donner right off The Omen.

He took a look at where they were going, hired his friend Tom Manckewitz (Hope i got that name right), and rewrote the script to remove the ultra campiness of it. What we got was one of my fave movies and a good sequel that could have been better...

... but I'll wait for that Wench Watches to Trek that story.

@thraeryn @socketwench - what's funny is this movie was my introduction to the Superman mythos, and do everything else feels foreign to me.

@socketwench - The bloom is very intentional. Geoffrey Unsworth put bloom in practically every shot of the movie. It's one of his calling cards. You can even tell the Richard Donner directed scenes of Superman II thanks to that bloom.

@socketwench - The Superman movie was my first introduction to Superman. I loved the ince-and-crystal Krypton so much that when I finally saw the comic version of KRypton, I was so dissapointed. I wish they'd stuck with this for the DCAU, but even there, they stuck more with the comic....

I rarely throw things away until they literally fall apart. Over the last week, my diamond print bed sheets, which I've had since the mid 90s and that you may gave seen in countless pictures of toys I've laid out on my bed, has fallen apart.

May the new bedsheets last just as long.

Memorable Lines From The 25 Years Since I Transitioning:

"You dress like mom." "Of course I do. Have you SEEN how she dresses?!"

"But you were born a guy!" "Not on purpose."

"This is a three month supply of the testoserone blocking Spiranolactone. If my demands are not met, I will release it into the local water supply...."

#jenns25th

Twenty Five Years Ago, about six months into living as a woman in Austin. I love that outfit.

#jenns25th

Twenty Five years ago, on March 6th, 2000, I walked into my job at Kinko's and began living my life as a woman.

I wouldn't start hormones for about six more months. I had been living more as a woman than a man since 1997, been living occasionally as a woman since 1993, and cross dressing since the 80s.

I wish I could say things have gotten better since March 6th 2000, but it's not. But today, I will celebrate 9131 days of survival, and worry about surviving another day tomorrow.

@socketwench - I think I missed this, but then I noticed your mention of the skull faces in the hell imagery. I think I may have pointed that out to you.

The Black Hole is up there with Tron with something I'd LOVE LOVE LOVE to see early drafts of. The concept art for both really point to a very different story at the the start of pre-production, and more Disneyish affair of a kid's adventure with adults.

From what I remember, The Black Hole was on Disney's backburner since 1974. I do know a Vincent like robot was part of it and the mystery of the Cygnus was the main driving point of the script, titled "Space Probe One."

The Black hole wasn't part of the original script, but was added as a minor element quickly, then the main element later. I seem to remember reading somewhere that towards the end of this phase of pre-production, the ending of the movie involved a hand delivering a flower through the black hole.

Another, very uncomfortable part of the script was that a lot of Reighardt's dialogue may have been paraphrases from Hilter speeches to bring home I AM THE VILLAIN. These were removed, but I've always felt the line of "It's about time that people learn about their failures and my successes" was one that got through.

The movie was just kind of in development hell (or at least development slow-burn) until Star Wars when it got fast tracked into the movie we got in 1980. One of the major changes was changing the Cygnus from a standard hulled-spaceship into a fucking cool haunted house. Whoever decided to do that was a freaking genius.

The final ending of the movie was rewritten multiple times, with wildly different endings. One involved The ship going through the blackhole where we pull out to see Michaelangeo's "The Creation of David" with Dr McCrae looking one. The novel ends with the Palomino crew becoming a gestalt energy mind, which may have been another script ending.

I never saw the hell imagery as Reighardt ruling in hell. I always got the feeling he was trapped there inside Maximillian. Immortal, but forced to watch Maximillian rule in hell forever. Alive, but his goal just out of reach.

A personal nice touch for me in this movie? Space. Space is BRIGHT in this movie. Nebulae color the stars so we're allowed to see silhouettes of the Cygnus, and it looks RIGHT. Love that look.

Texas is already trying to criminalize my gender care, but now are trying to criminalize ME.

While I think Skyward Sword's soundtrack is the best in the series, and that Breath of Wild's was the weakest, I will say they saved EVERYTHING for this piece of music, which doesn't just weave a bunch of themes together, but delivers it at 150%..

How many interlocking pieces of Zelda lietmotif can you count in this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieSz7F8MgqA

Thoughts Before Bed

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
"It's not extraordinary. It's just. Wierd"
"That requires weird evidence."

George Lowe
1957-2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OcqGrZaRdM

Weird question. Do any other right-handers use the left handed controls on their phones cause they primarily use or left handed?

Lefties using right handed controls?

@Orb2069 - ten years of an 8AM wake up at Nintendo casts doubt on that sticking part. ;)