An interview with the directors of Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story

Peter Ettedgui, director and screenwriter, and Ian Bonhôte, director and producer, sat down and spoke to SIA about their film “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story” which is out in cinemas on Friday 1 November.

Reeve was involved in a horse-riding accident in 1995, resulting in a high level spinal cord injury leading to tetraplegia. After intense rehabilitation, he dedicated his life to disability advocacy and the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation continues to research treatments for spinal cord injury to this day.

When someone has a freak accident with such tragic consequences, and they are a Hollywood movie star it can feel distant from the reality of most people’s lives yet what’s remarkable about this film is you don’t feel that about Christopher’s story.

Life doesn’t end with the tragic event; it is how you handle that moment and how the people around you deal with it.

Ian: Tragedy can touch us all but what we saw is that life is to be seen as a whole, there is not a before and after…everything that happens to us is a part of life. Neither Peter the producer or I have sustained a life changing injury in a similar way to Christopher or many of your members, but I understand what it is for a moment in your life to challenge and define your path or purpose.

What do you hope people with spinal cord injury and those who support them such as family members will take from this film?

Peter: We learnt that it is not just about the person who sustained the injury but it’s the whole family and how they come together and respond to it. And for us it was very much about that with this film. Once we had met and heard the story from the three children’s perspectives, we knew that was a major part of the story. We really want to make sure the film is reaching people within the spinal cord injured community and those who support them.

What did you learn about living with spinal cord injury that you felt was important to get across in the film?

Peter: I think it was made easier by how Christopher responded to his particular injury and how he sought for it not to define his life, but he knew he had to engage with it, study it and find out what can be done about it, which wasn’t being done at the time. Once you have that quest at the centre of your subject’s story, it makes it much easier to explore the complexity of spinal cord injury.

Ian: Not everyone is a Hollywood superstar who can garner a little bit of their fame and fortune but a lot of people would potentially have wanted to hide away and would have taken much longer to digest what happened.  He just went out there.

This is why it was important to include the part where he was attacked by some people for wanting to find a cure.  It is important to understand that he doesn’t not care about the people who don’t want to find a cure, he understands that too. This is why some parts of the disability community struggle with Christopher’s story but everyone in the disability community is an individual.

Do you think Christopher’s focus in wanting to regain some mobility and possibly even walk again meant he didn’t allow himself to live his life to the fullest as a disabled man?

Peter: It’s really tricky. I find it quite difficult, I read a paper that someone had written when we were doing the research where basically they cast him as the ultimate all time villain.  On a visceral level I couldn’t understand it because if you do suffer a horrific accident your first instinct is how do I recover from this, so of course you can understand that in his own life.   But what is for sure is that he realised that he wasn’t just doing it for himself but for all the others in the US in a similar situation. To help make those advances available to people for the greater good.

What we felt is what you see in the story which was Christopher’s focus, and that he was living his life. He went back to act and he made his career as a public speaker plus he directed two films and so he was living a very fulfilled life.  Also, he was travelling the world, in part to try and galvanize scientists and doctors and different communities.

Ian: Take his breathing, anything that meant he was able to breathe unassisted would have made a huge change to him and his family, to the costs involved and also some more privacy with his family without round the clock carers so I completely understand his drive.

I think what is interesting to examine is that he lived nine years only following injury.  Did what he impose on himself because he was so frantically looking for a solution and trying to use himself as a guinea pig and doing all these exercises? Did that exhaust him and did that prevaricate more injuries potentially which are very hard to evaluate? You don’t know how far you’ve pushed; you don’t know if you are hurt because you don’t feel anything.  My own opinion is that he may have shortened his life because he pushed himself too much.

To find a solution he actually sacrificed himself. Is not that making him even more of a hero?

Peter: There are many conversations that we are still having ourselves about Christopher about these feelings and how we have aimed to work out how to balance that in the film and not to skirt the fact that he did cause controversy and that he did cause division.

Ian: We saw Ella, our lived experience advisor living a fulfilled life with spinal cord injury and this is what had a huge impact on us, she is extraordinary and so strong and in a happy relationship and that is the example that Peter and I love and inspired us.

It’s important that we as non-disabled people understand this and absorb this, so we are able as filmmakers to pass it on to another part of the community.
READ OUR FULL INTERVIEW WITH ELLA HERE

Whilst making the movie did your perceptions change at all about spinal cord injury?

Ian: What was fascinating was to see how far we have moved from the early 90’s to now in terms of research but that at the same time how far there is to go in the understanding of the public and in science. It is interesting that it is the same conversations going on as it was 40 years ago yet back then very few people were talking about it but now many more are. In fact, in the UK representation of disability has transformed in recent years.

It is important that we understand as non-disabled people that it is not about someone who is different to you, it’s about you understanding more about them.  It is for us to push and interrogate people to question their own perceptions of disability.

For many people with SCI in the UK, it is a daily struggle just to keep going with many barriers to overcome and can be very different in the UK than the USA.

Peter: The whole health and social care crisis that the UK is facing, we understand how that is a huge worry for many people.

Even Christopher came to realise just how much resource is needed to keep going but he would acknowledge he was very lucky in that regard.

We hope that this film helps the conversation for people who need the conversation on spinal cord injury, its impact on people’s lives and the many barriers they have to face.

Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story is released to UK cinemas on 1^st November 2024.