GeorgeReeves Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Clint's Books, a local comic book store in the Kansas City area, will put on display a couple of very exciting pieces of geek memorabilia -- two classic George Reeves era Superman costumes. One of the costumes is the classic Superman color scheme the world is familiar with, while the other is a color variant designed to register well against a black and white color scheme. The owner of the shop, Jim Cavanaugh, is a lifetime Superman fan; he says his parents bought their first television the same year he was born, and some of his earliest memories are of watching Supes in black and white. Cavanaugh acquired the costume in a trade with a former Hollywood stuntman, complete with certificates of authenticity from the costume shop which designed and created them. Cavanaugh coughed up his vintage toy collection for the costumes, which he will now proudly show off in his comic book shop.

If ever there was a serious geek trade, it's a comic book shop owner trading his vintage toy collection for two Reeves' era Superman costumes. And oh, what deal he got!

The tragedy of George Reeves' life, according to the badly-titled new film Hollywoodland, is not that he failed to parlay his small role in Gone with the Wind into a bankable film career. It's that, following rejection, he demeaned himself by turning to television. "Take the job. Cash the check," his sweaty agent tells him, and with head hung low, Reeves heads off to a shades-drawn casting office from which we expect to see a woman come running, holding her top on. He is offered the lead role in a silly kids' show about an alien with a bulletproof torso who pranks everyone into thinking he's a human named Clark Kent. Smelling disaster, Reeves, played by a bulky and subdued Ben Affleck, puts up a small fight. "I see myself as more of a villain," he mutters. But it's too late. They have their mark. He's quickly fitted into Superman's traditional gay matador-looking outfit -- stone-gray, instead of blue and red, since there's no need to waste on color -- and pushed in front of a nation of cowboy-hatted children. To his horror, they fall in love with him.

Hollywoodland seems giddy over the fact that it's beaten James Ellroy to the punch on a story that would fit snugly into his peek-under-the-skirt-of-post-war-L.A. milieu. That special gin of seediness and sadness that abounds in Ellroy's L.A. Quartet has been mixed with care here, and it fills every nook and cranny of the movie's L.A., from the dysfunctional suburban outliers to the simmering streets of inner Hollywood. It's a town where everyone you meet has "contents under pressure" stamped on their forehead. The pool in the center of a cheap, wrap-around motel seems built for drowning someone in. The only person standing near it is a man with a tangerine-colored tan, grimacing as he lifts weights alone in the hot sun. Inside one of the motel's rooms is Louis Simo, who's having an impenetrable three-way conversation with a man in a suit and a young lady. Simo, it turns out, is exactly the kind of private dick who meets strangers in low-rent motels like this one, to pour out and pick through their dirty laundry.

Allen Coulter has been working on a biopic of George Reeves, the barrel-chested original Superman, for Back Lot Pictures and distributor Focus Features for a while now; shooting is done, and the project is thought to be either locked or virtually completed. The film's tentative title is Truth, Justice, and the American Way - which, since it's the motto of the character that made Reeves famous, seems fairly appropriate. As the studio behind the Superman movies, however, Warner Brothers, didn't agree, and threatened to sue Focus if they didn't change the title. So, as pretty much anyone would when faced with the iron fist of Warners' legal department, Focus caved, and the movie is now back to its original, just-as-catchy title: Untitled George Reeves Project.

The movie, which I don't remember hearing anything about until right now, is packed with stars: Ben Affleck (who looks only slightly more like the man than I do) plays Reeves, and among his costars are Adrien Brody, Diane Lane, and Bob Hoskins.