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2006 Movie News Archives

September 3, 2006: “Hollywoodland” Cast & Crew Speak

Diane Lane told the Boston Herald that she "always had a thing for George Reeves".

The Oscar-nominated actress plays Toni Mannix. Lane remembers her attachment to the show, "It was still on morning television when I was growing up, and George was the definition of Superman for me. I bought it hook, line and sinker in the sense that that's all he was."

Meanwhile, director Allen Coulter recounts to the Mercury News how tought it was working within the constraints set by DC Comics and Warner Bros. regarding the use of Superman...

So, Coulter, his lawyers and production crew trod carefully, reproducing the show's "faster than a speeding bullet" credit sequence from a slightly different angle and dropping passages from the prologue, such as "Superman, strange visitor from another planet who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men."

"They controlled how much we could use and when we could use it," explains Coulter, best known for his Emmy-nominated work on HBO's "The Sopranos." "But," he adds, laughing, "I think we proved we were capable of capturing the spirit of bad TV."

Gesturing toward a strategically placed poster bearing his likeness, Brody -- who made "Hollywoodland" during a break in the yearlong "King Kong" shoot -- confirms Warner's meddlesome ways. "Yeah, it was pretty difficult for the filmmakers," he says. "Names and characters had to change, and they could only use like 24 seconds of combined sound and image from the series' introduction."

Anyone who's planning on seeing "Hollywoodland" (which opens September 8th) can