Lorenzo di Bonaventura: Self
Quotes
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Kevin Smith : Essentially, if you read my script of "Superman Lives", it's like fan fiction. I was so nascent in my career. I was 26, 27 years old. '96, '97. So I sat down and met with a creative exec named Basil Iwanyk. He goes, "What do you think about 'Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian'?" I said, "That exists?" He's like, "Yeah. We've been trying to figure out 'Beetlejuice' for years." I was like, "What's there to figure out? Burton cracked the code." He goes, "Well, you know we've been working on -- trying to work on Superman." I was like, "Superman?" Like that was no part of the meeting I was going in for. It just came up in conversation, but he had given me the Superman script to take home and oh, good Lord. Terrible title from the jump. Might as well have just said, "Superman Remarketed For a New Generation". You know? It was just not the Superman movie I ever would have imagined. There was a scene in it I remember specifically where Clark Kent's going to a psychiatrist and talking about like having this, "I'm Superman" conversation and the psychiatrist is like, "No, you're not." This is something for a comic book fan, particularly that time and place in my life, I was like, "Oh, why don't you just piss on the Gospels? Why don't you just make Jesus dick jokes? This is ridiculous!" Why not just reach out to the guys who do the comic books? They would get it, this guy don't get it. He goes, "Yeah, but those guys are comic book guys." I swear to you, that was 1996 mentality. I get another call from my agent. He goes, "You made it all the way up the chain, dude. You're gonna go meet with Lorenzo di Bonaventura, the head of Warner Bros." I was like, "Really?"
Lorenzo di Bonaventura : I was the executive in charge of it for quite a period of time when I was at Warner Bros. Jon Peters came to Warners and said, "Listen, I think we can put all these rights together." We put the rights together. Kevin Smith came in with a really great take.
Kevin Smith : Lorenzo is the first one to ever say this of everyone I met with. He goes, "Alright, well, what would you do differently?" And I was like, "Oh. Well..." I changed the title; it wasn't "Superman Reborn", I want to call it "Superman Lives". I thought that sounded cool, plus "Fletch Lives" had always sounded cool to me so I was like, let's borrow that from "Fletch Lives" and call it "Superman Lives". More of like "Yeah!" That's more than "Superman Reborn", same idea but to me a little bit better. He's going, "I want to send you over to meet with Jon Peters." I know who he is, he's a producer. He's a producer with Peter Guber on "Rain Man" and 1989's "Batman" of course.
