I know that some people may want proof, so here's the article
LOIS & CLARK" EXPLORES A MORE HUMAN SUPERMAN
How can someone who's invulnerable be so vulnerable?
BY FRANK LOVECE. Frank Lovece is a free-lance writer.
THE STREETS of Metropolis are deserted on a recent day, as if some nuclear super-terrorist or a Stage Six smog alert are keeping everyone indoors. Across the street from the Daily Planet building, a movie theater draws no crowd for the double bill on its marquee: "Count Kracula vs. Son of Rodzilla" and "Farzan from the Year 2500." The flower shop Metropolis Buds has no customers. A stately, empty bank seems ripe for the robbing.
Ah, but that would bring down Superman, of course. The quintessential American superhero, going strong some five decades after bowing in Action Comics No. 1, still lives and works in his adopted city in ABC's new Sunday-night series "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman" (8 p.m. on WABC / 7). Yet on this Krypto-the-Super-Dog day afternoon, Superman, his journalist alter ego Clark Kent, and fellow reporter Lois Lane are all wisely off somewhere air-conditioned.
That turns out to be Stage 14, where the "Lois & Clark" interiors are shot. Teri Hatcher and Dean Cain, the stars, are hanging around the Daily Planet newsroom set, waiting for Randall Zisk, the fourth episode's director, to finish his camera and lighting setup. The actors, like the set itself, are dressed stylishly but not of any particular time or place. "Yeah, it's supposed to be `one minute into the future,' " drawls a seen-it-all crew member. "At least that's what they said when we started."
One minute sounds about right; ABC's old "Max Headroom" adventure series was set "20 minutes into the future," and look how punked-out that was. In contrast, the "Lois & Clark" set looks futuristic '40s. Art-deco armchairs sit beside moderne-style elevator doors; wall sconces are straight out of a Fred Astaire fantasy. Still, a computer rests on each old-fashioned desk, and one female extra this day wears tight, black leather pants.
The show, too, is a calculated mixture, straddling larger-than-life adventure and a down- o-earth romance. "The tone isn't `Equal Justice,' " notes series creator and executive producer Deborah Joy LeVine, who was executive consultant on that ABC legal drama, "but it's not Dick Tracy either. This is a realistic show - as realistic as we can be knowing someone on the Daily Planet staff is from outer space. There's nothing campy about it."
Indeed, "Lois & Clark" is not the 1960s "Batman." On the other hand, it's not "Quantum Leap" or "Starman," either. In the TV-movie premiere two weeks ago, for instance, Superman saved a space shuttle by removing a hidden bomb and, like the Tasmanian devil, eating it. He burped afterward, too. And society columnist Catherine "Cat" Grant (Tracy Scoggins) is a cartoonish, rolling-eyed vamp straight out of silent movies. As one staffer at DC Comics, Superman's home, puts it, requesting anonymity, "It's a sad comment on television when people act more grown-up in the comic books than on the show."
THE CAST AND crew don't feel that way, of course. "I don't find his character to be so comic book," asserts Cain, who plays Clark Kent. "Kent is a very human person. It just so happens he has these special gifts." Hatcher, who plays investigative reporter Lois Lane, says her character is "this terrifically well-rounded, very challenging woman's role that excites me. It's so well-written and such a fun and terrific role model that if it's a matter of being always remembered as Lois Lane, I don't mind, because I think this is a terrific Lois Lane."
The series also stars Lane Smith as editor Perry White (who has changed his character's trademark expression "Great Caesar's Ghost!" to "Great Shades of Elvis!"), John Shea as business-mogul archvillain Lex Luthor, Michael Landes as Jimmy Olsen.
This day on the set, Cain and Hatcher do seem to be having great fun, rehearsing and filming a scene time and again for director Zisk, whose credits tend toward serious fare such as "Midnight Caller." Lane and Kent are at the latter's desk, while editor White congratulates them on a job well done. Suddenly, laughter and wolf-whistles erupt and subside from some of the technical crew.
"I was sitting there," Cain later relates, "going, `Can you see her leg in this?' Because she had this slit skirt, and I was kinda tickling at her leg off-camera. So [the crew] said, `No, we can't see it . . . can we see it?' And so Teri pulled her skirt up."
That certainly would attract attention: The radiant Hatcher, among her many other credits, played the woman on "Seinfeld" whose "spectacular" breasts drove one episode's story line.
`IT'S SO FUNNY," she says, during a break in filming. "I did that episode of `Seinfeld' right before I got this part. And Jason Alexander(George on `Seinfeld'] said to me then, `Y'know, Teri, this is gonna be very good for you. People that guest on our show, great things happen for them right after they guest.' And right after that, I got this part! So while we were shooting the pilot for this, I went back to [cameo in] the `Seinfeld' season finale, and it turns out they're all such Superman fans over there! Huge! Jerry Seinfeld has Superman magnets on his apartment in their set, and they know everything about Superman, all the trivia. It was kind of a really weird karmic connection. Hopefully we'll live up to their expectations!"
Those expectations are likely tempered by the fate of "The Flash," the dark, moody superhero series, also based on a DC Comics character, that ran on CBS in 1990-91. The single-season drama was serious, relatively sophisticated family fare - and it tanked.
" `The Flash' was inhibited by many things," says LeVine, "especially by the fact all the Flash could do was be fast. There aren't too many places dramatically to go with that. With Superman, we have a wider spectrum to work with. And also, Clark Kent works at a busy metropolitan newspaper, so you get investigations and going after stories and all that." This explanation seems a bit glib - the Flash, after all, has been a successful comics character since the 1940s, and in his TV alter ego as a police forensic scientist had as much story potential as "Quincy, M.E." What "The Flash" did not have, however, is a strong romantic subplot that might appeal to those viewers - primarily female - ho liked the adventure-fantasy TV show "Beauty and the Beast."
"It's funny," LeVine remembers, "but when I came up with the title `Lois & Clark,' that sort of told me what the show was about. Usually you write the show, then come up with a title. But `Lois & Clark' sort of said everything. It's about the duet, about the unrequited love, about what happens between the two of them."
That angle was in the air when the series took seed. In late 1990, before Superman ever hit the eye of a media hurricane for his "death," he and Lane had taken center stage for their engagement. Around that time, Warner Bros., part of the Time Warner conglomerate that also owns DC Comics, bought TV rights to the Superman characters.
"Warner," says LeVine, "went to ABC and said, `We wanna do a new Superman,' and ABC said, `How about Deborah LeVine and (then-partner) Thomas Carter as executive producer?' " Carter went to work on features, Warner teamed LeVine with seasoned executive producers David Jacobs and Robert Butler, and "I came back to ABC with an approach, which was `Lois & Clark.' I didn't really wanna do a `superhero' show," says LeVine, "because I was not that interested in an invulnerable hero. I think part of the reason they came to me was they felt I would give the show a humanistic touch."
For the most part, LeVine has respected the comic-book mythos. She met with Action Comics writer Roger Stern and other Superman writers to get background and input. "The creative staff of the show has paid a lot of attention to what we've done in last seven years" since Superman's much-heralded revamping, says Stern, author of the new hard-cover novelization, "The Death and Life of Superman" (Bantam).
"They've tried to capture as much as possible what we've been doing. They've done a remarkable job, considering the things we do in comics that would cost millions to do on film."
Certainly, the special effects seem better than even in the big-budget Superman movies, thanks to ever-lowering costs and ever-increasing availability of computer-aided imagery. Still, Cain goes up, up and away with the aid of a harness, two crew members, electric fans for a billowing cape, and a green-screen backdrop. Cain's image is superimposed onto film, with the harnesses digitally erased.
The costume, almost an effect in itself, is made of Spandex with Velcro straps for the various capes, which are of different weight wools depending on how billowing they need to be. It was refined somewhat since the 1 hour 40 minute pilot, with the blue made deeper and the boots and cape modified.
And now all that's left to see is whether "Superman" will fly.
