Ilya Salkind

So, um, it really established my reputation, and, um, uh, and onward from there.

I mean, I- so A- Alex, Alex and Ilya Salkind, the producer, or well, it's Alex on, uh, on Superman, wasn't it, really? Um, uh, he's quoted as saying, "Alex has more problems than God."

[laughs]

Uh, I think that the-

Obviously, that was an enormous industry-changing hit.

And then a couple of entrepreneurs, Alex and Ilya Salkind, fancied getting into movie production.

and they somehow managed to get the rights to superman obviously wasn't the film at the time but a big huge um iconic property obviously from dc and it'd be on tv as well and then they just they didn't really know what they were doing in terms of making a film so there's so many different stories about how they were kind of muddling the way through and and that kind of thing there's a famous story about when they were looking for a director one of the first people that went to was sam peckinbar who was the director of the wild bunch sure and if you other things had a reputation of being a bit of a wild man on set and having occasionally having a gun on set um and when i think it was alex salkin went to see him um sam peckin because alex like i'm sorry when ilya salkin went to see him who was the younger he was he was the son alex was the dad as ilya salkin was only in his 30s at the time sam peckinpah was already probably 50s 60s sitting across from each other in this meeting about the new about directing the new superman film Sam Peckinpah reportedly puts a gun on the desk and says, what do you know about making films? And then that was kind of the end of that meeting.

Good Lord.