Show Business: Onward and Upward with the New Superman

"You will be picked up at 7 p.m. and taken to a spot 25 minutes away by car. Where? We can't tell you that. We will say only that it is not on the island of Manhattan." Mission: Impossible! No, just a reporter being escorted last week to the set of Superman, possibly the most supersecret, superpublicized movie ever to be shot—at least within 25 minutes of midtown Manhattan.

The spot turns out to be a street in Brooklyn Heights overlooking New York harbor, with Manhattan as a cinemascopic background. Superman, after a hard day's work going faster than a speeding bullet and leaping tall buildings at a single bound, spots a cat caught in a tree and swoops down to the rescue. How does he swoop? How, in fact, does he fly? Ah, that is the reason for the cloaks and the daggers: the producers are terrified a photographer will follow the reporter and show Superman being held up by a 100-ft. crane and wires. Says a spokesman, "We don't want anyone to destroy the illusion of flight."

Even with the crane and wires, flying is not easy. Christopher Reeve, 24, who plays Superman, has to make a dozen or so passes 50 ft. in the air before he bags his cat, made suitably cooperative by the taxidermist. Every once in a while Superman is brought down for an adjustment of his ailerons. He has 25 different costumes and perhaps six different kinds of capes—for standing, sitting, flying and coming in for a landing. He is now wearing his flying cape, which is stretched out with wires so that it appears to billow in the wind. The changes made, he goes back into the air, accompanied by cheers from local residents who are hanging out of windows. "Hey, Supraman, why cantcha get the cat?" someone shouts in that rich blend of gravel and adenoids known as Brooklynese. "Thattaboy, Supraman!" yells another when he actually touches the dusty beast.

Rescuing cats—a sign of his humanity, says Director Richard Donner—is the least of Superman's good deeds. Producers Ilya Salkind, 29, and Pierre Spengler, 30, are determined to outdo the special effects of Star Wars—and reap its profits. "At one time it was exciting to see Superman hold up the end of a truck," says Tom Mankiewicz, the last of five scriptwriters brought in to turn comic strip into film strip. "Now you see Lindsay Wagner do things like that every week on TV for free. So we had a problem, and Superman's feats had to be very, very spectacular. We had to go whole hog."

X-Ray Soufflé. Frying those pork chops may cost upwards of $33 million —without apple sauce. The budget is already well over the target of $25 million. Before the movie is finished. Superman will have 1) soldered together the Golden Gate Bridge, which has been cut in half by an earthquake, 2) rescued the President's airplane from a thunderstorm, 3) tamed the waters from a collapsing dam, 4) plucked a speedboat full of criminals from the East River and set it down, still dripping, on Wall Street, 5) caught a crashing helicopter in midair, 6) flown round the world in 90 seconds with Lois Lane in his arms, and 7) cooked a soufflé for Lois with his X-ray eyes.