Lisa Bernhard

The Remains of the Day
Two years after the accident that left him paralyzed, CHRISTOPHER REEVE directs his first film, In the Gloaming

By Lisa Bernhard

The Cable Guide
April, 1997

“I think he has a kick-ass wheelchair,” says Robert Sean Leonard of Christopher Reeve, his director on the HBO film, In the Gloaming. Based on an Alice Elliott Dark short story from The New Yorker magazine, the movie is about a young man's struggle with AIDS and his family's inability to communicate. But most talk on the set is of first-time director Reeve, whose equestrian accident two years ago has left him a quadriplegic. And though the cast and crew downplay his handicap, Leonard comes clean. “He does surprise me with how in charge he is,” says the 28-year-old former Dead Poets Society star, who plays this film's lead character. “I didn't know how much pretending would be going on, how much the cinematographer would say, 'How 'bout this shot, Chris?' and Chris would just nod. But man, he is in there.”

On location in Pound Ridge, New York, with the back of a director's chair fastened to his wheelchair, Reeve is truly “in there.” While Leonard and his on-screen mother, Glenn Close, are outside shooting a heart-to-heart about sex, Reeve watches on an indoor monitor, directing them via on-set speakers. All defer to the man at the helm, yet the set is relaxed enough for Close to make between-take masturbation jokes, sending the crew into giggles.

“I was excited but not unduly worried about directing,” says the 44-year-old Reeve, who was in fact ready to roll on another directing job before his accident. Feeling “confident and in my element,” Reeve has put in 20 ten-hour days, rarely losing his patience — “something I've learned more about since my injury.” He's also learned that “not being able to move, I've had to choose my words carefully. Trying to describe to Robert how his position should be on a bench took 20 minutes. If I could stand up, I could have gotten it across in a minute.”

Says Close, 49, and a longtime friend of Reeve's, “In some ways I'm filled with a sense of irony. I've always felt that he had an extraordinary mind, and here he is...” she says, her voice drifting off. “[His mind], thank God, is still here.”

Though Reeve may have been the draw, there are many reasons why artists signed on to this project — including musician Dave Grusin, who wrote the score, costars Whoopi Goldberg and Bridget Fonda, and Reeve's wife, Dana, who sings the closing ballad. Like Reeve, Close lives close to the set and admits location “was a major reason I did it. I had been away for 12 weeks [shooting Paradise Road] in Australia, and I was desperately needing to be home.” She was also taken by how “everything isn't sewn up neatly” by the film's stoic family, a point Leonard also stresses. “Out magazine wanted me to be on the cover talking about AIDS,” the actor tells. “That's like putting Timothy Hutton on the cover of a suicide bulletin for Ordinary People. The point isn't that my character's gay or has AIDS — it's about people trying to make bridges. It's rare when you have those flashes of recognition that we're not here long; any story that reminds us of that is wonderful.”

Which, of course, is something Reeve knows too well. The beauty of the on-and off-camera stories is that both, ultimately, are about hope. “I was as independent as you can imagine, and now it's the opposite,” he says. “I looked out the window this morning — the ice is perfect on our pond — and I thought how I could be out there teaching [my son] Will, who is four, how to skate. I might brood about it for a minute or two, and then say, 'Well, never mind. On we go.'”