"Hello, Clark." "I've been expecting you." "We had always wanted Christopher Reeve to guest-star on the show and we wanted a sort of passing of the torch from one generation Superman to the next." "Clark Kent and Superman was the vision of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster two teenagers who grew up on Long Island." "And I met them when we did the first movie." "You realize that this character's been around since 1938." "Comic books of Superman went with the troops in World War II as morale boosters." "It's a very important piece of American pop culture, mythology." "It's about hope." "It's about what friendship means." "It's about leadership." "It's about discovering yourself." "And all those things are relevant to every generation and I'm glad that the character has survived the test of time and will always be reinvented for each generation." "Christopher Reeve's casting in the Superman film is such a pivotal point in comic and film history." "That such an appropriate actor was put into the suit of a fictional character that he really electrified the legend of the character even more by his attractiveness as a male model type of guy." "But his clarity of performance the physicality he brought to it." "And then, of course, he's the first guy actually playing two separate people in these roles trying to make it convincing that you could be mistaken as to knowing Clark Kent and not thinking that's the same guy." "And he pulled it off." "We called Chris' agent and said, "Would he be interested?" "What is his connection to Superman now?" "Is he still interested?"" "And he'd seen the show and really enjoyed it." "I was skeptical when I heard about it at first." "But I must say that the writing, the acting and also the special effects were really quite remarkable." "When Al and Miles came to us in the writers' room and said:" ""Christopher Reeve is gonna do the show," I damn near fell out of my chair." "I couldn't believe we were gonna have this opportunity." "They wrote, I still think, one of the best shows that I'd ever read." "It was so rich with emotion, and it was so much about Clark's discovering something about himself." "And it'd be the first time he would really learn he was alone in the universe." "And to hear that from someone who had played the part and someone who was so in the audience's mind identified with Superman, was magical." "One of my receiving stations picked up a faint signal." "Took me years to decrypt it." "And finally I discovered a mathematical key that was built into the transmission." " Can you read it?" " Yes." "It says, "This is Kal-El of Krypton our infant son, our last hope." "Please protect him and deliver him from evil."" "I had the opportunity to work with Christopher Reeve." "He is probably the most knowledgeable guy on Superman in the world." "The guy knows every single date, fact, time, everything." "We got to the point in our discussion where I had to ask him..." "I said, "Wait." "I don't wanna know that stuff."" "And I explained to him that, luckily, growing up I had seen the Superman films, but I didn't know them so much." "I didn't follow the mythology that much." "So when I came on to Smallville..." "When I read the first script, I didn't have that knowledge in my head, floating around, so I'm able to go at Clark with only the information I get on Smallville." "I don't know who he'll become." "So I'm figuring him out just as he's figuring himself out." " In fact, there are two Clark Kents." "The character that Tom plays is more modeled on the character that Jeff East played in Superman I." "If you remember the scenes in Kansas where Glenn Ford and Phyllis Thaxter where you see Smallville High, you see him at the farm that character is what Tom is doing." "But then when he comes to the city, that's when another persona takes place." "Where he puts on the goofy glasses and acts very shy because he's distracting suspicion that he might actually be Superman." "So in fact, Clark Kent as an adult which is what I played when I was in my late-20s is actually another persona." "It's another character." "It's an odd dilemma that we found ourselves in because we played the same character at different stages in the character's life." "A lot of the information he had was about a character who I don't know as well as the character that I'm playing differs slightly from his background when he played Superman." "He brought humanity to the character because he treated it with respect." "At that time, when I'm sure it was like, "Just put on the suit and run around" he wanted to get underneath the skin of that character." "That's why I think the movie endures." "What was interesting, which is different from the show in the film, Superman is the character and Clark Kent is the disguise." "And in our show, Clark Kent is the character, and down the road Superman will be the disguise." "So I think it's a different..." "It's just a different take on the same material." "One of the most exciting moments that happened when we came to New York the first year and shot "Rosetta" was when Tom and I first met Christopher." "And there was just this feeling in the air." "When those two met each other you really felt the passing of the torch and the sort of excitement that Tom had meeting him." "And Christopher is really..." "There's something mythic about him." " Is that where Krypton is?" " No." "That's where Krypton was." "I followed the signal's path billions of miles out into space." "I was hoping to discover its origin, but instead I found nothing." "Season two was a slow revelation of who Clark was and where he came from." "Christopher Reeve was sort of where it all climaxed, in a way." "And we wanted him to have..." "You know, he is such an iconic figure in Superman that we wanted him to have that same sort of presence on-screen." "So we had this character, Dr. Virgil Swann, who tells Clark about the message from Krypton and also that the planet is called Krypton and what happened to it." "We actually play with the idea..." "I came up with Dr. Swann in season one, but never used him." "We were looking for the right place for him." "I remember when you were a kid and you watched those movies and Superman's everybody's idol." "He's that universal icon." "When I heard he'd be on the show, I was so excited I didn't know what to do." "The next step would be having Gene Hackman then all my dreams would be fulfilled." "I think it's really, really exciting." "The fact that somebody as prolific as Christopher Reeve has agreed to be on our show, just gives us all a feeling of accomplishment, and makes us feel good about the show that we work on." "I think that Christopher Reeve's seal of approval on Smallville is a tremendously valuable thing." "And it's a tremendous pat on the back to all of us." "With what he has been through and what he's continually going through it's amazing." " For a generation he was Superman and always wore that and always created this larger-than-life persona out of himself." "And even after his accident, the fact that he continued to fight on and continues to this day to fight on and to struggle and to make what happened to him not a handicap but a handi-able." "To show people that you can actually rise above any adversity is so true to who Superman is and who Clark is." " He is Superman." "I mean, Christopher Reeve is tireless in his efforts for his foundation and he's so incredibly knowledgeable." "And he really plans to walk again." "It's amazing what he's been able to achieve since the accident." "It's just really inspiring." "So I think he just has a real energy an enthusiasm for, and real passion for what he does that's just infectious." "And the fan reaction from that show, the letters we got, the e-mails we got was just really inspiring, actually." "You realize that people were watching the show, and it was inspiring for them." "That was moving for them to see him back and to see his love of Superman and to see our respect for him and the lore of Superman." "Why me?" "There must be a reason why I was sent to this planet." "You won't find the answers by looking to the stars." "It's a journey you'll have to take by looking inside yourself." "You must write your own destiny Kal-EI." "Please help us conquer paralysis." "Call the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation at 1-800-225-0292." "Or visit the CRPF website at christopherreeve.org." " Thank you." " Thank you." " No, thank you very much." " Thank you." "Please." "Please call."