“Super/Man” also touches on his connections to Williamstown. It was at the Williamstown Theater Festival in 1987 where Reeve met his future wife, Dana. The couple married in April 1992 at an outdoor ceremony on a Williamstown farm, and their son, William, was born in town just a few months later. (Reeve’s first son, Matthew, and daughter, Alexandra Reeve Givens, were from a previous relationship.)
“It’s just somewhere that was always very special to him,” said Matthew. “I think that’s where he just got to do what he loved without necessarily having either Hollywood eyes on him or sort of the pressure of being in a higher-stakes professional environment like Broadway.”
Even at the height of his fame during the Superman years, in between filming, Reeve would go back to Williamstown every summer to do a play for a few weeks, according to Matthew, because it was “creatively interesting and challenging to him.”
Reeve would find a Fortress of Solitude of sorts in Williamstown, buying a home for his family in town. Living in the Berkshires allowed Reeve to embrace his passion for outdoor sports and activities like horse riding. Matthew recalls the “little landing strip in a little airport in North Adams right next door” where his father would go flying and gliding.
“He also just felt really connected to the community there,” said Givens. “We grew up skiing Jiminy Peak, that’s our mountain. We rode at the local barn. Our neighbor, who’s the farmer for our valley, sold at the local farmers’ market every weekend. It was just really grounding.”
“For us it’s also home and we feel deeply connected to the community there,” she added, noting how they have family on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard. “Massachusetts is a second home to us.”
When Reeve’s family sold their house in Williamstown in 2019, they found a treasure trove of home movies. An archivist later approached them to see if they wanted to share any videos for a biographical documentary on Reeve.
“We talked amongst ourselves and thought, well, if we’re ever going to do this, now’s the time,” said Matthew. “We agreed to give them our archive and to give them ourselves, basically, to open up in these interviews and say things we hadn’t said before, share the memories we hadn’t shared publicly.”
Directed by Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui, the documentary was made with the help of production companies Words + Pictures, Passion Pictures, and Misfits Entertainment, and premiered at Sundance in January. The film then sold to Warner Bros. Discovery, which is now releasing it in theaters, coinciding with the 20th anniversary of Reeve’s death on Oct. 10, 2004.
In addition to Reeve’s children, many of his famous friends are featured in the film, including Susan Sarandon, Glenn Close, Whoopi Goldberg, Jeff Daniels, and former US secretary of state John Kerry, who befriended Reeve after an Earth Day event in Boston in 1995, just a few weeks before his accident. “Super/Man” also features an interview with Brooke Ellison, a disability advocate who was the first quadriplegic to graduate from Harvard University, prior to her death in February. Reeve directed the television movie “The Brooke Ellison Story” in 2004, which starred Lacey Chabert as Ellison.
While “Super/Man” focuses primarily on Reeve, Dana is also prominently featured. Givens calls her “the absolute rock of the family” who went to great lengths to take care of her husband and family, particularly in the aftermath of Reeve’s accident.
“Dad credited her with saving his life after the accident by reminding him that, even though his circumstances had changed beyond our recognition, he was still him and he was the person that our family needed,” Givens said, adding that “she had this incredible talent for just making joy in the most benign and kind of everyday moments.”
A Middlebury College graduate and noted performer in her own right, Dana died of lung cancer in 2006. Following her death, Reeve’s children joined the board of the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, which is dedicated to curing spinal cord injuries through the advancement of research as well as improving the quality of life for paralyzed people and their families. Both Reeve and his wife were vocal advocates on behalf of the foundation during their lives, raising funds and awareness for those with disabilities.
Reeve’s children continue to serve as directors for the foundation, with Givens noting that it has raised “over $145 million directed to spinal cord injury research.”
“The foundation runs the nation’s paralysis resource center,” Givens said. “If someone’s navigating paralysis of any kind and is calling for peer advice or how to navigate a fight with an insurance company, or how to make their home accessible, this is the place that you call.”
“It’s a credit to dad and Dana,” she added.
Looking back on their legacy, Givens can’t help but reflect on her father’s fights with insurance companies in the ‘90s and early 2000s, explaining that, at the time, they wouldn’t pay for his backup ventilator.
“He was facing lifetime caps on insurance,” Givens said. “His insurance was about to run out at the time that he died. He was fighting for it over and over again, and then the Affordable Care Act put in those protections now that everybody is entitled to insurance.”
“Of course there’s still constant work ahead, both for true equality for people living with disabilities and continued work in the medical field that needs to happen too,” she added. “But the work is continuing on strong and it’s really wonderful to see.”
“Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story” opens in theaters Oct. 11.
Matt Juul can be reached at matthew.juul@globe.com.