Christopher Reeve

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty four, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Christopher Reeve0:30

Our Castaway This Week is an actor with a very wide range and many interests, it's Christopher Reeve.

Christopher Reeve0:37

Christopher, with what degree of dread would you view a desert island? Could you endure loneliness?

Speaker 30:41

I think given these records that I'm going to take with me, probably it would be easier. But no, I am a social person, and I think that that's part of why I'm an actor. There is that need to communicate with our fellow beings, and I think that an actor without an opportunity and a location to perform would be a miserable kind of person. No, I would have to be back among people. Pretty soon. Pretty soon, yeah.

Christopher Reeve1:06

Music means a lot in your life.

Speaker 31:08

Yes. So the eight records would give you some comfort.

Speaker 31:14

Isolation on the desert island from a practical point of view.

Speaker 31:18

The records, I don't pretend to be a musicologist I or anything. I'm not picking eight things for the time capsule, but eight things that would help me emotionally to get through that period.

Christopher Reeve1:28

How long did it take you to choose? Could you make a list pretty smartly or did you think about it for a few days?

Speaker 31:33

Much more instinctively. I think that's along with acting, the the first choices, the quick choices tend to be the strongest ones. What's the first one you've got on your list? At the top I have the Box Saint Matthew Passion simply because I first became acquainted with it at Cornell in a music theory class and had never quite realized how powerful one man's imagination could be musically until I heard a recording of this work.

Speaker 22:08

Anto strato ine

Speaker 12:09

Yeah.

Speaker 22:21

Lost me.

Christopher Reeve3:54

An excerpt from Bach's Saint Matthew Passion

Christopher Reeve3:58

A production conducted by Carrian with the piano singverhein and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the soloists Peter Schweier and Anton Diakov.

Christopher Reeve4:07

Which of the United States do you come from?

Speaker 34:09

Uh from New Jersey. I was born in New York and grew up in Princeton, New Jersey. It's a little town.

Christopher Reeve4:14

Yeah.

Speaker 34:15

Uh

Christopher Reeve4:15

University time.

Speaker 34:16

A little bit like Oxford, I would say, if you had to compare.

Christopher Reeve4:18

Your father a university professor, but elsewhere.

Speaker 34:21

Yes. My parents uh separated when I when I was a kid and he taught for a while at Columbia in the Slavic department.

Speaker 34:27

taught Russian at night school as a matter of fact, as well as uh doing a number of translations and then he went on to Connecticut and taught at Wesleyan, where he still teaches. He's also a novelist.

Christopher Reeve4:35

Where is

Christopher Reeve4:37

Uh-huh.

Speaker 34:37

And your mother writes too? Yes, my mother's a newspaper reporter. What were your interests at school as a boy?

Speaker 34:43

Anything except science and math. If there's any way to avoid mathematical calculations of any kind, I would uh take them. And I I didn't like science. In fact, it was in a science class when I was nine, learning all about dinosaurs or whatever, that someone came in from the local Gilbert and Sullivan Society and they said they needed a a boy soprano to play the town crier in a production of Yeoman of the Guard over at the the local theater. And I auditioned for the part and that was my first time on stage. You were living at this time with

Christopher Reeve5:13

Your mother

Speaker 35:13

Yeah.

Christopher Reeve5:13

Uh

Speaker 35:13

Was she encouraging you? Yes. I think my my mother, from a very early age, she gave both my brother and I a lot of responsibility. And we didn't ever really abuse it. And I can remember, for example, when I was 15, saying, There's a summer theater in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where I've been accepted as an apprentice. May I please have $200 and I'll be back on Labor Day. And she let me go for nine weeks. And in fact, you know, I saw her once. She came up to see if I was still alive. I took her out for a sandwich and a root beer at the local drive-in. Said, I'm doing just fine. I've got to go back and paint the sets now. Goodbye. She had great confidence in you.

Christopher Reeve5:49

She had great confidence in you.

Speaker 35:51

Amazing woman.

Christopher Reeve5:52

Of course, your theatrical career was interrupted. You went to Cornell. You said that you were in the music theory class. Were you reading music?

Speaker 35:58

Not really. I was an English literature and theatre major, but I took what's called a minor in in music theory, which means that you don't have to take it to as as advanced a stage as you would a major subject, but it's something that you follow in brackets with your main subject. So I took theory up to sort of a reasonably advanced level. Were you doing university theatricals, or was that beneath you? Oh no. It was a very much above me, as a matter of fact, because there was a professional training program there and uh they had uh ten graduate students from all over the country. But there was a a level of work that went on there that was quite amazing. And I remember thinking it was difficult because I had come in there with already some professional experience and I got cast in the leads quite quickly over the graduate students and uh I was not particularly popular there for a while I think with a certain few grad students.

Christopher Reeve6:50

With a certain few grad students. That I can understand. Let's have your second record.

Speaker 36:52

Yeah.

Speaker 36:54

The second one is the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2, The Second Movement.

Speaker 37:00

After after Cornell, I just say this by way of introduction, I went to the Juilliard School in New York, which many people think of as just a a music school, but it's music and acting. John Hausman runs the or ran the drama division. This particular piece, the Rachmanonov, was the year that I was there, the piece that was being held in competition from all the piano students. And the the winner would get to play it with the Juilliard Orchestra. And I'll never forget sitting there in the Juilliard Theater listening to this all-student orchestra with this girl, whose name I can't remember, having been picked to be soloist. Who's playing it on the table? This is Van Clyburn now with the Chicago Symphony.

Christopher Reeve7:37

This is vanity.

Christopher Reeve9:39

Rachmaninoff's concerto number two in C minor.

Christopher Reeve9:44

Quite early on, Christopher, you decided to explore the European theatre.

Speaker 39:48

Yes, I uh was also looking for a way to get out of school. It's funny, having gone to college I found it very restricting. All my instincts were moving me towards a career in the theater, and yet I had pressure from both my parents to finish college. I don't know whether it was a status symbol or something my my mother didn't make it through college because I came along at an inopportune moment or whatever, but she never did get to finish college and always I used to go on and on and on about do whatever you want with your life, but go get a college degree. So there I was upstate New York in the snow drifts, thinking, What can I do to get out of here? I said, I know, I'll go to Europe and I'll make a thorough study of the British repertory system. And I'll think of a good reason why I'm doing that later on as a project. As a project.

Christopher Reeve10:31

As a project.

Christopher Reeve10:33

Yeah.

Speaker 310:33

And I I started with the Citizens' Theatre in Glasgow and worked my way down through practically every company that I could think of. You just turned up and said, I'm an American student. I want to observe and I want to do a little work with you. Hello, yes. May I come to rehearsals, talk to your actors? And I was interested in why is it that the community supports theater so readily here and that the theater is part of everyone's daily life, not just a um select or privileged minority that has the affluence to go to the theater. The Citizens' Theatre in Glasgow, I believe, is really a citizens' theater. The McCarter Repertory Company in Princeton, New Jersey is a place for people who are making you know a certain amount a stockbroker and his wife can afford to go for a comfortable Friday evening. And it's just it's safe, it's traditional, no one really gets shaken. And I think that theater here can be more political, it can be more involving and just generally more important to the community. So I just did a study of how do British actors work, what are their instincts, what is their training like as opposed to ours, and wrote up a paper. It was a fudge, really. I got away with murder, but it was a nice trip. You also checked in at the National while you were here. Yes. What did you do there? I worked backstage unofficially. If you went to the National right now, no one would remember me. But they were doing a production of the front page. And at the bottom of the cast list, it's, you know, whores, beggars, townspeople, etc. And they were all trying to do American accents. And I noticed that some were limping along here and there. And I said, listen, if you don't mind, I can tell you a vowel sound or two. And I was allowed to hang around on that basis. Let's have record number three. Record number three is La Mer by Dibusy. I've picked this because on my desert island, again, I'll be seeing a lot of the sea sitting there surrounded by water. And as I look at it, I'd like some music to go along with it that helps me to think kindly of it as a warm and appealing place rather than as some forbidden wasteland. So this is Eugene Ormendi in the Philadelphia Orchestra with Dibusy La Mer.

Christopher Reeve13:57

An excerpt from Debussy's La Mer played by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormondy.

Christopher Reeve14:04

What was your first Broadway production? You were with the Catherine Hepburn and a pl

Speaker 314:08

I don't know if I was with Catherine I was near Catherine Hepburn. We were on the same stage, but to the extent that we were with, I'm not sure. I don't mean to sound flip about that, but it was my first big job out of drama school. I had graduated from Juilliard and much to the envy of my friends got this very big part in a play by Enid Bagnold about a a woman and her grandson.

Speaker 314:31

And they all thought, well, that's the end of him. He's off to fame and fortune. Actually, none of us really came out of the play because it was a written by Enid Bagnold when she was eighty-seven, and she didn't bother with the formalities of playwriting. She'd get tired of a character and just sort of leave him stranded on the stage. He wouldn't even get an exit. And the focus would go to somebody else. So I remember being quite wooden and very afraid in that part, but I did have the privilege of spending this time with Catherine Hepburn, who took a very great interest in me, probably because since I was playing her blood relation, she took that kind of an interest in me as though I were actually her grandson. And it became really a full-time job, so that she suddenly got very involved in my life and my diet and who my friends were and what museums I went to see. And we'd arrive in some place, you know, out of town in Toronto or something. Bang, a list of museums would go up on the callboard, and you must see this exhibit by such and such a time, and this orchestra is playing here and that. And no nonsense. I mean, to her, I mean, life is steak, ice cream, and fresh air, and getting to bed early, and no monkey business. So I remembered being rather overwhelmed by this experience. And sometimes you didn't quite know what she was going to do when you came on stage. I had an entrance. I was to arrive coming home for the weekend, and she's downstage left waiting for me. And the blocking called for me to go running downstage and we'd embrace each other. But sometimes I'd go for this embrace, and she'd take this walking stick that she had and suddenly hold it out like a sword.

Speaker 316:07

And and I'd get it in the solar plexus as I came from my hug and I'd sort of th after a while I was very tentative, I never quite sort of edging over stage left to see whether I was gonna get challenged to duel or whether be be hugged and embraced.

Christopher Reeve16:16

Whether I was going to get challenged.

Christopher Reeve16:20

You didn't do another Broadway play until the 5th of July. What was that?

Speaker 316:24

The Fifth of July was a play by Lanford Wilson, who is at the forefront of our dramatist with David Mammet and Sam Shepherd, about a reunion of kids who were in college together in the late sixties at Berkeley and what's happened to them over the last few years.

Christopher Reeve16:38

Oh yes, you played a homosexual part in that.

Speaker 316:40

Al also a man with no legs, which is the more the more governing factor of his life, is that he hasn't m missing his legs from above the kneecap.

Christopher Reeve16:47

You were also cast as a homosexual in one of your first films, Death Trap, in which you fell in love with Michael Kaine. You had to watch typecasting at this point. You did have your legs in the film.

Speaker 316:51

Yeah.

Speaker 316:57

I had my legs, yeah, that character he wasn't in love with Michael Cain. He says, I want a shortcut and I don't care whose property it goes through So he was pretending that whole homosexual thing to get himself

Christopher Reeve17:07

Myself ahead in the business. There was a very interesting film, or what sounds a very interesting film, alas I didn't see it, monseigneur. Yeah.

Speaker 317:14

Mm.

Christopher Reeve17:14

Yeah.

Speaker 317:14

Yes, if you did see it, I would have to pay you two pounds fifty as a refund for the money you spent at the cinema. It was one of the worst films in the history of life. It sounds interesting. Yeah, so do many things. No, it it it's sure. It just didn't deliver because I I think what they did is they picked up all the outtakes off the floor and released them in 1600 cinemas. And left They must have. I have never seen a movie that is so different from the original intent to the execution and release. Let's have another record, number four. This next record I've picked, going back to what it's going to be like to be on this island, this is the emotional romantic side of loneliness. And sitting there on the island, I'm going to be thinking day after day about love and about relationship and girlfriend in the past and my lady now. And I think you need something to express it musically. And this song is by Stephen Sondheim, sung by Carly Simon, and it's called Not a Day Goes By.

Christopher Reeve18:36

Not a d

Speaker 118:37

Day goes by

Speaker 118:42

Not a single day

Speaker 118:48

But you're somewhere a part of my life.

Speaker 118:54

And it looks like you'll stay

Speaker 118:58

As the days go by

Christopher Reeve19:04

I keep thinking, when does it end? Where's the day I

Speaker 119:12

I have started forgetting

Speaker 119:16

But I just go on thinking and sweating and cursing and crying and turning and reaching and waking and dying. And no

Christopher Reeve19:31

Uh Not a day goes by

Christopher Reeve19:36

Not a blessing.

Speaker 119:38

But you're still somehow part of my life.

Speaker 119:47

And you won't go away So there's hell to pay And until I die

Christopher Reeve20:03

I'll die.

Christopher Reeve20:05

Day after

Christopher Reeve20:07

After day after day, after day after day after day, till the days go by.

Christopher Reeve20:19

How the days go by

Christopher Reeve20:28

Stephen Sondheim's song Not a Day Goes By from Merrily We Roll Along, sung by Carly Simon.

Christopher Reeve20:35

You made a series of three very celebrated films, The Superman Trio, one, two, and three.

Christopher Reeve20:42

Now this American comic book hero, but the films were made in Britain.

Speaker 320:46

Yes, Britain has the best special effects people in the world. And they are freelance, so that you can call up an individual and say, please come to work for us. Whereas in the States, you have to take the studio guy who fills that slot, who may not be the best. And over here, there must have been financial deals and production things that I'm not aware of. But I can't think of a better place to make a film. It's a wonderful industry over here, and it's not dead by any means, no matter what anybody says. Well, that's encouraging.

Christopher Reeve21:15

It must have been very uncomfortable some of it. I mean, all those process shots with you hanging about in the air.

Speaker 321:21

Mm.

Christopher Reeve21:22

How high up were you?

Christopher Reeve21:23

At at times up to two hundred feet.

Speaker 321:25

Two hundred feet. Yeah. On the end of a string. Two strings. Two strings. If it had it been one string I would have come down more quickly than planned. But yes, I was at the end of a construction derrick and hauled up the side of skyscrapers. And I one time, uh, in Superman Three, the last shot of Superman Three, I flew up and out of Battersea Power Station on the on the other side of the river there.

Christopher Reeve21:29

2010.

Christopher Reeve21:44

Yeah.

Speaker 321:44

Which is supposed to be a coal mine in Kentucky, and uh we drew quite a crowd that day.

Christopher Reeve21:48

How did they hoist you?

Speaker 321:49

You you had a a crane up there or you take a construction crane and you you have a long cable to a T bar and beneath the T bar are two very thin sixteenth inch five hundred pound test wires, going down to a um sort of a a nappy really. I mean this is a sort of leather number that you wear underneath with two attach points on the hips. And simply by balancing the body, which is done through extending the hands and the feet, you you maintain an equilibrium and and then are are hoisted and and it takes quite a lot of coordination. There were eight guys who I worked with as my flying team who went everywhere with me and and knew my sort of dynamics and I knew what their moves were. And we got it to the point by the middle of Superman One where I think we achieved pretty realistic simulation of a human being flying. And you didn't use double?

Christopher Reeve22:40

Perhaps this was all you? No, I'm not doubled anywhere, no. Oh, Christopher, I I admire you for doing all that.

Speaker 322:44

When I put on the costume, I went crazy. I just I did things. You'd put that costume on and you'd just become somebody else. I mean, they'd used to have to drag me away from some of these scenes before I hurt myself. Particularly walking through fire, things like that. I mean, I was very keen, it was very young, it was being you know, uh opportunity of a lifetime. And I'd sometimes take the clothes off and think, I can't believe where I was today.

Speaker 122:55

Protect

Speaker 323:07

That's insane. But actors have this willingness to believe that keeps them going. You earned your fame and fortune the hard way. Yes. Let's have some more music. Next comes, oh, we go back for me to Beethoven. And the grandmaster of all pianists, certainly in this century, playing Beethoven is Artis Schnabel. And I remember this recording of the middle sonatas. This is Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 10 in G, opus 14, number 2, because this was one of the first pieces. Having played the piano since I was about 8, by the age of 15, I was ready to tackle some difficult music. And this was one of the pieces that I went after time and time again. And I can remember sometimes that I would practice an hour, get really frustrated, particularly at the very fast runs and the difficult fingering. Then I'd go over to the record player and put this on and go, huh.

Speaker 323:58

Hmm, how do I get from here to there? And just this endless feeling of the difference between me and and my my piano teacher encouraged that. He said, Now, you know, work for yourself and then listen to where you're trying to go. Needless to say, several years after that I gave up trying to play classical piano and now I really just improvise. But uh this piece brings back memories and I'd like to have some nice memories on my desert island, memories of m my early years playing the piano.

Christopher Reeve25:47

Arto Schnabel playing part of Beethoven Sonata No. ten in G major.

Christopher Reeve25:53

From the high-pressure Hollywood-style Superman to a film from a Henry James novel, a much quieter film altogether, The Bostonians.

Speaker 326:02

Yes, a deliberate choice. Merchant Ivory, James Ivory and Ismail Merchant, are an independent company who've been making films together for twenty-one years and they retain complete control over what they're doing. They have no studio executives talking over their shoulder and all the money goes on the screen. So I took ten percent of my usual salary.

Speaker 326:25

And we went off to upstate New York and Martha's Vineyard in Boston and made this story beautifully written by Ruth Chabvala from the Henry James novel. Vanessa Redgrave is in it, Jessica Tandy, Linda Hunt, who was in the Year of Living Dangerously, Wallace Sean, all of us working really for peanuts. And actually we had T-shirts printed up saying, I did it all for curry because about every Friday Ismail would cook up a curry for us to keep us all happy. But I tell you, I got more satisfaction out of doing that film for curry, uh, so to speak, than I did some of the bigger things for a lot of

Christopher Reeve26:59

Bucks

Christopher Reeve26:59

And one Henry James subject led to another the Bostonians led to the Asburn Papers, which are playing in London's beautiful Theatre Royal Haymarket at the moment.

Speaker 327:08

Yes, and and it marks the second time that I've worked with Vanessa Redgrave, which is proving to be a very, very happy collaboration. When we were doing the Bostonians, an American actress named Glenn Close was supposed to play the part of Miss Olive. We were supposed to start shooting on a Wednesday, the Friday before her contract fell apart.

Speaker 327:25

And over the weekend there were flurried telephone calls, and Vanessa phoned me, we'd known each other before, and suddenly she was in the Bostonians. Then over Christmas she decided she wanted to do the Aspirin Papers here

Speaker 327:37

And asked me if I would join her. So we've had a home game and an away game. Each of us has invited the other into a project.

Christopher Reeve27:43

What happens next? What are you up to?

Speaker 327:45

Next I'm going to go sailing.

Christopher Reeve27:46

You're going safe.

Speaker 327:46

Uh

Christopher Reeve27:46

Uh

Speaker 327:46

Yes, good sailing.

Christopher Reeve27:46

That's good.

Speaker 327:47

Probably get the boat in the water. I have a a forty foot sloop named Shondell, which is a Swan forty I keep in Massachusetts. And uh she'll go overboard May sixth because I close in the aspirin papers May fifth. And I'll take

Christopher Reeve28:01

And I know

Speaker 328:02

The first Concorde out. And I don't want to imply haste here, but sailing season comes early May. And I would probably sail down east, down to Maine. What else in the theater or in films? Anything lined up? Well, we're discussing at the moment, as a matter of fact, going off to Venice and using a screenplay by James Saunders and the director Claude Waltham and Vanessa and myself of organizing and shooting a film of the Aspirin Papers, which would be a cross between the stage play and the Henry James novel. You couldn't take the play by itself because its conventions are very theatrical. You would need to find ways to open it out. So that's the next practical thing on the boards. Well, that's interesting. Another record. We've got to number six. Right, well I'm back on my island and now I'm lying on the beach. Night has fallen and uh I assume I'm not freezing to death. It's a it's a very nice tropical desert island. And uh having looked at the sea and thought about girlfriends, etc., I now have to look at the stars. And while I'm doing that I'd like some very nice music.

Speaker 329:05

Some very relaxing music, and this particular track is from Apollo, Atmospheres and Soundtracks recorded by Brian Eno.

Christopher Reeve30:05

Brian Eno's an ending from an album called Apollo. Now your other interest. You talked about uh sailing, which you're going to do very successfully. You you ski as well.

Speaker 330:16

Yes. I don't like speed skiing, but I I do like tackling difficult mountains if I can.

Christopher Reeve30:22

And you fly, you're a pilot?

Speaker 330:23

Mm-hmm.

Christopher Reeve30:24

You do like tackling difficult flights. You've flown the Atlantic solo. Yes. Was that easy? No.

Speaker 330:30

Uh

Speaker 330:31

That's

Christopher Reeve30:32

It came

Speaker 330:32

Closest to being one of the great disasters of my life. Tell me about that. Well, you would think that Europe's a big place and it wouldn't be that hard to find, but on the last leg of the flight I I left Reykjavik aiming for Glasgow. I was going to overfly Stornaway in the Outer Hebrides as a kind of landfall. And after three hours and a half, only having five hours in my fuel tank, Stornaway didn't show up. Just couldn't be found. Tuned into all various beacons and twiddled various knobs, nothing was happening. What was the visibility like? Oh, I was in freezing rain in zero zero in the middle of cloud the whole time.

Christopher Reeve30:35

How about

Speaker 331:05

Couldn't see anything. I was using the de-icers and the heat was on and I was flying strictly IFR instrument flight. So couldn't see anything. And when you've flown three and a half hours and you know you've only got ninety minutes left and you don't know where you are and you could be north in the Faroe Islands or south or maybe you've got blown off course and you're going to the Azores or whatever, that's the first time I really have made all kinds of severe promises to I'll you let me out of this, I'll call my mother, I'll stay home, I'll give up this, that and the other thing. I really, really panicked and I think that's it's the most scared I've ever been in a situation of my own making.

Speaker 331:46

Ever. I got a hold of myself. I mean, you you do remember from your training that that panic is your worst enemy, and you've got to find a practical solution. You you simply have to make your mind cause you to do active things. So I suddenly thought, Well, what's happened here is that the winds that they forecast, the winds aloft, are wrong and I've been blown off course because I was doing it totally without radio aid. I was flying for three hours just blind, holding a heading based on wind prediction. Finally, I was on voice control with Scottish Control, who were in Prestwick. And I said, May I have permission to phone Shannon and see if they have some airplane squawking my transponder identification number on their screen?

Speaker 332:24

And it was a very lucky thing, because, yes, there I was. I was about seventy miles.

Speaker 332:28

northwest of Shannon.

Speaker 332:30

And they brought me in and I landed and uh whose fault was it went to the bathroom.

Christopher Reeve32:33

Was it your navigation or?

Speaker 332:36

Probably my fault for being out there flying that leg like as though I were Lindbergh, you know, flying that leg without without any radar backup or anything. Because on that section of the flight there was a two and a half hour section where I had no radio navigation aids at all. You're just holding a heading. Now since then I immediately went back home and had Loran, which is a which is a worldwide radar.

Speaker 132:54

Fair enough.

Speaker 332:59

a to navigation thing so that next time I fly the Atlantic I'll know exactly where I am.

Christopher Reeve33:03

Yeah.

Speaker 333:03

Good.

Christopher Reeve33:05

What about gliding? You've tried to beat a record in a glider.

Speaker 333:08

Yes, yes, or yes, it didn't make it, but but it was a thrill. Oh. What was the record you were after? Forty two thousand feet. And I made it to thirty one thousand feet. That's really just an endurance test.

Christopher Reeve33:12

What was the record you were

Speaker 333:20

Let's have record number seven.

Christopher Reeve33:21

Yeah.

Speaker 333:21

When I was in high school I used to do a lot of choral singing and I briefly was in a madrigal group and uh conducted the school choir. This is back in Princeton, New Jersey. One of the very first choral pieces that I conducted was this piece by Mozart, Abe Verum, which is I think a motet. So I just wanted to pick this as such a beautiful choral sound. It reminds me of that time back in school when I tried a little conducting.

Christopher Reeve34:56

Mozart's Ave Verum by the Bach Choir conducted by Sir David Wilcox.

Christopher Reeve35:01

I don't think there's any doubt at all, Christopher, you're going to be very resourceful on a desert island. You'll rig up a shelter, no trouble.

Speaker 335:07

Oh yes.

Christopher Reeve35:07

Uh What about food? You've done some fishing?

Speaker 335:10

I've done some fishing, yes. I figured that I'm gonna go for the odd coconut or two as well. Any idea on escaping?

Speaker 335:16

No, I figured that this desert island is out of reach of everywhere, and that that what you have to do here is to make peace with the idea of being on this island. And imagine this is an environment that you must adapt to. What I'm saying is I do expect to be rescued someday, but I'm not going to pine away in a in and drive myself crazy for it. Um this next record is about my wish for what might have happened in the world while I was away, that maybe things have gotten better and uh this is a subject that John Lennon is singing about in his greatest record that he ever made, Imagine.

Christopher Reeve36:09

Imagine there's no heaven.

Christopher Reeve36:16

See if you try

Christopher Reeve36:22

Go hell.

Christopher Reeve36:24

Yeah.

Speaker 236:24

Below us

Speaker 136:29

Above us only sky.

Speaker 136:35

Imagine all the people.

Speaker 136:40

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 136:42

Go

Christopher Reeve36:42

On today

Christopher Reeve36:48

Imagine there is no control

Christopher Reeve37:01

Coming to kill or die

Christopher Reeve37:07

No religion too.

Christopher Reeve37:13

Magic all the people

Christopher Reeve37:19

Living life and be

Speaker 237:22

Who is you?

Speaker 237:26

You may say I'm a dreamer

Speaker 237:33

Uh

Speaker 137:33

But I'm not the only one.

Speaker 137:38

I hope someday you join the

Christopher Reeve37:51

John Lennon, imagine if you could take just one disk out of the eight. You lose seven in the surf. Which one do you hang on to?

Speaker 337:57

Hmm.

Speaker 337:58

You're asking a Libra to make this choice. I mean, it's hard enough for to choose fish or meat. Um I would have to say because of what it represents in terms of hopefulness, in terms of uh a wish for the world, you you you would have to go with

Christopher Reeve38:13

With Imagine John Lennon.

Christopher Reeve38:15

One luxury to take with you, one object of no practical use at all that would give you pleasure to have with you.

Speaker 338:20

Well, it's not practical yet. It would be very necessary for me, and that's scuba diving equipment and a compressor. And that's not useful? Well, it's only useful in this way. It's not you can't catch a fish swimming around with your bare hands. I'm I'm saying we'll leave behind the harpoon gun and the knife, okay? But we will keep the flippers and the the the tank and because what I want it for is to be able to change perspective on this island. See, I'm frying all day on the beach, sliding up and down coconut trees, and I'm going quietly crazy in the sun and to be able to go down into the water in the cool and to see the coral and the fish and it's to explore that world and and the peaceful weightless feeling of being down there. That's all.

Christopher Reeve38:57

Right, with adaptation you shall have it.

Christopher Reeve38:59

And one book. You already have the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. I want

Speaker 339:03

Something that helps me to go inwards towards meditation, towards a kind of peace with myself and acceptance of destiny. So I pick a very simple book. It's written by Paul Brunton and it's called The Inner Real

Christopher Reeve39:16

Reality. Right. The inner reality by Paul Brunton. And thank you, Christopher Reeve, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Thank you. Goodbye, everyone.