Nurses Onscreen
Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story
An inspiring documentary about life before and after his disabling accident
When I was a student at Cornell University in the early ‘70s, my roommate asked if I minded if she invited a friend of hers from high school over for dinner. That evening, in walked the most handsome man I’ve ever met: His name was Christopher Reeve.
While his fame was still in the future, he dressed as if he already knew it was coming, arriving at our very small and totally unimpressive apartment in a jacket and tie.
The 2024 documentary Super/Man, now streaming on Netflix and HBO Max, tells the complicated story of this complicated man. Made with the cooperation of his three children, it is largely narrated by them and by others who were close to Reeve, covering his life and career before and after the accident that left him paralyzed in 1995.
Reeve’s childhood was not as happy as it could have been. His parents divorced when he was young, and he had a difficult relationship with his father, so he threw himself into school activities, athletics, acting, and activism. He became a political activist at age 15, and later served as a coach for the Special Olympics.
Following my brief meeting with him at Cornell, Reeve went on to Julliard. After a series of supporting roles on soap operas and then on Broadway, his career took off — literally — when he was cast as the DC Comics superhero Superman in the 1978 movie and its three sequels. He continued to appear on stage and in smaller character parts on screen.
A Tragic Accident
In 1995, when he was 43, Reeve fell from a horse during an equestrian event, breaking his neck. The accident left him quadriplegic and dependent on a ventilator. (In 2003, he underwent an experimental procedure that helped him to breathe on his own.)
However, that didn’t stop Reeve from pushing forward. After the accident, his wife Dana reminded him, “You’re still you.”
He appeared in and even directed several films and TV shows, wrote an autobiography (entitled Still Me), and became an outspoken advocate for people with disabilities. He also founded what is now called The Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, which supports research into curing spinal cord injury.
If you’ve ever spent time with a quadriplegic, you know the difficulty posed by any type of travel. Nonetheless, Reeve managed to work, make public appearances, and testify in person before the U.S. Senate and state legislatures in support of stem cell research. UC Irvine later declared that Reeve “did more to promote research on spinal cord injury and other neurological disorders than any other person before or since.”
Super/Man tells the story of Reeve’s life using interviews, clips from his movies and audiobooks, and home videos that hold nothing back about the difficulties of managing his injuries. It’s a remarkable and very moving story well told.
For anyone who works with spinal injury patients or is curious about the challenges of life as a ventilator-dependent quadriplegic, this film is an eye-opener about what’s possible and what can be accomplished.
CHRISTINE CONTILLO, RN, BSN, PHN, is a public health nurse with more than 40 years of experience, ranging from infants to geriatrics. She enjoys volunteering for medical missions.
