As we pick up on page 96, we find that Clark Kent is reporting on the decrease in crime in Metropolis all because of Superman, and nothing has changed in this beat.

But it’s the next sequence that Mario Puzo fully expands upon and creates in the second draft script. In the first draft we find Luthor and Eve at the Metropolis Museum of Natural History. It is at that time that the heist is very quick, lasting all of about one page of script. Now, in the second draft, Puzo refers to the museum as the Metropolis New York Museum of Natural History. This is very significant because, beginning in the comics of the 1970s, Metropolis was viewed as a fictional substitute for New York City.

This would be a precursor to what would occur two years later, in July 1977, when filming on numerous scenes for Superman: The Movie would occur in New York City, with the city doubling as Metropolis. This sense of verisimilitude, the feeling of truth within a fictional environment, is something that occurred in the novels and short stories of Pulitzer Prize winning author Eudora Welty, long before Richard Donner embraced the concept of verisimilitude in filming Superman. We as viewers fully know that this is New York City, but we embrace the fictional reality that is Metropolis in the films.

From this point, over the next five pages, we see Eve attempting to distract a museum security guard while Luthor cuts into the security glass and steals a fragment of green kryptonite. The guard immediately catches on to their ruse, and Luthor is left with no choice but to knock the guard unconscious before they make their getaway.

Furthermore, the reference to their break-in and theft would be referenced in an offscreen moment through a bit of dialogue spoken by Perry White in the final film.

The next scene finds Morgan Edge addressing his reporters about the oil refinery crisis in Iran. Instead of meeting with them directly, he uses the closed-circuit in-house monitors to talk with them. As he says to Perry White, “The visual, Perry, the visual. You know I like to look my people in the eye.”

And yet in the next moment we see something most unusual. According to the Puzo script, “we catch a tantalizing glimpse of a massive head and then it disappears.”

Edge then says offscreen, “These damn controls don’t work. Anyway, you don’t have to see my eyes.” The rest of the scene is written with just Edge’s voice giving offscreen directions to Clark to travel to Iran and cover the story.

Clark then asks a question that he later asks in the theatrical version of Superman II:

Edge then dismisses the reporters, and all of the monitors go off. As Perry gives them their marching orders, they all look at the monitors for several moments and wonder if they are really off and Edge is secretly overhearing them. Jimmy then makes an ominous statement about Edge that has them all wondering about his intentions: “That maniac is going to get us all killed.”

The scene then ends with Perry telling them, “Don’t worry. We have big insurance policies on all of you. I’ll give you all the stuff you need. And I’ll put you all in for a raise.” This shift in reporting assignments adds to Perry White’s character development as the managing editor of his staff that we all know him to be.

Edge’s offscreen comments and lack of appearance in the story, coupled with Jimmy’s comments, further adds a layer of mystery about Morgan Edge and makes us, the readers, why Puzo is phasing him out of the script as much as possible, referencing him in offscreen bits without seeing him. Perhaps Puzo realized that Edge was more of a superfluous element to an already packed script and decided that he needed to go. Or maybe it’s an issue that he later addresses in the expanded script. Whatever the reason, it’s something that we will look at down the road.

Next time, the Iran crisis.