On the set of Spider-Man (2002)

digresssmlOriginally published July 6, 2001, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1442

Spider-Man, having just saved Mary Jane from the clutches of a super-villain, lands with her on the rooftop of a Manhattan building. He exchanges a few words with her, then quickly bolts, vaulting off the roof with a mid-air somersault thrown in for good measure.

From a comic book point of view, this is fairly routine stuff. Except it wasn’t a comic book.

“Let’s go again!” called Sam Raimi from his director’s chair, as Spider-Man and Mary Jane moved back to their starting positions. The dark clouds which had been amassing from an incoming storm front—bearing with them precipitation that would have sent actors, crew and cameramen scurrying for cover and effectively ending the day of shooting—miraculously stalled offshore. The air remained brisk and snappingly cool (a sharp contrast to the several days of warm weather preceding it), but the rain that the weathermen had been forecasting for the previous two days never came. Even God, apparently, didn’t want to get in the way of the shoot.

Yes, Spider-Man, the long-awaited, hotly-debated live-action version of everyone’s favorite web-slinger, was shooting in New York City for a few days. Naturally most of what you’ll be seeing in the 2002 release is being produced on sound stages (and, against a ton of green screens, most likely). But there’s nothing like genuine New York City backgrounds to provide the kind of authentic ambiance that one wants for a film like this one. So one day late in April, the film crew had set up on a 7th floor terrace rooftop at 50th Street and 5th Avenue, to film the aftermath of a Spidey-style rescue.

Why the heck was I there? Because as of this writing (I provide that qualifier because the final publishing and licensing contracts haven’t been signed yet, so it’s merely 99% certain instead of a done deal) Ballantine/Del Rey books will be publishing the novelization tie-in of the film, and I’m slated to be writing it.

I’d sworn off writing novelizations a few years ago after the on-going script changes and incessant rewrites on Batman Forever nearly drove me insane. But I’d later stepped away from that “never-again” policy and several subsequent novelizations had gone without incident. Furthermore, Del Rey was working far enough in advance that shooting of Spider-Man would be wrapped before I started writing, which meant that I would be able to work off a final, locked script rather than something that was constantly in a state of flux.

Plus, c’mon… it’s Spider-Man. X-Men had snapped the decades-long curse of Marvel movies first begun with Howard the Duck (a film that, if first released today and with Howard done entirely with CGI, would probably have been a hit), the casting for Spider-Man didn’t have a clunker in the bunch, Raimi seemed a good choice as director, and the picture of the costume in Entertainment Weekly looked absolutely dead-on. The whole thing sounded like a quality hit to me. Consequently, I did a full court press for the project with editor Steve Saffel of Del Rey. I just kept reminding him of the working relationship we had going back to our days in sales and promotion at Marvel, my track record of novelizations, my experience writing Spider-Man (including Spider-Man 2099, which featured organic webshooters years before they became a controversial aspect of the film), and ultimately, I reminded him about the incriminating photographs I had of him. This landed me the gig.

One day Steve called me and said, “Wanna go see them filming Spider-Man?” Apparently a mini-junket had been arranged in conjunction with Sony Pictures. It was on the day that I was just returning via red-eye from Los Angeles, but I just couldn’t pass it up. Which was how I came to find myself on a Manhattan rooftop, trying desperately to keep out of the way of cameramen, prop men, sound men, etc., all passing through narrow walkways not designed with a thirty-man film operation in mind. First rule of being on movie set: No matter where you stand, sooner or later, you’ll block someone.

Dressed in leather jacket, with sunglasses on, the eye of a storm of activity (as directors so often are) was Sam Raimi. I could see the familial resemblance to his actor brother, Ted (the late, lamented Joxur of Xena, Warrior Princess), although his face was a bit more square and his voice deeper. I was introduced to him and he looked me up and down and said, in regards to my duster, “Nice coat.”

“You want it?” I said immediately. Fortunately he didn’t take me up on it, considering it was a gift from Kathleen and I don’t think she would have been too jazzed.

And thirty feet away from me was—well—Spider-Man.

In a low voice I asked one crew woman, “Is that a stuntman, or is that Tobey Maguire?”

“That’s Tobey,” she said.

They’d certainly come a long way from the Michael Keaton Batman. Rather than a rubber suit on the outside, they had constructed a form-fitting muscle suit for Maguire to wear under the costume itself, and a chin-piece within the mask, so that there would be visual consistency between Maguire and the stuntmen. The weblines had been carefully sculpted, and the blue was dark—not quite as black as in the early Ditko days, but darker and moodier than the bright blue of later years. The entire costume had a sort of “mesh” look to it. I was told that they started with over twenty costumes (including some that were “distressed” to varying degrees, making it sound like our hero is going to be taking something of a pounding during the film). Four of them, however, vanished early in the production, stolen, and there is a sizable monetary reward for information leading to their return.

At one point, Maguire—fooling around between takes—started dancing around and shaking his sculpted (literally) backside like a Chippendales dancer. The women surrounding me seemed to appreciate it. Also the reflective eye pieces in the mask were removable, so when the camera wasn’t on him, Toby Maguire’s eyes were peering out from under the mask, which was certainly a bizarre sight.

Kirsten Dunst was Mary Jane, her hair dyed the appropriate red, and wearing one of those slit-skirted, high-collared Chinese dresses for plot reasons I won’t go into. The scene began with the actors running into frame, Spidey with one arm around Mary Jane’s waist and the other inexplicably straight up in the air. For a moment I had no idea why our hero was posed like the Statue of Liberty, but then of course I realized: He was swinging in on a webline which would probably be added later. The magic of movies.

While this was going on, a stuntman was practicing what I assumed to be Spider-Man’s eventual exit from the scene: An impressive forward leap (off a springboard, I think; I couldn’t quite see since my view was impeded) capped by a mid-air somersault and perfect landing. He made it look incredibly effortless, so when you see Spidey performing amazing (naturally) aerial acrobatics, don’t automatically assume that he’s on strings. You might be watching this guy.

I was turning around at one point to step out of someone’s way. The trailing end of my duster spun out, brushing near a free-standing heater, and a voice from my immediate right said, “Don’t let your coat touch the heater.” I turned the other direction; Kirsten Dunst was sitting about eight inches from me, perched in a chair with her name on it.

“Thanks,” I said. I introduced myself and commented that I was pleased they’d made her hair red. “What other color would it be?” she asked, as if it was a given. Now you and I know that Hollywood is perfectly capable of saying, “Can’t Mary Jane be a blonde?” and poof, she’s a blonde. This is the town that gave us Don Blake standing side-by-side with biker-thug Thor, and Daredevil with a wrestling costume, no horns on his head, and a blindfold. But she may not have even been born yet when those travesties hit the airwaves.

A crew woman asked Dunst if she wanted to retire to the inside and the room serving as her dressing room, but the young trouper chose to remain out on the chilly rooftop, part of the group, wrapped in a jacket and next to the heater for additional warmth. A chat with her revealed that she’d been faithfully reading up on her character, and yes, fan boys, she even knew the classic “Face it, tiger, you just hit the jackpot” intro of our favorite red head. She, along with other key people on the shoot, is very aware of the history of, and anticipation for, the film. (Yes, the movie makers do indeed aggressively monitor the internet, aware of such fan controversies as the organic webshooters debate.)

All in all, we visited about forty-five minutes. And naturally, because there’s no situation that I can’t screw up to some degree, as I was exiting I was so pumped up on what I’d seen (not to mention a bit light-headed because I was still jet-lagged) that—as we passed down the narrow hallway out—I came within an inch of knocking Sam Raimi out of a chair he’d taken refuge in while the next shot was being set up. Very slick. Great way to leave a final lasting impression: Nearly cripple the director.

Wallopin’ websnappers indeed.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY, 11705. Say, if Marvel is currently publishing The Ultimate Spider-Man, does that mean the other Spidey titles should be renamed The Penultimate Spider-Man?)

 

One comment on “On the set of Spider-Man (2002)”

  1. “the casting for Spider-Man didn’t have a clunker in the bunch”

    Welllll … Overall agree the choices for the leads and major secondary roles were perfect … except Dunst. Good actress, sure, but there was just something about the way the character of MJ was written or Dunst’s direction … I just couldn’t buy her in the role. Perhaps I misremember MJ from the early comics, but she always seemed the high flying party girl and not usually the ‘oh woe is me’ from parts of the first film. Maguire, on the other hand, worked for me far better than the new guy. And Aunt May and JJJ and … just not MJ.

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