fuckyeahraimispiderman:
June 2007 Deathray magazine interview with Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst, promoting Spider-Man 3.
Since these are such bad scans they are in fact not even scans (they’re photos taken with a phone) you can find transcripts of both interviews under the cut
Tobey Maguire
Tobey Maguire makes an amazing Spider-Man. Or rather, he makes an amazing Peter Parker – it could, after all, be anyone in the red-and-blue suit. (Or, indeed, the black one.) Handsome yet nerdy, he’s the Peter of the early Stan Lee/Steve Ditko comics, before ex-romance artist John Romita prettied Peter up. It’s now virtually impossible to imagine anyone else in the role.
Peter Parker is actually a job that demands some serious acting chops. Whole swathes of the brilliant Spider-Man 2 played like some flashier version of a Woody Allen New York comedy, circa Annie Hall, spliced together with chunks of a James Cameron action film. It was a mix that worked thrillingly well.
And now Spider-Man 3 ups the ante, ups the heartbreak, ups the action. Thanks to his new, nefarious, parasitical black costume, Spidey’s fighting the enemy within – his own darker side – for half the movie. Then, with that more or less sorted, there are those persky traditional enemies to scrap with too; a homicidal best friend; the chap who, apparently, really killed his beloved Uncle Ben; and a boldly designed monster that could easily look ridiculous but will, we trust, become a movie classic of its type.
But then that’s Spider-Man: the archetypical hard-luck hero. He only really works when he can’t catch a single break.
Death Ray: Poor old Peter. You really drag him through the muck in this one, don’t you? It’s pretty dark.
Tobey Maguire: Sam (Raimi, director of all three Spider-Man films) and I definitely had fun building that side of Peter. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out the tone exactly, because we wanted to make him do things and behave in ways that were getting him in trouble, personally, emotionally. But we wanted to make it fun and funny and entertaining, and not push it too far. You want to still be with the character, and care about him. And we are making
a film for a broad age range.DR: And your best pal, Harry Osborn, isn’t having such a great time of it either. Both of you are after revenge in this one…
TM: Well, Flint actually did kill my uncle. And I didn’t kill Harry’s father, so that’s
one very distinct difference. You’d have to ask James (Franco, who plays Harry Osborn) about it, but Harry has bad information, or he wants to believe something which isn’t true, which I think is probably him not wanting to believe that his father was the kind of man that he was, actually willing to give up the life of his own son. So he’s probably blocking some of that out, and shifting responsibility and blame onto someone else, the only person he could, which is Spider-Man. Later, he finds out that Spider-Man is Peter. He probably knows that Peter is ultimately a good person, and is making him confront what kind of person his dad was, which I imagine would be difficult. (I exhausted myself on that answer. Too much thinking!)DR: Any friendships gone sour like that in real life?
TM: I’ve never had somebody coming after me wanting my life! I guess it’s been a while since I’ve been in any big blow-out fights with friends, but as a teenager I would get it fights semi-regularly for no good reason. Somebody would do something on the basketball court and there’s shoving and then we’re hugging and whatever.DR: Obviously now you’ve been Spider-Man a few years, you’re massively recognisable everywhere you go. To little kids you must be a proper hero…
TM: I love little kids, and it’s fun if I bring some kind of excitement or joy to them, and I’ve had some fun moments, just seeing them get excited and happy. Kids of three, four, five years old who’re not sure what to make of me. Maybe they think it’s all real or whatever. I remember when I was in New York outside a subway, and the doors were closing and I saw this kid. Right as the doors were closing we exchanged looks. It’s little moments like that.DR: Peter’s changed, grown up through the three movies. Do you find
you approach him different?
TM: There is a whole team of people working on that- the producers, the writers, Sam, the studio, everybody has got their ideas of the direction of the movies. On this movie, I spoke with Sam early about the character, and I got an early draft of the screenplay, and I would come in and give my notes or say what I would like to see more of or less of, the tone of the scenes and what it adds up to. It gets very detailed, of course. And then Sam kind of takes everybody’s ideas and figures them into his own vision.DR: We know you’ve got a new child, which must keep you busy, and Spider-Man’s eaten up a lot of your time- you’ve only done two other films (Seabiscuit and The Good German) in the past five years or so. Anyone you’re keen on working with in the future?
TM: I love Alexander Payne’s movies. Alfonso Cuaron I think is a great
director. Of course, Scorcese is a great director.DR: You won’t be missing the costume, we guess?
TM: It’s not that bad. It’s a little bit uncomfortable, and not my favourite thing to be sitting in, but when I’m doing the action it’s fine. It’s just when sitting there for long periods of time that I don’t like it. Sometimes you just have to keep it on, because the frequency of shooting means it doesn’t make sense to take it off and on. But it doesn’t bother me to the level where I need outside help to get through it.DR: Finally, which fella do you identify with most yourself: Peter Parker,
or Spider-Man?
TM: I don’t really separate it in my mind. I really see the character as Peter Parker, and Spider-Man is his alter ago. He’s basically hiding aspects of himself, therefore he puts on this suit – that somehow he made himself, which when you really think about it is kind of silly!Kirsten Dunst
We remember the howls on the internet. Truth be told, we howled a bit ourselves (though in the privacy of our own home). Kirsten Dunst was an excellent young actress, and great casting for a Spider-Man movie. But she was great casting as Gwen Stacy, Spider-Man’s first great love (we don’t count Liz Allan or Betty Brant, and we’re sure Pete doesn’t either). Blonde, pretty, a believable good girl; nothing like the red-haired maneater Mary Jane Watson was initially portrayed as.
Yet Mary Jane she was, and we had to lump it.
And rarely have we been so pleased to be wrong. Dunst made a charming and vivacious MJ, the girl next door but with a darker, tragic undertow. In truth she was more of an amalgam of assorted Parker girlfriends than a strict depiction of the traditional comic book Mary Jane: an aspiring actress, not a model; a school-mate, not an (at least initally) rarely-seen visitor to Peter’s world. That assorted comic book depictions of MJ have started to veer towards the Dunst version shows how much she’s made the part her own. Now, in Spider-Man 3, we have a ship-load of new problems for the eternally troubled MJ: her boyfriend’s nifty new black threads are sending him loopy; her Broadway bid for stardom looks like going tits up; and then there’s that black-hairband-sporting Stacy girl looking to mess things up between her and her Pete.
Time, then, to talk to Ms Dunst about her character’s current crop of woes.
Death Ray: What’s different about Mary Jane this time around?
Kirsten Dunst: She starts out at a very high place. We left the second Spider-Man with her committing to loving and supporting him, and then we beat her down and beat her down and beat her down. So that’s my character arc for you!DR: Would she really love a guy like Peter?
KD: Yes! He’s a dork. I love dorks.DR: Isn’t he too sweet?
KD: No, I want a sweet man. I don’t want somebody who’s a jerk. You want
to be with a nice person, a good person.DR: We like your get-ups as Mary Jane in the Spider-Man movies. Dressing up must be one of the perks of the job, right?
KD: My dear friends do the costumes for me – and actually Tobey too – on this one. They did my costumes for the last film as well. Their names are Nina and Clair Hallworth. They’re sisters, and I brought them onboard because I wanted somebody who understood my aesthetic and could collaborate with me and make her a real girl. We wanted her to have the same brown coat – it’s actually the coat from the last film. We didn’t want to break continuity, because she’s not a girl who can afford ten coats. And we wanted her to be a vintage kind of girl: she would emulate how Julie Christie dresses. Somebody who is subtly vintage, not kooky. That’s kind of what the style is – but also she has a really huge apartment, which makes no sense! Every time I walk into that apartment I just have to laugh. That would cost probably $1million, for sure!DR: In most people’s minds this is the last film in a Spider-Man trilogy, but, of course, Spider-Man has been around for over 40 years, and there are plenty more tales to tell. Is this the end of the line as far as you’re concerned?
KD: I’d do another one only if Sam (Raimi) and Tobey were doing it. I always say to Sam “Wouldn’t it be interesting if we just forgot about making a really expensive movie? Let’s make the independent Spider-Man!” That’s Sam’s heart. I always tell him that we should make the fourth one not with all the bells and whistles. I would love to do that!DR: So you reckon the bells and whistles sometimes get in the way?
KD: Yeah, they do. It gets really difficult at times, because I’m somebody who likes to be free and change it around, and you’ll spend all day on a scene, like 100 takes, and you don’t even know what you’re saying anymore. They don’t even sound like words any more. But you have to get over it.DR: Now you’re the big movie star, is it hard to identify with the likes of Mary Jane – the ordinary girl who has only one brown coat?
KD: I always went to a normal high scool – but I would go do films, so I was in and out. I hated high school, but I missed my friends – they’d go out to parties and things like that, and I was going to bed at ten because I had to get up at six in the morning. My mom is a very thrifty woman in certain ways, and very New Jersey still. She’s still like a real woman, and never got caught up in the thrill.DR: How was it having a new girl on the block?
KD: Bryce (Dallas Howard, who plays Mary Jane’s love rival, Gwen Stacy) is
the best girl in the entire world! I love her with all my heart. She’s an amazing woman. It’s good, because we could sit in the trailer and talk about the harnesses we have to wear. I couldn’t talk with other people, because how it hurts on a girl is different from the guys!DR: When you’re not filming, what d’you get up to? What do you do to relax?
KD: I just went to art school for a little while, and I’m going back the next break I have. I’m painting with acrylics and charcoal. I started out (on Spider-Man 3) really high, with lots of energy and lots of ideas, but by May – when all I had to do was sit around all day and wait for one shot, then do a reaction shot, then do a reaction shot before they yell cut – it can be very depressing. My best girlfriend was living with me at the time, and we’d just have a glass of wine and watch American Idol!DR: When you’re struggling with the sheer logistics of something like Spider-Man 3, you must dream of doing smaller, simpler films. Is there anything else you’ve always wanted to do…?
KD: My work I’ve done with Sofia (Coppola) is the most personal to me and the rawest, and I know I can do even more with her. She understood me better than anybody else – Marie Antoinette and The Virgin Suicides are the most that anybody has gotten me. The Virgin Suicides was me at that age. In addition, I’ve always wanted to be in a psychological thriller, like Rosemary’s Baby or Repulsion. And I’d love to do a movie in black and white.DR: You’ve said in the past you don’t really have career goals. Why’s that?
KD: Because my career is not the most important thing to me in my life.
I have more life goals. My mom raised a good daughter!