TOBY MAQUIRE

FILM INTERVIEW Toby Maguire

The Man Behind the Mask

PG 12 • insiteatlanta.com • June 2007 T BY MATT GOLDBERG IT’S FUNNY REALLY’ I GO TO SET AND I’M HAVING

A BLAST. LIKE I WAKE UP IN THE MORNING AND IT’S NOT LIKE A NI GHTMARE THAT I’M UP AT 5:30, 6 IN THE MORNIN G, IT’S LIKE OKAY COOL. I’M GROGGY, I’VE GOT TO JUMP IN THE SHOWER, BUT I’M EXCITED TO GO OFF TO WORK. OBEY MAGUIRE HAS DEFINED THE ROLE OF PETER Parker and made the man behind the Spider-Man the most compelling of alter-egos. Now that he’s donning the webs for the third and perhaps final time, we caught up with him to ask about his experience in shooting Spider-Man 3 and his future as both an actor and a producer. The dark side of you in this movie, and the funniest moment in this movie, are the swaggering down the street and seeing all the girls and getting a reaction. How much of it was scripted and how much of it was you? You know, it’s hard, I do all these interviews and pretty soon I just answer how people ask. I’m not trying to think for myself anymore. Basically the general idea of it was choreographed and then, you know, we riffed from there, and Sam would say throw this out, do this, and then I would throw in some thoughts and ideas and just kind of messed around with it. I apologize for asking this question, because I know everybody asks it, about the 4th film. I talked with Sam about it and he said he wouldn’t do it unless you were onboard. I asked Sam what it would take to get him onboard, and now I’m going to ask you what it would take for you? What did Sam say it would take to get him onboard? He said he would have to see a deficit in the character of Peter Parker that still needed to be addressed. That’s a good answer. Mine won’t be as interesting or as well thought, but for me there would have to be a great screenplay, a great story, something really worth telling. Some new territory for us to go on with Peter Parker. Sam would have to be involved, the right cast would have to be in place, and then I would consider it. The producers said during this junket that in the last ten days everything is a little bit wider open in that people have changed their minds a little bit. Are they just being producers or is that true? Well the studio will make more Spider-Man movies one way or another and you know, you never know until you’re there, so it’s hard to say what people’s mind frames are. Today it might be one thing--there’s a lot that has to happen, and like I said, they’ll figure out how to make them one way or another. You know, Warner Brothers with Superman and Batman, it’s like, they can recast, they can bring in new people and they can reconceive things and come at it from, have a different take. Who knows? Whether we continue this story with this cast of people or not, we’ll see, and how open people are, I don’t really know. You don’t know until there’s something in front of you. Could you identify with Peter’s view of celebrity? I mean, Peter reacts very differently than I do. He is much more reflective about it and kind of soaking it in a different way. He loves it, he bathes in it, he’s swimming in it, he’s like “Oh, they love me!” He just loves it, and it gets to his head and he’s becoming kind of arrogant and believes his own hype. He’s got a real self-importance and I love it, the scenes we’re doing with Kirsten where Peter’s trying to give her advice, it’s just hilarious to me. And you know, it’s funny, because nobody really laughs at those scenes, but I’m just sitting there cracking up. I just find them so funny. So our experiences are different. I understand what you’re saying, but we just react differently. What are the challenges of being in these major action set pieces and how do you have to get ready? It’s a lot of work. I mean, it’s cool, the results are great and you know, that’s kind of like the means to the end, and that’s what helps sometimes with staying motivated through that stuff, because you have so much down time and then you’ve got to go and get yourself to the height of an action sequence, and you shoot something and it’s maybe one to six seconds of film. And it takes probably like a month for us to shoot a major action sequence. And then we would have to come back and shoot some more later, and there’s different elements we’re putting together to create it. In terms of just uping the ante and raising the bar, that’s more the people who are conceiving them. So Sam, who I think is a great visualist and does it with humor and is really great with the camera and has a great style with that stuff, that’s largely in his hands. What challenges are there for you as an actor outside of this franchise? What are you looking for that you find challenging? I want to do everything. I love movies, and I want to work in every genre and I just want to work with great filmmakers that I respect and admire. As an actor, I just want to do everything. I do want to challenge myself and stretch myself and, I don’t really have any set ideas about what I want to do. . Tokyo Sucker Punch. What’s the story with that? It’s something I’m developing in my production company. It’s a great title. It’s something I’m developing with Doug Wick and Lucy Fisher’s company, and Ed Solomon’s writing the screenplay right now. It’s based on this book by Isaac Sin, called Tokyo Sucker Punch, and it’s the character, Billy Chaka, who lives in Cleveland and he does this kind of manga thing, that he uses his own character, or a heightened version of himself, Billy Chaka, in this thing, and it’s really a fantasy of who he is. And really he’s this small town kid in Cleveland who thinks he does have like a cult following and think he thinks he’s more worldly than he is, and he has to go to Japan for--they’ve made a movie out of the Billy Chaka character, so he goes to Japan go be part of the thingyou know, reluc tantly. And he ends up getting involved in a Billy Chaka type of adventure in Tokyo. It’s really cool and I’m excited about it, so, we’ll see. We’re developing it right now. You would star in it? I’m developing it for, with that idea, yeah. Would you consider being a bit player, say Spider-Man, in an Avengers-type movie? I don’t know. It depends, I guess. It depends on what the movie was or who the filmmaker was. I mean, that would probably be pretty com plicated in terms of just getting different studios to figure out as they have the rights to those certain characters. But let’s just say in the fantasy world that it was all figured out: it depends. If there was a filmmaker I loved and my part, you know, I could go in and it would be more of a fun little thing where I worked for a couple of days. I probably wouldn’t go and work for several months and be in an ensemble type of thing. I mean, you never know, but I really doubt it. Would I walk through a scene and have a little conversation as Peter Parker with a little red suit showing that was just a fun little moment with a director that I loved in a movie that I thought would be great? Yeah, maybe I would consider that.

After wearing the red tights for two movies, was it nice getting to switch to the black for this? It was fun, I mean fun just to have a different suit, sure, and also just what it represented and you know, how it allowed us to explore new grounds for Peter Parker.

Did you like the challenges of this film as opposed to the previous two? Yeah. and the thing I felt is really impressive is how Sam really wove all the stories together and didn’t make it feel disjointed like it was a bunch of separate storylines, but it really came together under common themes. So I feel like that was the greatest challenge with that, which wasn’t really my job, but that’s what I was most impressed with regarding that.

Spider-Man was your first blockbuster, like in that genre. What have you learned from his whole experience as an actor? I’m not quite sure what I’ve learned, but I know I’ve learned a lot. It’s been six years and I feel like I’m just more at ease in general, working, which is great. One of the things I’ve really gained is a great relationship with a lot of the crew and cast but especially with Sam. I really love working with Sam, it’s such a pleasure, we have so much fun together, he’s so collaborative. It’s funny really’ I go to set and I’m having a blast. Like I wake up in the morning and it’s not like a nightmare that I’m up at 5:30, 6 in the morning, it’s like okay cool. I’m groggy, I’ve got to jump in the shower, but I’m excited to go off to work.