Back in 2001, I had the opportunity to visit the Los Angeles set of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and watched the director and his star, Tobey Maguire, shoot the scene in which Peter Parker locks himself in his bedroom and plays with his newfound web-spinning powers. Raimi was a stickler for perfection that day, filming many, many takes of Maguire pretending to fire jets of silk from slits in his wrist across the room, ring and middle fingers bent back to his palm, the other three fingers extended like prongs. The webs erupting from the actor’s hands had to be imagined, but the floor of Parker’s bedroom — built on a soundstage on the Sony lot — was littered with hundreds of little pieces of kinky pasta-colored silly-stringish stuff. I swiped a strand when no one was looking — I didn’t think anyone would miss it — and it occupies a spot on a shelf in my office. I treasure it like a trophy… even if it most visitors to my office confuse it for a piece of trash. READ FULL STORY »
