Saturday, April 6, 2002

SPIDER-MAN NEWS CONFERENCE IN JAPAN

OPENING REMARKS

Sam Raimi: Thank you for having us here in Tokyo. We're thrilled to be guests in this lovely city. This is my first time to be in this beautiful place. My name is Sam Raimi and I'm the director of the motion picture Spider-Man.

I've been treated very kindly in the short amount of time I've been here and I appreciate the hospitality very much. I'm hoping you all like our motion picture. We put our heart and soul into the thing and want nothing more than to entertain and to bring this great hero to the screen. Thank you.

Tobey Maguire: Hello, this is my second time here. I'm very happy to be back. Unfortunately, I'm working most of the time I'm here. Last I was here I got to spend a couple of weeks and I didn't have to work at all. I really like it here. I'm trying to recover from all the flashes of the cameras.

I'm really proud to be part of this film, and if I do have to work, being here to support this film is a good way to be working.

Kirsten Dunst: I'm Kirsten Dunst and I play Mary Jane in the film. This is my first time to Japan, and I haven't seen much more than my hotel room. But everybody's been really sweet to us and I thank you for welcoming us so wonderfully. And I hope you all enjoy the film.

Willem Dafoe: It's just very nice to be back in Japan. It's one of my favorite places to be, and I hope you all enjoy the film.

Avi Arad: Good afternoon. I'm very happy to be here. I've been here to talk to you many times. It's one of my favorite cities. It's a big celebration for all of us. Spider-Man is now 40 years old and we have this incredible team and I hope you like (the film) and that you all enjoy it.

Laura Ziskin: I'm Laura Ziskin, and I'm one of the producers. I can't wait to show you the movie. We've been working on it for a little over two years, so it's very exciting that it's finally a reality.

Although the movie is set in America, we think it's really a universal story. It's a love story. It's an action movie. As I was looking around I was particularly impressed by all these webs. Sam, did you see them? Aren't they great? I'm thrilled to be here.

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS

Sam Raimi on why he wanted to make a Spider-Man film: I wanted to make a movie of Spider-Man because I've been a fan of Spider-Man since I was a little boy. And the thing that was so great about Spider-Man is that he was one of us. He's a regular kid. He's not from some other planet. He's kind of a lower middle-class kid. He's not popular in school. This is a kid I really identified with. Something extraordinary happens to him and I get to watch as he becomes a hero. So it's a great way to identify for the first time with one of the super-heroes and that was particularly effective for me.

Sam Raimi on the pressure: It felt like I was always wondering whether we were making the movie good enough because there's so much audience expectation, so much love of this character, and not just in one group of readers but it's been so popular for 40 years, and I wanted to make sure that Kirsten and myself and Tobey or Willem were doing together was worthy or that love for the character.

There was one other aspect about it that was so important to me. I felt a lot of pressure making the picture - not from the studio. Sony was incredibly supportive, along with my producers Avi Arad and Laura Ziskin. But the pressure I felt was that I knew kids were going to see this movie, and, right or wrong, they were going to look up to Spider-Man as their hero. So I felt a tremendous obligation in working with Tobey and Kirsten and Willem - but mostly in this case Tobey and Kirsten - to make sure we were creating characters that were worthy of these children's admiration.

And by that I mean not just that they beat up the bad guys. But they found the strength within themselves to do the right thing, to be responsible, to be proper role models.

Tobey Maguire on playing the role: I felt satisfied because it was a long process in getting the role. I had Sam on my team, supporting me, and we won the studio over to get me the role. I was also very anxious to get going. It was going to be a lot of work and a long journey, and I couldn't wait to dive right in.

Kirsten Dunst on Mary Jane's affections toward Peter and Spider-Man: "They're both the same character, and they're the same qualities of the same person. She realizes at the end she loves Peter Parker for all the qualities that are important and not the shallow qualities of the men she's going out with.

I think she likes Spider-Man because of the danger of now knowing who's the guy behind the make. She's kind of consumed with the bad-boy side. But Peter Parker is the man she chooses because he loves her for all the things that she is and she is not.

Willem Dafoe on the schizophrenic Green Goblin: These two sides are very plausible. I know even from my own life that the very ambitious one goes so far that it becomes a force unto itself.

Sam Raimi: Darkman was a movie I made about 10-12 years ago and that was an American super-hero. But I always considered Spider-Man to be the world's hero. Even though he lives in Manhattan, I never considered him an American super-hero. He's an everyman.

Sam Raimi on Spider-Man's qualities: I wish I found more similarities in myself in Spider-Man. It's probably more my admiration of the qualities he has that makes him a hero to me. I don't know if I'm similar to those heroes. But I learn from those heroes, and I strive to be like him.

Some of the qualities that I admire in Spider-Man are his ability to push off his own personal fulfillment to the betterment of others. That's a quality I've strived to achieve. I can't say that I've attained it, but I do strive to achieve it. I do look up to Spider-Man. In the Spider-Man story, that's one of the good values that he offers the world.

Tobey Maguire on his history with the character: I didn't read the comic book as a boy, so Spider-Man wasn't my hero as a child. (Laughs). Sorry.

A lot of people have their image of who Spider-Man is to them. And I read a lot of the comics after I was cast to get a sense of Spider-Man and my own ideas. And I spent a lot of time with Sam talking about what his vision for the film was and how to portray this character. And I just gave it all I had and tried to do the best job I could.

It's a lot of responsibility that I share with hundreds of people who work on the movie. They'll enjoy the success if people like it, and they'll take the heat along with me if people don't.

Laura Ziskin on creating Spider-Man's powers: In many ways, we had our actor, Tobey, doing the action. Certainly no one was going to do the action of the character 40 stories up or higher as you'll see in the city. For that, it has to be computer-generated. There was green screen, with a character in front of a green screen, (and) there was a completely computer-generated character. It was really a challenge.

But there are scenes that were shot in three different places: on a sound stage, on the streets and completely CGI. And sometimes all those elements were used for one sequence.

And ultimately when you see the movie, you won't know which is which.

Sam Raimi on CG cityscapes: There's usually elements of still photographs or motion plates of the city. There's usually not a full CG shot. We always tried to combine elements of reality, so that it seemed real.