SPIDER-MAN 3: THOMAS HADEN CHURCH

LOS ANGELES -- The Continuum today continues its series of interviews from the recent Spider-Man 3 junket with Thomas Haden Church, who plays Flint Marko/Sandman.

Following is an edited transcription:

Question: You apparently took a leap of faith in taking this on when you were offered this because there wasn't a complete script.

Church: There was no script, but I wouldn't say a leap of faith, though. Between knowing the first two movies and Sam's (Raimi) profile as a filmmaker and the thoughtfulness and precision with which Tobey (Maguire) exacts his performances, it wasn't a big leap of faith. I've never signed onto a movie that had no script, but you know what? I've never signed onto a movie 2 1/2 years before it was going to be released, so there were a lot of firsts in the process.

Question: What surprised you the most about the entire experience?

Church: Really, the volume of time required when you're shooting. This is precision in another way. There were days where I'd work with the second unit and they'd be like, "Today, we're shooting 1.1 seconds of the movie," and we'd spend all day shooting something that is that fast [snaps fingers] in the picture. Literally, these literal snippets of action.

It's probably when the second-unit director Dan Bradley told me that, it was when we were shooting all the armored car sequence, just little teeny tiny moments. Like when he's kind of surfing behind the truck and there are cuts to me on the top of the truck, and I'm little in the frame, that kind of shoot would take a whole day to shoot.

That was what was surprising to me is how surgical and painstaking the process is.

Question: One of the most interesting parts is the birth of Sandman scene...

Church: For my character, it's my favorite scene.

Question: And it's all computer-generated...

Church: It's not. That's not true. That scene, when I emerge from the 18-wheeler, the sand truck, and the end of the movie, all of that is built upon a performance that I gave.

We would set up multiple video cameras and I would act out this sort of muted primordial performance and then all of the people involved in the special effects, they would start building upon that. I called it kind of video tracking or mapping, because it's not the same as motion capture, which is much more technical. This was just about pure performance, but they would still put markers on me that they could then transfer and start building from.

The birth of the Sandman sequence, over the six months of principal photography in L.A., Sam and I would get together once every couple of weeks, which is a lot, and I'd go through it again. That's a very emotional sequence for me because I know what I poured into it emotionally, and what was challenging and ultiamte rewarding for me, was seeing it in the movie and how much of the tragedy of the character comes through without eyes. There's no eyes, and it's all in the way they sculpted my body. And obviously one of the more salient moments is reaching out for the locket and my hand collapses.

Question: What has been your biggest challenge since shooting Sideways?

Church: Spider-Man, by far. Not to diminish the other movies, but Flint Marko is a very emotionally isolated guy who is almost singularly defined by tragedy. I hate to be cliche, but it's a very daunting place to go because it's not a place that I ever exist. I'm not an emotionally isolated, tragic guy, and I had to draw upon my imagination in ways that I've never had to.

Question: Do you see yourself coming back for a fourth Spider-Man movie?

Church: If the right elements were in place. If Sam was going to be there and Tobey was going to be there and it was a challenging story and a complete character arc, that he starts someplace and it's emotionally satisfying and the resolution of the character is where it needs to be, yeah, I would consider it. Absolutely.

Question: Sandman was kind of one-dimenstional in the comics. Were you relieved that he was more emotionally charged for the movie.

Church: From the onset, Sam wanted me to know, even before there was a script as he laid it out for me with storyboards in our very first meeting, that it would be a very compelling journey.

I don't even like to call them villains because they're men that have their value systems corrupted by something. The irony with Willem Dafoe's character, Alfred Molina's and Topher Grace's characters is that they are corrupted by lust or power or ambition or prestige. It's almost ironic that Flint Marko is corrupted almost by his own good intentions. He becomes a criminal out of trying to protect his daughter.

At the very beginning Sam knew the story he wanted to tell. Sam and Ivan (Raimi) were really the architects of my story for the movie, and then Alvin(Sargent), Avi (Arad) and Laura (Ziskin) were largely the architects of Topher's story in the movie. Of course they all worked together and it's all an amalgam of everyone's creativity, but Sam and Ivan were really the proponents of my story.

And Sam has gone on record as saying as much, that he always wanted Sandman in this movie and it was Avi who came to his and said he thought Venom was the balancer. Earlier on there was a completely different villain, and as diametrically opposed to Topher as you can get in the acting world to play this other villain. It was Avi's idea to bring Venom in, and I think it was a really great early change of plays, because Topher and I are a really good balance of storytelling. And I think, ultimately, Topher's character, Eddie Brock, is very tragic.

Question: Had you heard of the Sandman character before this movie?

Church: No, I was completely oblivious. I'd never read the comic book when I was a kid. I'd seen the movies, but obviously Sandman wasn't represented in the movies.

Church: Sam gave me an original copy of Spider-Man #4, which is the first appearance of the Sandman. Unfortunately I couldn't look at it, because it was in this museum-quality frame job, so I'd have to break the glass to get into it. But somebody in production sent me some of the reproductions of the comic book from the '60s that went on to flesh out Sandman's story, so I read a little bit.

There was something I saw on the Internet where Sam insisted that do research with the comics series, but that's not true. Somebody made that up. Sam made a casual suggestion that I look at the comic books. We really looked at other source material, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and the Jewish folklore character of Golem. Early on, I took a still photograph to Sam early on of Lon Chaney Jr. just to have that inherent tragedy in Sandman's presentation, and Sam agreed with me.

Look, yes, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko were the cornerstone of these characters, and I was honored to meet Stan.