The one scene Tobey Maguire refused to shoot: “You think this is easy, you do it!”
In every actor’s life there probably comes a moment when their commitment is tested to its limits by the director, with most presumably strong enough to do whatever is demanded to keep the part and prove themselves a real professional, and for Tobey Maguire, the moment came during the filming of Spider-Man 2.
Despite the gruelling physical toll his previous performance in Seabiscuit had taken, even leading to his briefly being fired from Spider-Man 2, Maguire performed most of his own stunts during production, and although he relished this, he was pushed to his limit when director Sam Raimi insisted he perch right on the edge of a 15-story building.
“I was yelling at Tobey, ‘You gotta really get out there on the edge’, he was standing maybe a foot or two away, I told him, ‘I want you to lean over the edge!’” Raimi explained.
Regardless of being hooked to a safety line, Maguire refused, calling out, “No way! This is as close as I’m getting. You think this is easy, you do it!”, challenging the filmmaker. So instead of pushing him further or simply giving in, Raimi rose to the occasion, confessing, “I put on the line and tried to do the scene, and I couldn’t get any closer than ten feet from the edge”.
Where most directors would have just used their authority to bully their actors into doing it, or quitting, Raimi put his money where his mouth was, and it backfired. He didn’t get the shot he really wanted, but it’s not the first time he’s been known to push actors to their limits to realise his visions.
His early films were renowned for their physically demanding, often punishing, commitments from the actors, where those involved not only had to endure physical blows from other actors, or have buckets of water, debris and gunk chucked at them, but Rami frequently took pleasure in winding them up.
During the filming of The Evil Dead, Raimi famously kept poking Bruce Campbell’s hurt leg wound with a stick and teased him about it, and one can imagine the actor must not have felt his best about that. In fact, the whole experience was miserable for everyone, given their remote location and small budget, and it got so bad towards the end that they took to burning the sets to keep themselves warm. However, his actors have never given Raimi a bad name, as they seem to accept what he does is all part of getting a better performance out of them.
Who knows, maybe he would have gotten an even better performance out of Maguire if he’d agreed to stand right at the edge of the building…as for hard feelings between him and Maguire, there doesn’t seem to be any, as Raimi has said he has “nothing but admiration and respect for Tobey and his ability to stand on the edge of buildings”, although who knows what the director might subject Maguire to if we ever get the oft-rumoured Spider-Man 4.
