AG 3.2

By Asa Montreaux 

After that, there was this gap, when actors don’t have much to do. I didn’t mince words, and we re-filmed nearly the whole movie after that, the Amazing Spider-man, I mean. I think maybe what I worked on the most was developing a personality that fit onto the screen. I wasn’t a writer, though I was. I could develop the part, and I suppose I worried all the time about how to speak the part as perfectly as I could. Maybe I was impressionable, and weirdly enough, I was still influenced by Spider-man. I became a geek. I wanted to speak every line perfect, and be able to come with something on the spot, in a way, so everything was natural. My emotional life seemed to be something that I had to harness, to be able to compose myself and then be Peter. Or whoever. It was almost silly thinking writing, all the literature and philosophy I read, would feed into my acting. But it did, beautifully. And as for my interviews, and carrying out a life in the microscope, it worked beautifully. I was composed, and I had things to say.

I was doing other things in the meantime, not just living a carefree life. I know I said. I was in school, graduating, and reading, of course. But I was still busy in film. The production hit snags. They were worried that it would come out to soon after the previous Spider-man. And well, there was some other negative feedback. Maybe the movie wasn’t going to a smashing success. I did know why they predicted only 300 million. It was insulting. They even were saying. I didn’t measure up to the role. But I would say no one can match up to the original. And that’s what Spider-man tm was. And that’s what Toby was. The original. And of course, I was in only the ‘Amazing’ Spider-man. We weren’t the real spider-man. I heard it all the time. I thought I might hear it all my life. I said, then I don’t see what the big deal. It seems there are no expectations, and therefore no pressure. I said we can achieve 700 million. And there wasn’t a pin drop. Then of course, a woman said, yea right.

And I said, well, why.

And another person, well that’d be possible. And then, that’d be a little underwhelming. Then, it would be.

I said, then we should be able to achieve that. And they cut the interview. 

Eventually it came out. And I was happy that it came out in the summer. The delay from December brought it into a more prime box office time. It’s definitely when movies are most successful. The summer, July, that is the sweet spot. It was funny. By 2012 I felt like a different person. I felt like an adult.

And though all the delays, there was time for me to find myself, and I found I was just the Spider-man. I wanted to be an actor. I wanted to contribute everything I could. It was funny because normally I thought I wanted to be a world leader, or maybe the greatest artist ever. I suppose this was it, was film. If I wanted to do other things after, that was fine. This was a secret. A lot of people knew something. I was an actor through and through I just didn’t want to be Ronald Reagan. I had been all my life, and I probably always will be. I struggle with that, and how actors are perceived. I am more intelligent than people perceive me to be, and I take that to be a given. Because they thought I was pretty damn dumb. Every day the media doesn’t ruin my life is a victory. Sometimes that was my favorite game. They did not know how evasive I could be. So, it was almost like I had said nothing at all. And yet I’d said everything I was supposed to. In that was I was as dull, and poor spoken as these hockey players. I really wasn’t anyone not relaxed during my interviews, and I really didn’t have anywhere to go afterwards, or anything to get back to. Usually.

*

When it came out, all I heard was seven hundred fifty-two million. Though I swear it was 800 million. Well it was more than a little underwhelming. But I don’t tell people, for the Amazing Spider-man, that was really not so bad of a performance. It sounded like an animated movie, or something even on Nickelodeon, though it wasn’t. It was a good movie, and people missed that by interpreting as the next first Spider-man. Spider-man was the best superhero movie ever. Batman had never been as good or anywhere near it in the box office. No one had ever heard of the Avengers. In a way I hadn’t fully understood before the movie was released that people had actually craved a Spider-man movie. Not that we fulfilled their fantasy. In a way we had, and sometimes I laugh about how. I must have been in Deadpool. That’s how spin-off I sometimes feel we… anyways, they said that movie did extremely well. Though there having trouble getting a third one going. Same story, in a way. A little bit of a different spin by the media.

Though it seemed a second one would come out, and that was the greatest news. It was weird. I think if just one came out, it would have just been a movie I was. Like the Fantastic Four. But two movies, then it was turning into a series. I guess the question of a third was actually a bigger question all of the sudden. Would the second one be big enough to have a third made? Probably not. It depended on what they wanted to make. 500 million. And the fourth? Maybe 300 million. I secretly thought it wouldn’t happen. I knew that that they had Spiderman: Homecoming on their minds as something they wanted to get started already. It was only a matter of time before they were ready for the real Spider-man to return. And in that time, waiting for the movie to come out, the first movie – I found I didn’t need to be in these movies, I wanted to be a different kind of actor. I took pains to control my impatience. I wasn’t really supposed to work on other projects the whole time I was on Spider-man. So I was biding my time. I wanted to start a real movie star career, and show my real acting chops, but I was always reminding myself that Spider-man was a dream part. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but it was an experience no one would want to waste with lethargy or petulance in the least. I would continue to live for the moment, no matter what the situation. And really I hoped there would be a third, but time was running out. And the inevitable was the inevitable. And it was not my fault. I feel that strongly.