Thomas Haden Church Discusses Spider-Man 3

Thomas Haden Church says that by the time Spider-Man 3 had wrapped, he’d been working out right at two years for the part of Flint Marko/Sandman. “We started out pretty intensively for nine months before I started shooting, and just stuck with it because I had to maintain the appearance. But it was pretty intensive,” explained Haden Church. Director Sam Raimi wanted Haden Church to really fill out and the Academy Award-nominee did just that. “I gained 28 pounds of muscle and dropped 10 points of body fat, which for a dude in his forties was, let me tell you, was no bake sale.” But to listen to Haden Church tell it, he’d go through the entire process again just to have been a part of the Spider-Man franchise with Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire.

Following Up Sideways with Spider-Man 3: Haden Church indicated the decision was really a no-brainer. “Four names – Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire. They are genetically incapable of delivering anything that isn't superlative in the business. It has to be good. I knew that it was going to be a compelling and dramatic story because Sam refuses to do anything less, and you go all the way back. I'm not a huge fan of Evil Dead, but I think that the characters story's in Evil Dead II are very compelling. Then you move onto Army of Darkness, and particularly Dark Man. And then really one of my favorite movies, Simple Plan, which is a very intimate character study, really. I mean it has its psychological thriller kind of aspect to it…

I knew that between Sam's filmmaking history and what a thoughtful performer that I think Tobey is, that this was going to be good. Sam introduced Tobey the other night at the Tokyo premiere as perhaps the finest actor of his generation and I concur. If you look at Ride With the Devil, which I think is a great film and he's terrific in it, and then you look at Deconstructing Harry and he's hysterical in it. He just has such amazing range as a performer. I think that they picked the perfect guy for these movies. And then having worked with Tobey over the last two years, he really is profoundly determined to find a character that the audience understands and wants to take a journey with. From the onset to the end they're going to be happy and thrilled and saddened, but ultimately rewarded. So it's the two of them, really, that made me want to do it. That was the fire down below for me.”

Turning Into Sandman: Thomas Haden Church spent hours having his body scanned in order for the visual effects team to turn him into Sandman. “The preproduction aspect of it was lengthy and all of the body scans and motion capture and all the various technological processes,” revealed Haden Church. But he really didn’t mind the process. “I found it very interesting. I'm not a tech head, but the whole phenomena of what they do is cool. I got to be pretty close with [visual effects supervisor] Scott Stokdyk who I had actually met at the Academy Awards in 2005. Scott's a really sweet guy and he was so generous in sharing information and letting me know how they build the creatures.

But a lot of it, like they like to say, is inspired by me. The three big sequences, the birth of Sandman – for my character, I don't want to seem self-aggrandizing – and then whenever he manifests himself out of the truck and then of course at the end of the movie, it was kind of this video-tracking, camera test process where many, many times they would have multiple camera sets and I would act it out because it's all so muted and bestial. It became, to some extent, the bane of my daily life when I was shooting because you would hear crackling over the walkie, 'Sam wants to meet with Thomas at lunch to shoot some more video of the birth of Sandman.'

We really did a lot of it. There were very specific emotional beats that we wanted that they were going to layer upon. Particularly in the birth of the Sandman, without the advantage of eyes and real human facial expression you still wanted to convey the tragedy and not just leave it up to things like when he grabs the clasp and it breaks apart in his hand and then he kind of re-manifests himself. It could just be that. It had to be everything that was happening and how he would breathe as he's re-ionizing the evolution of the beast.”

The Physical Demands of Playing Flint Marko/Sandman: “The birth of Sandman was by far the most challenging dramatic thing that I did in the movie because we did it so much, and it's setup by the terror of being ripped apart. It also happens to involve by far the most dangerous stunts in the movie, which I did myself. The insurance company would only allow me to do them one time and we literally rehearsed it for six hours before we shot it. It was when the de-ionizer or however you want to describe it – I always called it a kind of molecular accelerator. I decided to have my own scientific terminology. But that thing was built off of this Bell helicopter turbo engine, and when it got up to full rev, the guys were like, 'Look, if you get hit it's like getting hit by a car at 80 miles an hour.' So that's why we rehearsed it as long as we did.

I was on a tether, but the way that Sam wanted to do it…is that where the camera was and you see the light bars going by and I had to run straight at those light bars and then get yanked back. Like I said, the insurance company – believe me there was a phalanx of representatives there that day – would only allow me to do it one time. I wanted to do it again, but it's the one that's in the movie. The intensity and quite frankly the fear is really there.”

Page 2: Thomas Haden Church on Playing a Villain in Spider-Man 3