I watched The Social Network again last night with my family, the first time I'd seen it all the way through since its premiere in late September, and was bowled over again, of course. And while I actually came away with a new appreciation for Armie Hammer's work in the movie-- he's 6'5, 250 pounds, and there's two of him-- I once again thought the heart of the movie was in Andrew Garfield's Eduardo Saverin, Mark Zuckerberg's only friend and co-founder of Facebook who was cruelly, maybe even maliciously, cut out of the company. Garfield still may be able to snag an Oscar nomination for his work, but he's probably already reaped the biggest reward-- a starring role in Sony's Spider-Man reboot.
Peter Parker will probably dominate most of the interviews Garfield does between now and the movie's release in 2012, and that was definitely the case in a chat he had recently with The Guardian (available in audio only). He was on Christmas break from the movie's set and, as usual, didn't reveal very much about the movie at all beyond talking about his excitement: "I feel incredibly lucky that I get to wear spandex for the next few months." When allowed to get a little eggheady about the physicality of the role and his preparation for that, though, he let loose a little more:
"I think Spider-Man needs strength, but Peter Parker is still a teenager, you know? That's a very tender balance to figure out. It's very specific what we're trying to achieve in terms of body type and the feeling of that. Rest assured, there's a lot of people who are helping me with it because I have no discipline in that respect. My father's a swimming coach and I kind of rebelled against that very, very early on so any form of physical discipline has to be really cracked with a really smart whip."
To hear the full interview, cue up the Film Weekly podcast and listen starting around 29 minutes in. Garfield is always an interesting, intuitive guy, and he may have figured out the miracle of being an actor with interesting things to say about superhero movies-- at least at this very early leg in doing press for it.
