"And he also would wisecrack a lot as Spider-Man." "He was a little bit like Woody Allen, in the sense that he was that type of personality," says Lee.
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In fact, in the early days of Spider-Man, Lee would sometimes compare his creation to a certain actor-director with neurotic tendencies who coincidentally also has a movie coming out today. He played the shy, introverted guy perfectly." Maguire, he explains, is "a very natural actor, and he looked like he might be a bookworm. "But - and this is very important - one minute into the movie, when I saw him on the screen, I said, 'That is Peter Parker!'" says Lee.
For Lee, part of the problem was the actor's physical stature: At 5-foot-8, Maguire is at least 3 inches shorter than the height Lee once established for Spidey in an early issue of the comic book. "If somebody said to me, in the beginning, 'Who should play Spider-Man?' I don't think Tobey Maguire would have been one of the first guys I would mention," he says. Lee admits to having had some initial trepidation about that casting decision, too. Picking up on this feeling, a sketch on a recent edition of Saturday Night Live ridiculed the choice of Maguire for just that reason. Known for such cerebral, character-driven productions as The Cider House Rules, The Ice Storm and Wonder Boys, Maguire is seen by some Marvelites as too anti-heroic to play a superhero. "I would've tried desperately to keep that scene in." And then when he finally sees her, she says, 'Face it, tiger, you hit the jackpot!' "But I would have loved to have had Aunt May trying to introduce him to Mary Jane, and he didn't want to meet her because no teenager wants to meet a girl the aunt's recommending. "They started the story where he already knew Mary Jane and she knew him already," says Lee, who has an executive-producer credit on the new film.