As you can imagine, Laura Ziskin and Avi Arad are two of the busiest people in Hollywood this week. Danny Fingeroth managed to snag each of them at key times in the progress of the Spider-Man movie phenomenon.

Figuring out how to deal with the characters' masks was one of the bigger challenges for producer Laura Ziskin (seen here with actor Tobey Maguire on the set of Spider-Man). Photo credit: Zade Rosenthal. © 2002 Columbia Pictures.

Laura Ziskin, Executive Producer of Spider-Man
(Ziskin's previous credits as executive producer include Pretty Woman, To Die For and As Good As it Gets.)

I spoke with Laura Ziskin by phone on Friday morning (Spider-Man's premiere day), after the phenomenal East Coast box office returns had started to roll in. Needless to say, she was in very good spirits.

Danny Fingeroth: How are you doing?

Laura Ziskin: We're havin' fun.

DF: Did you read a lot of Spider-Man comics to prepare for this film?

LZ: I did. I hadn't read any comics until I came onto the project, but Avi Arad says I'm now a geek.

DF: Congratulations. (Laughs) Many comics fans wonder why the Green Goblin's costume is so different from the Goblin in the comics. What was the reason for the drastic change?

LZ: One of the toughest things we had to deal with was the Goblin. I didn't feel that the comic book character, visually, was something we could just translate directly to the screen. It was a struggle. We wanted to give the audience some understanding of why he put that green suit on, where it came from. We wanted it to be related to what he did. That's why we put him in armor that would be connected to his glider. The mask was trickier. Originally, we tried a latex mask, which we had high hopes for, but it was frightening in not the right way. We made it so that he was a warrior who made weapons of war and collected warrior masks, and when he flips out, he puts a warrior mask on his noggin.

DF: For much of the movie, you have two characters wearing masks that cover their entire face, yet having to convey emotion. That must have been difficult to deal with.

LZ: It was truly one of the huge challenges we dealt with, having two characters in masks. With the Goblin, we figured, "Let's see his eyes, that will help." But we couldn't do that with Spider-Man and be true to his costume. That was when Sam [Raimi] came up with the notion of having his mask ripped at the end of the movie, so you could have an ending where you see the actor react.

DF: You really kept things true to the flavor of the comics. I was very impressed by that.

LZ: Thanks. That was our goal, to honor the original's spirit. That's been the most gratifying thing -- the positive reaction of the fans. We felt we had to make a movie for them.