Site Overlay

Jamie Foxx on Le Grand Journal

Check out the translation after the cut.

Antoine de Caunes: Andrew, Emma, Jamie, good evening. Avi Arad – The Amazing Spider Man 2’s producer describes the movie like a huge pop opera. Were you aware, as you were filming, of being part of a funnier, lighter project than most superheroes movies coming out nowadays?

Andrew: Yeah, I think we were aware of that. Spider Man, inherently is a lighter super hero. He’s not taking his troubles as seriously. He’s entertaining himself and everyone around him while he saving the city, cause he’s a teenage kid in spandex so he’s gotta have a sense of humor about himself while wearing a ridiculous costume. So, it’s a fun part to play and it’s really fun to have a role in the Spider Man universe. There’s a reason he’s one of the most popular super heroes, I think he’s universally likeable because he’s a kid struggling while being a hero.

AdC: Andrew, you said that with Spider Man, you wanted to explore the character’s prankster side by taking inspiration from Bugs Bunny. I’d like to know What does a spider and a bunny make when they merge?

Andrew: A bunny spider. Just like that, just combine those two things and that’s what you get. There is something… I mean, it’s delightful to watch the old Disney Warner Brothers cartoon. It’s hard to achieve that in a …. I mean look at that. You can really put yourself into that, in that suit and imagine taking a dive straight down and swing back up. You wanna feel like in a cartoon or like a great athlete. Like the greatest athletes the world’s ever seen, like Daniel Russo in the Karate Kid or Mohamed Ali. You wanna be all these people in one and Bugs Bunny.

AdC: Emma, Jamie did you feel the Bugs Bunny under the Spider Man suit?

Emma: Oh yeah. I thought I was there with Bugs Bunny. It could be anyone under the suit, you know. There were suspiciously long ears.

AdC: I don’t know if you know this but in the United States, God has a twitter. It’s called ‘the tweet of God’…

Andrew: He does?

Emma: Oh, thank God!

AdC: … and he tweeted this week: ‘Most homophobes are secretly gay however most arachnophobes aren’t actual spiders.

Emma: That’s fair.

Andrew: I’d say those were probably both true, yeah. I think it’s true that most people who are scared of gay people would like to have sex with the same sex. I agree with God on this.

Augustin: What makes a good super hero movie? A solid plot, a good amount of special effects but it’s also, very often, a intelligent subtext, meaning an universal reflection like teenage years with Sam Raimi or marginality in Tim Burton’s Batmans. What’s the subtext in this new Spider Man saga for you guys?

Andrew: I think it holds a lot of fantastic themes, especially for young people and the methaphor of Peter Parker stepping into his powers, his gifts as Spider Man. The metaphor of that, I think, can be applied to everyone in our lives, in terms of identifying what our talents are, what our gift is and dive in.

AdC: Jamie, we can’t count super heroes movies with our hands nowadays, what do you think it means about our society? This need to identify with people who have super powers. What does it say about our world?

Jamie: I think it’s an escape. You know, like with super heroes, it’s someone you’d like to be. We’d like to save the day. When you go to the movies, you wanna see someone you can’t do in real life, that’s why super heroes work. The thing about spider Man is that Peter is still in high school, he’s a kid, so you know he’s sort of someone you’re inspired to be like. Even if he gets bullied at school, he has this ability of going beyond it all. There’s this idea that he’s like someone or there is something you can be.

AdC: You were giving the heavy responsibility of playing Electro, the bad guy who will chase Spider Man and I learned incidentally that spiders are one of your phobia.

Jamie: No, I don’t like spiders, man.

Augustin: Is it more fun to play a bad guy than a super hero?

Jamie: Yeah! It’s a lot more fun to be bad. You know, in this, the emotion that we got out of Electro is something that we all know. Basically Electro is jealous of Spider Man. He wants people to yell his name, he wants the pretty girlfriend, he wants to have everything he has. That’s an emotion that we all understand so when you see Electro, he’s basically coveting what Spider Man has and when he sees him … he wants to hurt him.

AdC: Emma, your character evolves in a males’ universe but it’s thanks to your femininity that we discover Spider Man’s weakness. Is it a big responsability to have to personify the romance and sweetness in those kind of action movies? Were you aware of that?

Emma: I think, he has such an incredible relationship with aunt May that it didn’t feel like all the feminine responsability was on my character. But there is something important about Gwen being the only person who knows that he is Spider Man and. There’s this intimacy between the two characters and with the promise he made to her father in order to protect her, it makes it a difficult environment to be in. I think Peter Parker has weaknesses or fears and insecurities and they’re seen in his relationship with Gwen.

Augustin: *talks about a Marvel exposition in Paris.* You can see that in the original Spider Man, he used to have webs under his arms, something he has in common with Antoine.

AdC: There’s something else we have in common, I always wanna weave (there’s some kind of innuendo there but I never heard of it)

back at 12: 57

AdC: Jamie, you have some kind of ritual apparently. With every new project, you write a song about the movie you’re filming.

Jamie: Yes, yes. When we did Spider Man, people would text me while I’m being in my Electro suit and I’d say ‘I can’t talk right now, I’m chasing a spider.’ So I wrote a song entitled, I may be black but I ain’t no wido

AdC: Andrew, can you sing it again?

AdC: Not bad, not bad.

AdC: Jamie, I was wondering during the movie, you’re blue and electric. Would you have accepted the role if he was called ‘Disco’ instead?

Jamie: As a matter of fact, yes.

AdC: Thank you so much Emma, Jamie, Andrew.

Source: emmastonefan

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.