This is perhaps the most inspiring documentary I’ve ever seen to kick young would-be filmmakers in the a*s to go out there and make their vision come true.
Regular readers of Film Threat should already know the story behind Dan Poole and his Spider-Man fetish, but for those who aren’t, let me break it down real quick. Dan Poole may be the most devoted Spider-Man fan in the world. Realizing in the late 80’s that Spider-Man was to be turned into a feature film (been a long that we’ve been waiting hasn’t it, folks?) Dan decides that he needs to be a part of this process by directing and starring in his own Spider-Man shot on video shorts, followed by a feature length effort based on the comic book titled “The Green Goblin’s Last Stand”. Storyboarding the comic so that it will adapt well to live action video, Dan practically translates the comic panel by panel.
Let naysayers, like I once was, be warned. Dan is merely no obsessed fanboy with a video camera, a crumby Spidey outfit and a few spare weekends to spare. This documentary shows that this guy has more passion about making his vision come true than most other filmmakers I’ve ever heard of. And this passion includes Dan swinging from tall buildings without a safety net, clinging onto the roof of a speeding cab and getting thrown though various collapsible set pieces, all of which look damn painful, I don’t care how collapsible they were. Dan’s early interests in becoming a stuntman helps him pull off these feats without killing himself and you know what? He looks and moves how I imagined Spider-Man would when I was reading the comics as a kid. He’s got amazing gymnastic ability and that greatly enhances his role as our favorite webslinger.
This hour long documentary contains interviews with Dan Poole as well as his cast and crew, who all vouch for his insanity, but in the end, confess that he’s one of the most devoted people they’ve ever known. Interview segments are broken up with actual scenes from “The Green Goblin’s last Stand” as well as outtakes.
I’ve yet to see “The Green Goblin’s Last Stand”, but let me say this – after seeing this documentary, I know that we need more people like Dan Poole in Hollywood. I believe X-Men was a fluke and I’m not expecting too much from the sequel. And as far as the “real” Spider-Man movie coming out this summer, all’s I have to say is I think that Poole was on the right track with picking a major dramatic story in the middle of Spidey’s history to make a film about. Let’s face it, most of the people that are going to see Raimi’s Spider-Man are die-hard fans that already know the story of Peter Parker and how he came to be a webhead. I’m not even a die-hard Spider-Man fan and I know that I’m not looking forward to spending at least a half hour of this summer’s film wading through the whole introductory story, so I’m sure that plenty of die-hards feel the same way. I still have some faith in Raimi’s Spider-Man, but I think that if Poole was a major figurehead behind the project, we’d have a movie that would have comic book nerds creaming their jeans all over the world. “The Making of the Green Goblin’s Last Stand”, it’s the “Hearts of Darkness” of the comic book world.
