Just a few minutes into Spider-Noir, it’s clear the Prime Video show not only features a very different take on Spider-Man, but also a very different take on Nicolas Cage. While not as cartoonishly silly as he is in Raising Arizona or as manic as in The Wicker Man, Cage performs as Ben Reilly (aka, The Spider) in a snappy, heightened style that was far more common in noir films from the 1940s and 1950s, before more naturalistic acting became dominant in the following decades.
The effect would be jarring too, if not for the fact that the rest of the cast follows Cage’s lead and everything else in the series compliments it as well, from the set design to the period costumes to the harsh lighting. All of it seems to be pulled straight out of those old movies, and the complete commitment to that genre makes Spider-Noir something really special.
Given the atypical style of the series, setting the tone early on was absolutely critical and much of that came down to Emmy-winning director Harry Bradbeer, who directed the first two episodes of Spider-Noir. That’s why Polygon reached out to the director, to ask what old movies informed the look of the show, and what it was like directing Cage while he was portraying “a spider pretending to be a person” (which was Cage’s reported approach to the role). According to Bradbeer, Cage never mentioned acting like a spider in their conversations, but he did reference an iconic noir actor who helps explain the performance. Check out the full interview below.
Polygon: I’m going to put you on the spot for the first question: What’s the right way to watch Spider-Noir, in black-and-white or color?
Harry Bradbeer: Oh man, I’ll alienate half of the audience if I say one or the other. I’d say it depends on your mood. Some days you’re going to feel particularly nostalgic for black-and-white. I mean, it’s a nostalgic experience anyway, because the color has a very particular tenor because of the way it was shot by [director of photography] Darran Tiernan. It’s an extraordinary achievement. Ask any DP to shoot something for black-and-white and color, they’ll tell you it’s a headache because the colors had to be a certain kind to chime with black-and-white. For example, blood always used to be green in the old days because it registered better on black-and-white. You do different things with color than with black-and-white, so he had to find something that would work.
Can you talk about what goes into that? What kinds of compromises are made to do both at once?
A good example would be the hotel room, which was one of the first things we shot on the stage. We did a pre-shoot a month before we did the main shoot, just to try things out. The color of the hotel room looked so vividly bluey-green that I thought, This is going to be insane to look at. But when it came through the prism of the method it was shot, it came through as a different color [dull green]. So you have to think ahead. The DP has to understand how color is going to actually appear on the negative in a different way than it would normally. It’s a challenge for the DP really and the design department working together to find something that will work for both formats.
Does it affect the directing?
Well, in the sense that we shot it with noir in mind, we watched tons of film noir from out of the past, right up into modern noir like Chinatown and also other, more contemporary black-and-white movies. But also there was the whole [Spider-Noir] graphic novel of it all. So you’ve got a hardboiled detective story, you’ve got a film noir, and you’ve got the graphic novel with its own aesthetic.
Like, at the beginning in the first episode when Ben Reilly’s on his back and we are tracking down towards him, straight and center-framed, then the onlookers come into the frame, that’s right out of a comic book. That was the first image that came into my head when I read the script and we shot it just as I pictured it.
Were there films that were particularly informative for you?
There were a few. Chinatown was a big one. Casablanca was a big one. Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing. Also Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, the camera work and the lighting was very much influenced by that film.
I’m guessing, even more so than most shows, it was really incumbent upon you as the first director to set the tone. Can you talk about the challenges of that?
Well, I had to get my head into films like Touch of Evil. Those film noir films didn’t have a large budget, so they were very inventive with the way they would use graphic angles and Dutch angles and hard lighting to shoot in small stages. Like, they’d shoot on the city sets somewhere at Warner’s and they’d put a lot of smoke in there. Suddenly, it created a whole mood and aesthetic that looked far more expensive than it was. It was economical, graphic, inventive, hard-lit and full of mood.
Also, I’ve always loved private dick films and TV, the way there is someone who is not really a cop, he’s not really a civilian. He lives between those two worlds and he has a very complicated relationship with both the police and civilians. No one really ever likes him. All he does is poke his nose in other people’s business and he somehow has to find satisfaction and love and meaning to his existence.
I saw an interview with executive producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller where they said that Nicolas Cage told them he’s playing this role like a spider pretending to be a human. I’m curious if that came up while you were directing Cage and how that affected things.
That’s interesting. Maybe that’s how he ended up. The first thing he said to me was that he was going to play Humphrey Bogart. There was quite a bit of Humphrey in him.
I remember the very first day of our rehearsal, I said to him, ‘So Humphrey Bogart, how’s that going to sound?’ He said, ‘Well, let’s go and try it out.’ So we went into my office and we read both scripts. I did all the other parts. He did his part, the love scenes, the action and it was a wonderful kind of fast, speed-dating way of getting to know Nicolas Cage and the way he works. We rattled through the script. We had a great time and we found the emotional inflections, the pain, the excitement, and we found the pace of it. It was fun. It’s just the way I like to work.
The last thing I wanted to cover was the villain. I would love to hear about working with Brendan Gleeson because he looks like he’s having the time of his life in that role.
Yeah, he does. Brendan was our first choice, hands down, for Silvermane. Brendan was great. It was Brendan’s idea to play him Irish because originally it was an American character. I thought it was a really, really good idea and he made Silvermane his own thing.
