What attracted you to "Eight Legged Freaks"?
It was a chance for me to play an action hero and have a love interest, which is a role I rarely get offered. I'm usually the quirky one. I also saw Ellory Elkayem's short film ["Larger Than Life"], which was about a woman's house that gets taken over by giant mutated spiders. He really captured the feel of B-movies, so I knew he understood the tone. I've also wanted to work with [producers] Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich. I knew that they would provide a realistic standard of CGI and bring the genre up-to-date.
Tell us about filming the spider scenes and special effects...
To create the spider webs, we had to deal with this runny, wet latex material. It was stretchy and kind of drippy, so that was a little gross. In one scene Scarlett [Johansson] and I were supposed to be pinned against a wall by a spider web, and the crew stood there and threw buckets of gooey stuff at us. It was spattered all over us but ended up looking like we were making "The Blob", so they had to use something else. It took forever to wash off! There isn't any blood in the film. It's not really graphic or gory, but there are a lot of spider guts - which we used apple sauce for and some other things with a green dye in it.
Are you afraid of spiders?
I used to think I wasn't, but when they brought this tarantula on to the set I was like, "Whoa!". Then I saw it stand up on its back legs and I just freaked. I am definitely afraid of big spiders and poisonous ones. But, then again, I love it when my wife Courteney [Cox] yells from one of the rooms, "David, there's a spider in here!", because that's when I get to run in and act like a hero. I say, "Stand back darling", then stomp on it and say, "We're safe now". It's a real moment of manliness.
Your next film is called "Stealing Sinatra". Can you tell us about your role?
I play Barry Keanon, a guy who kidnapped Frank Sinatra Jr. As crazy as it sounds, he had this idea and executed it. The whole thing lasted 58 hours before they were discovered. The humour of this story is tied to the fact that these guys were not really criminals but just bumbling wannabe criminals. William H Macy plays the guy who turns us in. He's just such a great actor. It was a thrill getting to work with him.
