Toby's Big Ride - Maguire Talks Seabiscuit AND Spidey
The star of 'Seabiscuit' and 'Spider-Man' jockeys his way to superstardom
Mountain-girdled, faux-elegant Santa Anita Park is reposing in the last few wisps of what Southern Californians have been calling June Gloom - which means the weather is beautiful, just not that beautiful. The race track, built in the early '30s by Bing Crosby, among others, won't see real horses for about three more months, but that doesn't mean the place isn't busy. For one thing, there's simulcast racing every Wednesday through Sunday. For another, Seabiscuit is back.
There he is. Out there on the infield. Flying through the turns, churning clods into mist, humiliating his competition and blazing down the home stretch to win the then-astounding purse of $100,000 in the 1940 Santa Anita Handicap, proving himself one of the greatest thoroughbreds in history. Maybe the greatest ever, if all you care about is heart.
Up in the grandstand, smoking a fat Opus X cigar and taking an occasional glance toward the track is Tobey Maguire, star of director Gary Ross' adaptation of the bestselling Laura Hillenbrand book - which is the "Seabiscuit" that's running today on the racetrack's massive screen. Maguire is on a break from shooting "The Amazing Spider-Man," the sequel to the film that's suddenly made him a major - MAJOR - Hollywood commodity, and indulging in what he admits is his "last vice," primo smoke. He finds no irony, as far as one can tell, in the fact that Seabiscuit's real jockey, Red Pollard, a semi-tragic figure in Hillenbrand's book, was plagued by alcoholism and that he is being played by a 28-year-old who hasn't had a drink since he was 19. (A recent Playboy interview implied otherwise.) Or that Pollard's drinking is all but absent from the movie.
"That was Gary Ross' choice," Maguire says. He is small in some ways, like the jockey he plays, but his arms are well muscled (Spider Power, no doubt). He's a vegetarian, he does yoga; he fills out his T-shirt without stressing the fabric. "But I don't know how you would get into that, or how to incorporate it into the story. I think you kinda gotta keep the characters developed enough, but they all have to meet and move the story forward; it might have been difficult to do that - Red was drinking a lot, and then he'd be dry, or somewhat dry, for a while. I think it becomes scenery in a way. I felt OK that it was left the way it was."
Maguire has parlayed a seemingly effortless acting technique and an understated but apparently effective sexuality into one of the more remarkable Hollywood success stories of recent years. The product of a broken home whose childhood was one relocation after another (his father was a cook, his mom a secretary), Maguire has worked with some of the world's better-known directors - Ang Lee on "The Ice Storm," Lasse Hallstrom on "The Cider House Rules," Woody Allen on "Deconstructing Harry," Sam Raimi on the "Spider-Man" movies and Ross, for whom he was the TV-and-time-traveling teen of "Pleasantville."
Still, he smiles and nods when it's pointed out that, in the same way Red was too tall to be a jockey, Maguire is the unlikeliest of movie stars.
While Maguire is immediately likable, expressing a great deal of enthusiasm about having ridden an actual thoroughbred and a profound admiration for the job that jockeys do, it's also clear why he's a notoriously problematic interview. Dumb, an interviewer can deal with; too smart, you ratchet up the stakes. Maguire is more like inscrutable.
For instance: It's pointed out that, like he and Pollard, his co-stars also share certain aspects with their characters: Jeff Bridges, who portrays Seabiscuit's wealthy owner, Charles Howard (who also helped build Santa Anita), is a person of privilege, given his birth into a film industry family; Chris Cooper, like his crusty cowboy horse trainer, Tom Smith, has worked his tail off in relative obscurity and only later in his career is getting the recognition he deserves (such as this year's supporting actor Oscar for "Adaptation"). Maguire, again, is sort of the Red Pollard of movie stars.
"This sounds interesting," Maguire offers, like a sugar cube. "I like how you did that. It's not the kind of thing I spend my time thinking about, but that's the difference in our jobs. But yeah, you could perceive things that way."
I could also run a few laps around the track. How about the idea that "Seabiscuit," in the way it regards its time in American history (the Depression), the genuine, authentic feeling of national spirit and the hope that the undersized colt engendered in a lot of despairing people and, last but not least, the authoritative way historian David McCullough's voice informs the short documentary-style chapter intros throughout the film - how will that play in a country in which the campaigning never stops and the public posturing is neverending?
This, Maguire can chew on. "It's just so obvious," he says. "So much on the news is about campaigning. I'm not commenting on Bush especially, but so much is a popularity contest, a campaign." (Director Ross, who is the son of blacklisted screenwriter Arthur Ross, participated in Ted Kennedy's 1980 presidential campaign and worked as a speechwriter for Michael Dukakis and Bill Clinton, among other prominent Democrats). "I think that there's an interesting thing to using McCullough - although it's not for the mainstream population as much as for people who watch documentaries, but there's a recognition there. It makes it feel more authentic to me, 'cause when you're watching 'The Civil War' you're really only seeing stills and yet it's still entertaining; he's like an entree into this world of the 1930s - we start even earlier, but let's just say the '30s - and you're immediately up to speed. And there's an authenticity about the time without it being too stuffy or whatever, clunky. And it's definitely the kind of filmmaking that I hope is somewhat timeless."
He said Ross' consolidation of the book by Hillenbrand - who revealed in a recent rather startling New Yorker piece the extent of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome she's suffered for years - presented particular problems.
"The movie is 400, 450 scenes," he says. "All the scenes being half a page, basically. And that was a feat, an amazing job to pull off - and kind of tough for an actor, y'know? You've got only two lines and it's a pivotal moment. It's complicated filmmaking, and it was done very gracefully. I think."
The movie, he says, is not overly sentimental either - which is fine with him.
"I really don't like sentimental things. Good sentiment, yeah. I like stuff that tugs at your heartstrings. But if I can smell the goals that the filmmakers are after, then I get upset ... because it's just blatant manipulation."