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Spider-Man: Far From Homespoilers ahead.
When Peter Billingsley got the call, he ignored it.
The caller ID said it was Louis DEsposito, co-president of Marvel Studios.
I was like,Ill give him a call tomorrow, Billingsley recalls.
The next day, my phone rang again.
I was like,Geez, Louis has really got to get ahold of me here.
So I walked off the set, grabbed the call, and we caught up.
And he said, Were bringing him back!
The him in that sentence, as it turned out, was William Ginter Riva.
With a box ofscraps!
To which poor Riva whimpers, Im sorry.
Im not Tony Stark.
And the bringing him back part of DEspositos exclamation?
Born in 1971 and initially raised in New York City, Billingsley found fame at a dangerously early age.
And a third agent said, Oh yeah, theyll work.
His first stop was in a TV ad for the senior-citizen elixir Geritol that starred Tony-winning actress Betty Buckley.
I was just a prop, but I booked it.
And that accelerated, for whatever reason.
I had an aptitude for it.
I guess I could mimic people pretty well, which was the job description.
did the young thespian get his first taste of true fame.
The films success gave way to another mass-market part as Messy Marvin in ads for Hersheys syrup.
Less notable roles ensued, but Billingsley started to get restless.
I was never the guy to always go back to my trailer.
I would watch the crew, what they were doing.
And it was my film school, I guess.
He branched out into producing, writing, and even directing.
The pieces were in place for a major change in Billingsleys fortunes in multiple senses of that word.
Eventually, the powers that be raised the prospect of him playing the scientist that Stane yells at.
He didnt need much convincing indeed, he immediately had ideas for the role.
The scientist wasnt based on anyone from the comics, so he needed a name.
Jon or Kevin might have thought of it, but I remember Jeff saying, William.
It had just the right amount of syllables, just the right consonants and vowels in it.
If Jeff likes this, its William.
William, it is.
The bigIron Manscene was shockingly easy to shoot, as it turned out, if a bit terrifying.
And we didnt even shoot anything past that.
And then there was that fateful call from Louis DEsposito.
He flew to London for the shoot, which featured a surprising amount of ad-libbing with fellow villain Gyllenhaal.
I just started this thing where I would repeat things back to [Gyllenhaal].
I think he said, All right, why dont you take the weapons and double them up?
And I was like, You want me to double them up?
Make it happen he does, and the Beck-Riva relationship is one of the funniest parts ofan already-quite-amusing picture.
Who knows, maybe William Ginter Riva will live again to fight another day, Billingsley muses.
