The Amazing Spiderman

1st Broadcast January -March 1995 BBC Radio 1

Writer

Dirk Maggs

Dirk Maggs

Producer

Dirk Maggs

Director

Dirk Maggs

Produced for

BBC Radio Light Entertainment BBC Radio 1

Synopsis

How spiderman came to be.

Episodes

Cast

Production Crew

None at this time

Recorded at

None at this time

Music composed & Arranged

Mark Russell

Spiderman Theme

Brian May

Comment by Dirk Maggs

‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ was really fun to adapt and direct. Stan Lee’s energy makes reading the original comics a treat, and it was great to work his realistic and irreverent approach to the comic book genre into scenes which could not always be filled wall-to-wall with action. Listening back there's still not enough foley (movement, clothes rustling) in this for me. Movement foley, even the most subtle, helps reinforce a sense of reality, of people existing, not just propped up to say their lines.

Bill Roberts as J.Jonah Jameson still cracks me up. A terrific terrific actor, and as a sort of bonus, When he blew a line he swore like a trooper, it made editing very hard work - but hilarious. I still think he gave the definitive version of JJJ. Bill Dufris who plays Spidey is now living in Maine and is the US voice of kid’s favourite ‘Bob The Builder’.

The signature tune for Spider-Man was by Brian May - not only a big Spidey fan but a terrific bloke. (This is high praise for a guitarist, coming from a drummer ... er, 'drum owner' !)

This from an Interview by Ty power

"The decision to return this character back to its earliest roots was not a conscious effort to make the production noticeably more light-hearted in contrast to Batman, as some people have claimed. It was a deliberate attempt to reflect the freewheeling, enthusiastic spirit Stan Lee brought to comic books. I loved that gung ho attitude and I felt Spidey needed to hit the wall running, as it were. The early Marvel titles in the 1960s were bustling with flip jokes, sight gags and irreverence for pomposity. Our version had to reflect that.

"There's no point in doing this if you can't have fun! In fact there were gag reels for all the series we did. But Spidey was such a laugh that I incorporated some of the stuff into the credit sequence. The other stuff was unbroadcastable! Part of it is using actors like Michael Roberts (who Played Dr Doom), who are always improvising, always 'on'. Mike had us in stitches. One minute Dr Doom was threatening Spidey, the next he's turned to the microphone and is plugging his own Home Shopping channel! There IS pressure and the BBC and Copyright holders are breathing down your neck, especially when you're having to knock out three-minute episodes that are full of action and progress the story. As a result a lot of nervous energy gets translated into laughter... thank goodness.

"The guys in the Marvel UK office were very pleased with our 'Movie Without Pictures' version of The Amazing Spider-Man. In fact a really great guy called Tim Quinn, who was the editor here for Marvel Comics at that time, was the person who first came up with the idea, and indeed got Brian May aboard to write the music. A copy was sent to Stan Lee, but we never heard back. I expect he was too busy to look at it. Sadly, most audio stuff in the USA is so bad that he probably figured it was another cut-price single voice reading. But it was a fan's tribute to him, in fact to everyone in the Marvel bullpen in the early sixties."

Running Time

Orginally broadcast as 50 3 minute episodes

120 Minutes

Cast Pictures

William Dufris	Garrick Hagon	Anita Dobson

Other Items

Dirk Maggs Radio Productions On Tape/ CD

Review By Ty Power

What Others have said

“This is just what you'd hope for from a Marvel Comic Book dramatised for radio. It's a high powered, fast paced, richly produced and wonderfully performed audio movie... Dirk Maggs’ production is infinitely superior to the embarrassingly sluggish Spiderman brought out by Simon & Schuster."

AUDIO THEATER.COM Website, Spring 2001

“Maggs’ forte is more than marshalling the apt accent: he midwives the whole acoustic of American popular culture onto the airwaves, a rich soundtrack, along with lashings of irony. No wonder people so readily compare radio as a medium with film ...”

ANNE KARPF, The Guardian, January 21st 1995

“... Dirk “Mr Genius” Maggs, as Brian May calls him, is Writer Producer Director behind Spider-Man ... Were any Archers fan to tune in, their eyebrows might be raised at the adventure and the ground-breaking effects (and wall-smashing, bomb-exploding effects for that matter)...”

NICHOLAS BARBER, Independent on Sunday, 5th February 1995

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