J. Michael Riva · 7:18pm Nov 20th, 2023
As quoted from the petition’s status update:
J. Michael Riva was an American production designer, born on June 20, 1948.
Among his many contributions, Riva was a collaborator of filmmaker Richard Donner, serving as the production designer of “The Goonies”, “Scrooged”, “Radio Flyer”, and three “Lethal Weapons” films. He also collaborated with Ivan Reitman in “Dave”, “Six Days and Seven Nights”, and “Evolution”; Rob Reiner in “A Few Good Men” and “North”; and Jon Favreau in “Zathura: A Space Adventure” and the 1st & 2nd “Iron Man” films.
In addition to these collaborations, Riva was the production designer of Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man 3” (where he worked alongside Neil Spisak), Steven Spielberg’s “The Color Purple”, McG’s “Charlie’s Angels” films, and Will Smith’s “The Pursuit of Happyness” and “Seven Pounds”. He was also the production designer of “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension”, which developed since its release and starred several notable performers.
On June 7, 2012, Riva suffered a stroke, resulting in him dying in a hospital bed at the age of 63. The last two movies he was involved in prior to his death were the first “The Amazing Spider-Man” film and “Django Unchained”, both of which were released posthumously.
Similar to James Horner, Laura Ziskin, Alvin Sargent, and Irrfan Khan, it occurred to me that a director’s cut of the first “The Amazing Spider-Man” film would serve as a perfect dedication for Riva. It became a new reason as to why the “Release the WebbCuts” petition is important to me, because when you look back on Riva’s work in that film and all the other movies he was involved in, everything about a director’s cut of the first film coming to fruition would be a great way of saying ‘thank you’ to him for his contributions throughout the industry.
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