Before Peter Parker was a hero, he was a nerd, and only the finest university education would be enough to satisfy his ravenous intellect. In the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy, Peter attends Manhattan’s Columbia University, and it’s there that some of the series’ most significant moments happen: among them, Peter meeting Norman Osborn and getting bit by the super-spider in Spider-Man 1, and falling for Gwen Stacy in Spider-Man 3. The film crew wanted access to the actual campus and a lecture hall, and according to Fedynich, Columbia was happy to make that happen. One problem: gawking students. “Filming outside on campus is always a challenge when there’s students and other people roaming around,” he says. “During Spider-Man 1, we were not recognized, but obviously, for Spider-Man 2, everyone was much more popular. And so the attention we got being on campus was even greater, which attracted a lot more people. Crowd control became an issue.”
