Stan Lee documentary

Open with a simple question about a famous character, not a birth date. David Gelb's Stan Lee documentary begins by asking where the idea of Spider-Man came from, instead of starting with Lee's early life. Gelb argues that opening with "I was born on the Upper West Side" fails, because viewers first need a reason to keep watching.

The approach follows the cold open Gelb took from James Bond films and uses on Chef's Table: a one or two minute hook that drops viewers into the action, then the credits, then the story. He says the strongest hook is a simple question about a character everyone knows, and that on streaming an episode has about ten minutes to pull someone in.

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A large archive of interviews let Lee narrate his own story. Stan Lee left a huge trove of interviews, so the film could be edited to have Lee tell his own story in his own words.

Gelb's comic book roots led him to the project. He holds up Spider-Man's origin, where Peter Parker lets a burglar go who later kills his uncle, as the model of an origin story that explains why a character does what he does.

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