July 2011 By Philip Berk
WORKING WITH CHRISTOPH WALTZ, WHAT WAS THAT LIKE?
SETH: It was great. I had a lot of fun. He’s a really wonderful actor and he’s really nice. He was a lot of fun, you know, and when we hired him we didn’t know if he’d be uncomfortable with working at the speed that we had to do it but he was totally game and he is really good in the movie I think.
WHAT STORT OF STUFF YOU HAVE IN THE MOVIE WOULD YOU LIKE IN REAL LIFE?
SETH: What sort of stuff do I have in the movie that I would like to have in my real life? All of the missiles and stuff would be pretty cool I think especially in L.A.
ALL THE ACTION SCENES IN THIS FILM, THERE ARE SO MANY. WHEN YOU WERE WORKING IN THOSE ACTION SCENES, WHAT ARE THE THINGS THAT YOU WERE MOST CONSCIOUS OF AND WHAT IS THE SCENE THAT YOU PUT MOST EFFORT INTO?
SETH: Well, the action scenes I think you have to be most conscious of is not getting blown up or run over by a car or something like that. It can be dangerous. We tried to film as much of it practically as possible. We tried to use as few visual effects as possible so there’s a lot of cars crashing through buildings and explosions and stuff like that and I just have to try to not look as terrified as I was for the most part but obviously those scenes aren’t that difficult from an acting standpoint. To me the scene where it’s just me and Kato kind of talking about our friendship and our history, those were the scenes that required much more focus and care in putting into it.
WHAT ATTRACTED YOU TO THE GREEN HORNET?
SETH: The character was written and started I think the late 1930’s and was a radio show and it was a spawn off of the Lone Ranger radio show and then before movies, they used to have movie serials like they’d show little 2 minute movie in the movie theatre, kind of in the ‘50s, and they would do that with The Green Hornet, then in the ‘60s, ’64 I think it became a TV show which only lasted one season and kind of intermittently there have been comics about the character and not really having a very long run so that’s one of the unique things about the character is that there is not really one single definitive version of it and that’s what allowed us to kind of explore him and interpret it a little differently I guess.
HOW MUCH CREATIVE FREEDOM DID YOU ALLOW YOURSELF IN TELLING THE STORY, CONSIDERING THAT THERE ARE SO MANY DIEHARD PURIST FANS OF GREEN HORNET AND SETH, CAN YOU PLEASE TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER. THANK YOU.
SETH: Yeah, well, I guess the first part of the question you know, we didn’t want to let the material hold us back in any way. We wanted it to always be a base upon which to build, you know, and create this world so we kind of, you know, took the products that we thought were relevant and awesome and we kind of let some of the ideas that we didn’t think would translate that well to a modern world and a modern audience and we didn’t want to put stuff in the movie that people who had never heard of The Green Hornet would watch it and they’d be thinking oh, that must be something from the TV show that I don’t know about. That’s the only things that could possibly be in this movie and I’ve seen movies based on old things and – and that happens. You see them shoehorning stuff in there just for the sake of having it and – and you feel like you’re kind of being pandered to in some way which – which we didn’t want. We wanted it all to be very organic to the characters but that being said, some of the fun of writing it was trying to include as much of the stuff from the old version of The Green Hornet as possible but making it organic like I get the gas gun in the movie which is from the TV show but we tried to really make it a character based plot point that I get the gas gun. It’s not just like it arbitrarily happens, it’s because I am not as good at fighting as Kato and it’s an emotional moment for us you know, so that’s really how we tried to approach it as – as writers and as far as the character of Britt goes, you know, he’s a – a very wealthy man who grew up in a very cold household and he doesn’t have a lot of real friends or real good values and his father and him don’t have a very good relationship but then when his father dies he kind of connects with another person who he finds was close to his father yet didn’t have a very good relationship with him and that was one of his father’s mechanics and that’s Kato and we kind of form this friendship over this relationship we had with my father and in doing it kind of realize that we both have always had this dream to kind of get out there and – and be heroes and we bond over that and we try to do it and meanwhile have to kind of overcome each other’s personalities as that’s happening.
SETH, I WAS WONDERING IF YOU WERE PARTICULARLY A FAN OF THE GREEN HORNET WHEN YOU WERE A KID AND WHAT OTHER SUPERHERO WERE YOU THINKING OF PLAYING WHEN YOU WERE A KID?
SETH: I’m a big Batman fan but that was taken but I mean I an a big comic book fan and always as we were young and we still are we both go into comic book stores often and but honestly, I mean, I was – I was aware of The Green Hornet. I wasn’t a particularly huge fan of it anymore so than, you know, a lot of other comics but obviously the – you know, me and Evan really I think what we’re best at writing relationship movies and we always wanted to try to a superhero movie but it wasn’t until the idea of The Green Hornet came along that we could do both with it, you know, because it was the only superhero story where really there were two famous characters and Kato and The Green Hornet, not just The Green Hornet so it allowed us to write both things we really wanted to write which was a superhero type movie and a relationship movie and that’s more than anything why The Green Hornet attracted us.
IN THE FIRST MINUTES PEOPLE ARE GOING TO EXPECT THAT YOU’D MAKE THEM LAUGH. MR. ROGEN, WAS THAT A CONCERN?
SETH: We were very aware of what people would think going into it and I think we tried to write the movie accordingly. I think in the first five minutes of the movie you see that the character is probably grossly different than you think he is. I think the character is a lot savvier than you think he is. There’s a lot more going. There’s a lot more depth and a lot of room for growth, you know, and I think – I think it all helps the story. I think watching someone like Brad Pitt become a superhero isn’t that interesting because he’s pretty much starting out as one but I think watching someone who is not like that become one is a far more interesting journey and that’s what we tried to do, you know, to really go from A to B with it, not from A to A, you know. Or B to B.
WHO WAS ACTUALLY RUNNING THE SHOW ON SET? WHO WAS THE BOSS?
SETH: I was around quite a bit, you know, but I’d say we really formed an incredible collaboration. I mean, Gondry knows things about film-making that me and Evan don’t at all but me and Evan had written movies that are commercially successful in a way that Gondry has not quite gotten there but – but t creatively he can achieve things we couldn’t even conceive of, you know, so it was basically like how we were going to make it and still have people like it and that’s kind of the conversation we – we always have. There was not too much ego. We always wanted to make the best movie possible and it was a lot of fun, you know, I mean, the best situation is when it kind of doesn’t feel like anyone’s in charge. You kind of just feel like everyone has the same say.