Seth Rogen and Jay Chou
It's nothing short of a miracle The Green Hornet made it out of development hell. After seemingly never-ending script rewrites, changes in directors and casting speculations, Seth Rogen was psyched to announce making the movie became a reality. Sony Studios invited us to an early set visit to get a look at just how production was progressing. Read on for cast interviews, scene details and our firsthand spin in the Black Beauty.
Superhero vs. Sidekick
Rogen plays Britt Reid, publisher of The Daily Sentinel newspaper, who secretly fights crime as The Green Hornet. He's aided by his sidekick Kato (Jay Chou), a martial arts expert and excellent mechanic. In between filming, Seth, in full Green Hornet garb, complete with Hornet cufflinks, and his screenplay writing partner Evan Goldberg, talked to us about exploring the superhero-sidekick relationship, which lies at the heart of the film.
"We watched the show as we were preparing to pitch the thing," Rogen said. "It was based on the hero-sidekick relationship. First thing is, Kato doesn't have an alter-ego name. He's just Kato. They didn't even give him a name? It's so ridiculous. Britt doesn't introduce him to people. It's not like, 'This is Kato, also known as Kato.' So it's just little things like that we didn't even have to make it up. It was just there."
When Rogen returned to filming, we watched as he and Chou scuffled at Britt's luxurious pad. Posters decorated the room, including one of the Lone Ranger as a subtle nod. After exchanging a few kicks and punches, Britt bounced off the wall and onto the floor. As he got up, Chou said, "Now I'm gonna hurt you," in a very heavy Chinese accent.
After the take, we asked Rogen what Chou's next-to-unintelligible line was. "It may be dumped later," Rogen said with a laugh. "We're not trying to sell him as a guy who speaks perfect English."
The Bruce Lee LegacyWhen we sat down to chat with Chou and his translator, it was evident the language barrier has been one of the challenges of his role. Like his character Kato, he doesn't say much, but the little he does say is effectively humorous. "If I focus [on] English, I [compromise] my acting. So [I] practice English every day. [My] dialogue teacher follows me like a ghost, [even] when I go to [the] restroom."
Chou's more daunting challenge is stepping into the role made famous by Bruce Lee. "A lot of people wanted to fill this role," Chou said. "Bruce Lee's very serious. He's a legend. Nobody can replace him, so I [tried playing Kato] a different way, [adding] a little [humor], not serious fighting."
Most anime fans know Chou played the main character in live-action film Initial D, based on the popular Japanese comic book and TV series. "I don't sleep that well every night," Chou admitted. [With] Initial D, I [slept] very well filming. Exciting. Sweet dream. For [Green Hornet], it's the same exciting, but different. There's a lot of pressure because it's Bruce Lee's legacy."
Choosing Cast and Crew
The shoot experienced setbacks when Steven Chow was set to direct. When that didn't pan out, Chow, who's significantly older, was set to fill Kato's role, until he left the project altogether. Casting Chou brought "youthful exuberance" to the superhero-sidekick dynamic, Rogen said.
Meanwhile, the search for the right director continued. Michel Gondry—whose Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind garnered Oscar success—wasn't the obvious first choice for helming a comic book movie, but he surprised everyone. "My tastes are broader than people expect," Gondry smiles. After much probing, he admits that the original Superman is his favorite superhero, and two of his favorite films are Back to the Future and Groundhog Day.
Casting for Chudnofsky, the villain, also took time; at one point, Nicolas Cage was set to play him. "I was looking forward to working with him," Chou said. "Even though he didn't come here to work, I'm really happy because Christoph [Waltz] is a great actor." Rogen agreed: "It's one of those things where it's almost like every time we had a setback, something much better ultimately would arise."
Waltz Takes to Writing
The Inglourious Basterds villain conceded he wasn't initially keen on the part until producer Neal Moritz explained Chudnofsky was a "villain in his mid-life crisis." Waltz loved that: "Let's leave the comfort zone and just risk it."
The script, however, was previously penned for Cage's Jamaican-esque villain. "When that dissolved, we saw it as a real opportunity to get back to a version of the character that we were more interested in all along," Rogen says. "We had just Jamaican-ized the script, then de-Jamaican-ized it, so that was a whole process, but there were a few key speeches here and there that Christoph said, 'This type of language I think would be great to carry throughout the whole character.'"
So Waltz sat down with Rogen and Goldberg to rewrite all of his scenes. "He's written a lot of stuff that I'm very happy I'll get credit for, ultimately," Rogen quipped.
Black Beauties
Although Cameron Diaz wasn't around that day, we got an up-close look at the other Beauties on set. Dennis McCarthy, picture car coordinator, says they built 27 Black Beauties for the different stages of the car's destruction; they had already destroyed 22 of them. To end the day, we took a spin around the neighborhood in one of the unscathed cars. The car had vintage, black rubber seats, Gatling guns on the hood and missiles beneath the bumper. The 500-horsepower Chevy motor roared to life, which was deafening even with two mufflers—definitely not an eco-friendly vehicle. Chrysler would be pleased to know how much detail went into creating—and destroying—the signature vehicles. They were all built in McCarthy's one-stop shop. It takes approximately one month to build and soup up one Black Beauty. "We actually have this car in 10 different conditions. If they could shoot the movie in perfect continuity, it wouldn't be so bad, but they're always skipping over and going backwards, so it's a challenge. We never seem to have enough cars."
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