Video:The Green Hornet Michel Gondry, Edward Furlong Interviews
with Rebecca MurrayDirector Michel Gondry and Edward Furlong hit the green carpet at the Hollywood premiere of Columbia Pictures' 'The Green Hornet' in support of the action comedy. Gondry and Furlong chatted about the action and working on such a big-budget project.
Transcript:The Green Hornet Michel Gondry, Edward Furlong Interviews
Rebecca Murray from About.com Hollywood Movies at the LA Premiere of Columbia Pictures' The Green Hornet.
The Green Hornet Director Michel Gondry
First off, how do you put your stamp on something when the guy who wrote it is starring in it?Michel Gondry: "It's a good question. It's not always easy. But first of all, my decision in doing it is putting it's stamp in itself, because I'm not going to do it if it's like about a guy who's very pretentious, very confident, very handsome, and so on. By accepting to do the film, there is a connection here. And as well Seth wanted to see - people asked me to do this movie because they wanted to see fights in a way they had not seen before. On that I could put my stamp on it. I did ways to shoot the fight sequence, the action sequence that were different than before."
The 'Kato Vision'. How did you come up with that?
Michel Gondry: "Well it's ideas I had over the years and some of them had just been occupying the space in sort of a geometrical way, some other was changing the time to d different ratio within the same frame. Some are like more driven by video game inspirations. It's a combination of different elements."
I hear that was a lot of changing the dialogue on the set. How difficult was that when you're doing a big action film?
Michel Gondry: "Well what's very important to me, I think, to get sort of a vibe for a movie of this kind is to give room for improvisation, room for the human element of it. So Seth [Rogen] likes to improvise. Jay [Chou] could not improvise too much, but he had to come up with stuff to compensate. In being open-minded to that I think is how you preserve the life into a big machine like this one."
How do you balance the action with the comedy, because you've got Seth who everybody knows from comedy?
Michel Gondry: "Well we did not override the comedy, especially in the action sequences, so the action was what was driving the shooting in some ways. When we kept room for them to improvise and keep arguing or getting back together. It's intricate, if you will. I remember when we shot some time I would say to Seth, 'You should write more stuff here for this action sequence.' And he said, 'Don't worry. We're going to do that after. It's going to be there.' So there is always an element of improvisation, even if it's very technical."
Edward Furlong - 'Tupper' in The Green Hornet
So tell me about working on The Green Hornet.Edward Furlong: "It was cool. I mean, I have a smaller role. I worked on it for a couple of weeks. I don't know, man. It was wild. I'm so used to doing these independent films and stuff and smaller budgets, and it's like I get there and there's like a crew of 300 people, a fricken explosion every night. I mean it was wild. It was cool to be on a big film again."
At least you had Michel heading it up who's from the indie background.
Edward Furlong: "Yeah, exactly. Michel Gondry, man, he's awesome. He's really cool. There's a couple of times I could not understand what he was saying because he's like [unintelligible]. It was like, 'What the hell are you talking about?'"
Do you just fake your way through it?
Edward Furlong: "Yes I do. Yes I do! And there was one time where I actually literally fake my way. I was like, 'Oh, okay, cool,' and he gave me a look like this [questioning], 'What the hell?' So I don't know, maybe I gave him the complete wrong response. But I have a lot of respect for his work."
Did you get cars thrown at you or get blown up? Everyone's telling me he loves to do these stunts all the time.
Edward Furlong: "I get killed, but it was good like just straight-up gunshot."
No car smashing on top of you?
Edward Furlong: "No, but a car does come into my meth lab. I got to see a car come in through the wall."
You're just a really good character in this - meth lab, get killed with a gunshot...
Edward Furlong: "Yeah, and I'm kind of a bad guy but I'm sort of a misunderstood bad guy, you know? He probably, if he could come back from the dead, would go and help the Green Hornet in the sequel. You know what I mean?"
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