Was Green Hornet a comic book you had a particular affinity for?

I did collect it back when I was a hardcore collector in the late ’80s, early ’90s. And I was a big fan of the show when I was a kid because they would sometimes run it back to back with Batman which I always watched when I was a kid. But they didn’t have a lot of episodes. They only had one year worth of episodes, where Batman I think had two and a half years. So you didn’t see a lot of Green Hornet. You didn’t see as much Green Hornet as you did Batman. But yeah, I always kind of dug him. I remember liking it so much more as a kid. I re-watched all those shows recently and with the exception of those guys in the mask and Bruce Lee kicking ass, the rest of it is kind of boring. It’s always them after mobsters and racketeers. They didn’t have very colorful villains like the Batman stable. But I was always kind of a fan.

What villain would be more interesting in the film?

I’ve got to create one for him. I’ve got to give him a villain, at least in this one, because having him go after gyp artists doesn’t really make for a big action movie. If you listen to the old radio shows, that’s what he’s always doing is going after mobsters, racketeers and gyp artists. There was one radio show I listened to where he’s going after an insurance scam racket, and it’s like why do you have to put on a mask to do that?

Are there no comic book villain you want to bring back?

Well, there’s nothing really from the run of the comics that I read that I was real fond of. It’s just something I’ve got to create, come up with for the purpose of the movie.

How are you preparing for big action scenes?

I will definitely have to do storyboards. It just requires more diligence than I’m used to putting in when I’m actually working on a flick because generally I’m just totally shooting dialogue, right? And it’s usually two people talking, so you don’t have to be that visually interesting. This time around, in Jersey Girl, thanks to Vilmos Zsimond, we’ve got a good looking movie about people talking to one another. But with Green Hornet, you’ve got to build in whole action sequences where it has nothing to do with dialogue, it’s all about eye candy. So for me, even on the few action sequences we’ve had in, say, Dogma or Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back are always the most painful for me to shoot because it’s boring. It’s really boring. You work your whole day and get two seconds of usable film, two seconds of actual movie time. I’m used to getting like seven pages of dialogue done in a day. So it’s just a matter of rewiring the brain and just being like all right, we’ll work many long hours to get a few seconds of film, but we’ll make it a really interesting, really fun looking film.

Was Jason Mewes supposed to have a role in the film?

Jason Mewes, when I started writing it, I wanted Jason to play Jason Biggs’ role. And then Mewes got knee deep in the heroin and that wasn’t going to be happening. So I scaled it back and then I wanted Mewes to play the guy who delivers the diapers who Matt Mayer played. And then Mewes couldn’t do it because he couldn’t come shoot in Jersey because there was a bench warrant out for his arrest. So Mewes wound up missing the boat this time.

How does Ben cry on cue?

Very well and it’s kind of a weird process that you feel bad for him afterwards, because he goes someplace really dark. I’m not quite sure where it is, but he is able to do it, to summon it up and be authentic. I think that’s one of the toughest things in the world for an actor to do. I don’t think it’s that easy to sit there and call up real emotional sh*t. Like when Silent Bob had to cry in “Dogma” they just blew this menthol sh*t into my eyes that makes your eyes water. He doesn’t do it. He just goes to that place and f*cking gets emotional. So big props to him for being able to do that. I’m sure he probably thinks about all the terrible press he received this year. Now he’ll be able to do it much more easily than he did in the past.

Were the scenes of Ollie and Gertrude romancing each other cut into a montage from longer, full length scenes?

Some of them. Some of them were longer than they were [in the current cut]. Some of them are exactly the same length they are in the montage. But with the exception of lifting out the wedding scene itself, or the wedding shot, it’s only 12 seconds, nothing was cut because of that. It was just cut because the movie was chunky and it took a while to ramp up and get going. So, when you edit a movie, you just pull sh*t out. There’s as much stuff from Liv and Raquel and George as there is from Ben and Jen.

For the DVD?

All there. At least a half an hour of cut stuff on the DVD.

THE ‘JERSEY’ GUY

March 18, 2004 — TO tell the truth, this movie inspires me to be a father as much as ‘Armageddon’ inspired me to become an oil-rigger / astronaut! It’s a great role, but it’s just a role.” So says Ben Affleck in response to the unimaginative question, does his role as a doting dad in his new film “Jersey Girl” lead him to thoughts of diapers and domesticity?

Affleck, disarmingly candid, says that “Jersey Girl,” made with his friend and frequent director Kevin Smith, is an “actor’s movie. It’s performance-driven, as opposed to movies in which the actor is . . . incidental.”

This tale of a p.r. man who makes the fatal mistake of dissing his client – Will Smith! – publicly, gives Affleck the opportunity to emote. He is not a stock, stoic, heroic figure. Ben, at his best on-screen, is kind of a mess. The closer his characters are to an emotional crisis, the better he is. Here he performs colorfully with young Raquel Castro as his daughter, and Liv Tyler, extraordinarily appealing, as the woman who wants to bring a little oomph back in his life. Also excellent is George Carlin as his dad.

“Jersey Girl” is a leap for indie god Smith, who has guided Ben through “Chasing Amy” and “Dogma.” The director has attempted to keep his cutting edge, while confronting sentimental issues – precocious children, aging parents, dying spouses – all in the context of a more mainstream Hollywood-type film. Affleck says, “This certainly reflects Kevin’s change of life. We met when we were both about 23, before ‘Chasing Amy.’ A lot of what was on our mind was sex – getting it, the history of it, figuring it out. ‘Jersey Girl’ represents his maturing.” And Ben’s maturing? A hearty laugh – “Well, maybe I’m not as evolved yet!” Maybe not, but he did give us a fascinating analysis of recent events, insights he hasn’t offered elsewhere.

“Jersey Girl” features 12 minutes of Jennifer Lopez. Then she’s gone. This is not “Gigli,” of which Ben says today, “Well, there you had a film that was affected by, and informed by, the off-screen lives of its participants. The original film was dark and weird and kind of surreal. Then, as Jennifer and I became closer, and the publicity got out of hand, the studio decided it wanted a ‘Ben ‘n’ Jen’ comedy – as if there had been a precedent for such a thing to begin with! So, we had to go back for reshoots, to conform to an image we barely knew we had.

“But that was all part of the absurdity of the thing. And as bad as it got, I did appreciate being in the eye of the hurricane, a first-person perspective on a pop-culture phenomenon, which is a ridiculous way to refer to a personal relationship that mattered. And I thought I’d seen the worst of that when I broke up with Gwyneth [Paltrow]! But Jennifer and I sort of fit into the zeitgeist of the moment. They had to, metaphorically, ‘build new sets’ for our affair. I felt like I wore a hair shirt for a while, but we both got out alive.”

And what’s next for Ben? “As soon as this ‘Jersey Girl” junketing is over, I’m taking off. Four months. I’m going to travel and clear my head. There’s some tentative plan to to do a movie called ‘Glory Road,’ but I don’t want to think about work right now. I don’t want to, nor do I have to, worry my career into the ground – when’s the next job?”

No more matinee-idol, pop-culture sizzle? “No, please!” Ben says. “The lucky thing is, the press and the public have such short attention spans. One minute it’s me and Jen, the next, Janet Jackson’s breast . . . ”

Smith fears controversy will also hurt his latest flick, the romantic comedy Jersey Girl, which reunites Ben Affleck and ex-love Jennifer Lopez for the first time since Gigli crashed and burned. “I have to accept the fact that [Jersey Girl] will never be a No. 1 film because people are predisposed to think it is a Ben and Jen [vehicle],” he laments. “They are just not going to turn out because they all hated Gigli so much, even though nobody saw it.

“I have the benefit of knowing that the movie is not about those two,” adds Smith, referring to the fact that Jersey Girl really focuses on the relationship between Affleck and his on-screen daughter, played by Raquel Castro. “Now if Ben and the kid break up, I’ve got problems. But then again, if he and the kid date, I’ve got bigger problems.”

JERSEY GIRL- New Yorker Ollie Trinke’s (Ben Affleck) life goes into the toilet when he finds himself a single father, out of work, and living back at home with his dad (George Carlin) in a small town in New Jersey. As years pass and he settles into the routines of manual labor and evenings spent watching cartoons with his daughter, he finds himself yearning for a chance to return to the hustle of his former life. Kevin Smith’s newest film (and undoubtedly his best looking yet) is something of a departure as it leaves the slapstick behind. It feels almost like Woody Allen lite–although at times a little sappy– as a dramatic comedy about real people. Some of his hardcore fans will be upset by the stylistic change, but Smith has created a likeable paean to parenting and children, and to accepting the life you have instead of always chasing after the past. And the characters, Liv Tyler’s notwithstanding, are familiar, three-dimensional people… like your friends and neighbors. And it still has plenty of laughs. No, it’s not perfect– a little cheesy, even saccharine perhaps. But it’s still a fine movie from a director who, after five movies, has finally grown up. (B ) –Ben Beard

Kevin Smith Eyes Gyllenhaal for The Green Hornet

Jersey Girl writer and director Kevin Smith has met with actor Jake Gyllenhaal about taking the title role in Miramax’s The Green Hornet, says The Hollywood Reporter.

The trade says the two had a positive chat with the actor about the famed character and with the direction of the potential franchise, Smith is now interested in casting Gyllenhaal as the crime-fighting superhero who also doubles as Daily Sentinel publisher Britt Reid.

Other names may still be in the mix, but Gyllenhaal appears to fit Smith’s current conception of the character. Gyllenhaal can next be seen in Roland Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow, in theaters on May 28.