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.

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.