Believe me I’m still sorting that out in my head. There was a period for about two months after the movie came out, where I was, I’d hesitate to say the word ‘depressed’, but I was in a fucking funk. Because we should have done better, that movie easily should have done double what it did. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful we didn’t do Gigli business. The fact that we were able to do 25 million bucks after Gigli is pretty fucking great. However, that movie should easily have been able to make $50 Million, it should have done Uptown Girls business or Raising Helen business. The fact that we did $25 Million, definitely Gigli had an effect. In that period when I was in a funk, I wanted to find someone to blame, because I know I did my job… Even if you read the reviews it wasn’t like everyone was saying ‘Oh this movie blows, because fucking Bennifer is in it.’ A lot of people were just like ‘this movie blows and this dude has no business making this movie.’ All those critics who smashed this film were really hardcore supporters of my first five movies, and then interestingly enough all the people who hated the first five movies I did loved this movie.

What are you working on next?

Next up, I’ve still got to finish the script for the Green Hornet movie. I don’t think I’m going to direct, I’m just writing it. Then I’m going to do that $250,000 movie I was talking about. Ten years in, the thing I start thinking about is: what I do doesn’t require a lot of money, like the kind of movies I like to make. It’s this (gestures to the interview), just put a camera onto this shit and let it roll. I just like fucking talking movies. Talk is cheap and shooting talk is cheap. I don’t know, for me, I’d just like to make movies that are cheaper than what we got used to. Like Jersey Girl, I love that film to death, man, but there’s no reason that movie should have cost thirty five million bucks. You can’t even go, ‘Well Ben got paid $10 million, and Jen got $21 million’, because you’re still at a $21 million dollar movie. There’s no way that movie needed to cost twenty one fucking million dollars. So I’m trying to reign my shit in, be more in control of it. Not listen to people go, ‘Well, this should be your budget’. Because it’s not necessary.

Well, Hollywood is finally doing it. They’re going to make a movie about the coolest masked hero of all time — the Green Hornet.

And what makes him the coolest hero of all time, you ask? Because, in his real life, he had the coolest job anybody could have — that’s right, he was a newspaper editor.

The Green Hornet’s secret identity was Britt Reid, dashing young editor and publisher of the Sentinel.

What makes him different than Batman or Spider-Man or anybody else who wears a mask is that the Green Hornet fought crime by pretending to be a criminal and fighting the mob by their own rules.

Only his right-hand man, Kato, knew who he really was.

Anyway, Mirimax is making a big-budget feature film on the journalist/crimefighter.

Thirtysomethings may remember the TV show with Van Williams and a very young Bruce Lee in the role that made him a star.

But chances are the older folks of the Valley remember the old radio show starring Gordon Jones in the 1930s, with its opening line: He hunts the biggest of all game — public enemies that even the G-men cannot reach — the Green Hornet!

The character was sort of a latter-day Lone Ranger. In fact, Britt Reid was supposed to be the great-nephew of John Reid, the Lone Ranger. He rode around in his car, the Black Beauty, and took on the mob in many different non-lethal ways.

A script is being written by Kevin Smith, the guy who made the Jay and Silent Bob movies.

Of course, it’s not unusual for a super hero’s secret identity to be some guy who works for a newspaper. Superman was really mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent. Spider-Man was really freelance news photographer Peter Parker. And Captain Marvel was cub reporter Billy Batson.

Each of those characters was created at a time when journalists had a lot more respect than they do these days. Everybody read the paper and everybody trusted Edward R. Murrow.

It’ll be interesting to see what Kevin Smith does with the character. Like everything else, it will probably be modernized to appeal to today’s audiences, complete with explosions, car chases and theatrical martial arts.

To me it will always be film noir — a guy with his own code of honor rubbing elbows with the denizens of the underworld, only to sting them when the time is right.

It’s vigilante justice at its 1930s best, when a new breed of criminal found his way around the law.

Let’s roll, Kato!