Green Hornet Writer Evan Goldberg on 3D and Michel Gondry's 'Secret Shelf of Shame'

Two hours before the Comic-Con panel for Michel Gondry's The Green Hornet this weekend, I sat down with co-writer Evan Goldberg, a longtime collaborator of star Seth Rogen who was eager to show the audience what they'd brought down to San Diego. The results may have been a mixed bag -- some attendees were charmed, while others walked out of the panel in droves -- but as he told Movieline, Goldberg is more than confident they've got the goods, and when it comes to 3D (to which Hornet will be converted after the fact), he speaks with religious fervor.

Michel Gondry has said that he had to softpedal some of his more outrageous ideas when he first came in to pitch the studio on directing the movie. Had he already told some of those ideas to you and Seth?

Oh yeah. [Laughs] We had what I'll call his "secret shelf of shame" in the back room of the art department. You never think about this until you work with him, but he's got all these genius creative ideas he thinks about, and they don't all work -- and he hides the bad ones somewhere! Like, we wanted to blow up a club in a very early draft of the screenplay, and he was like, "No, let's do something interesting, something really cool! Let's have a foam bomb explode that then hardens, and you see all these people trapped in it."

I was like, "Hey. This movie is PG-13, and that's horrific." He also wanted the cops to be cutting them out with chainsaws. I was like, "No." We all agreed that we were not gonna do that, and then one day Seth and I were taking around the DVD guys and interviewing some of the people in the art department, and we found a Lego club with Lego people, all solidified in a block of foam. And [Gondry] came in and was like, "What? No! You weren't supposed to see that!" He throws out all sorts of stuff. I probably shouldn't say the other ones, because he might do them in another movie, but the foam bomb failed, so I know he won't be doing that one.

Yesterday in the J.J. Abrams/Joss Whedon panel--

Wait a minute.

What?

J.J. Abrams and Joss Whedon? The nerds must have lost their minds!

Between that, the Marvel panel, and his own panel, Joss is in about eight thousand panels here this weekend.

Sheesh.

But anyway, in the panel, J.J. got a lot of applause when he said that Super 8 was not going to be shot in 3D or converted after the fact. There's definitely a backlash to post-conversion -- does that concern you, since that's what Green Hornet is doing?

No.

Not at all?

Not even slightly whatsoever. I actually think it's kind of silly. It's like when black and white existed and then they came out with color -- a lot of artists back in the day were like, "This color thing is fun and all, but black and white is what artists do." Exact same thing. People are talking about it like it's some gimmicky thing, but it's 3D. We're talking to each other in 3D right now. This is much more engaging than if I were talking to you on a computer screen. It's undeniable.

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Comments

  • stolidog says:

    truth is what seth said...we all just want to watch movies on big screens at home with our friends. Being in a theater with 4oo usually gross strangers is not fun. so, we have to miss the movies that only come out in 3d in the theaters.
    tvs have a lot of catching up to do...a lot.

  • JM says:

    1) You should've point-blank asked him how far along in the conversion process they are - what they showed at Comic Con could've been done a while ago.
    2) Clash of the Titans did work, in its own way - a Clash 2 has been greenlit and there are talks of a tv series. If it had relied solely on its 2d version, tickets would've cost less and there would've been less money to make up for a shoddy story/plot and its 60% drop-off over the second weekend would've looked even worse.
    3) 3D is here to stay as long as the studios believe they can continue to make money from it. Those studios want conversion done as cheap and fast as possible which is why I posed question #1 because they're more than happy to give rush jobs and bankrupt an fx house as long as they still get their movie.
    We'll see how things are in 2-3 years and if people are tired of it or theatres are broke because they wasted their money on the tech (like with stadium seating and the bankruptcies there).
    The comparison b/w black and white to color and its naysayers and the naysayers of 3D is bunk, imho. 3D doesn't really add anything, if it's done well (because most ppl want the Avatar, more subtle route), can be distracting if not done well, can be painful if really not done well. Color is something that can add to a movie - think Suspiria, Amelie, a Wong Kar Wai film - while currently 3D is more like the newest H'wood gold rush. There are creative people out there doing cool stuff but it might not fit with the studios' bottom lines.

  • Barbie Bonesteel says:

    @john DUDE don't even buy from that guy.. the only person who actually did help me make a living online is http://tinyurl. com/3yrh3qo