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.
Still, you have to admit that there are a lot of s**ty post-conversions in the marketplace right now.
Because they rushed it! They rushed it! I bet you a million dollars that if you were there [in the executive suite], you'd see them making the decision to rush it, financially. I mean, we pushed for 3D because we saw the mistake they made [by not greenlighting it in the first place]. I can confidently say that if you're at the panel where we're showing footage in 3D, you'll throw all your concerns out the window. And it's not even 100% done yet!
When Seth went to make Zack and Miri and Observe and Report, I went on a two-month campaign to figure out, is 3D smart? I went to all the companies and vendors and conventions and I talked to DPs and did all the research because we didn't just want to be, like, "Let's do this!" We concluded that this movie will be in 3D, and a huge portion of movies from now on will be in 3D, also largely because it will get you to the theater. I can get a TV as big as a theater in my house now, hypothetically. One of my friends has one, and we kind of stopped going to the theater because we can just watch movies at his place and make microwaved popcorn and stop when we want to.
So how do you combat that?
The theater remains relevant because of 3D. It makes it an event. You go there, 400 people put on their glasses, and it's just fun.
Then why wasn't Green Hornet shot in 3D to begin with?
Because we couldn't convince the studio to do it. Then, when all these disasters happened with other films, we said, "Look, it takes time, and they didn't take the time. We're gonna take the time and we're gonna do it right." It's just awesome. Also, this isn't a cartoon or a giant CG movie -- these are real people. My simplest pitch is this... What's more emotional: seeing someone cry on a movie screen, or seeing someone cry directly in front of you? The one in 3D.
I've been working on this movie for so long, and the 3D fights, they're just better. If the Bourne movies were in 3D, I would love the car chases even more! I can't wait for them to convert old movies to 3D. I want them to convert Terminator 2 to 3D more than I want anything in the world. I am 100% confident in 3D, and I still think it's nuts that people are so against it. I don't get it. I understand that Clash of the Titans and other things didn't work out, but 3D is a work in progress, and those particular movies rushed it. It's like if you rush the CG, and you end up with the effects out of, like, Wolverine -- I assume that's what happened, I don't really know what the hell happened there, but it was very strange. Take your time, like the other X-Men movies, where it looks awesome!
You definitely have strong feelings about this.
I'm passionate about this 3D s**t. [Laughs]