The Green Hornet Rogen adds

Rogen adds own kicks to ‘Green Hornet’ 

 

Seth Rogen turned “The Green Hornet” into more of an action comedy and buddy film than what audiences remember from the 1960s televison series.

Seth Rogen wants to make one thing perfectly clear. He grew up a Batman fan.

“As a kid, I’d watch ‘Batman.’ It was my thing,” he says. “But afterward, ‘The Green Hornet’ was on in reruns. I never left my couch. Here was this guy fighting crime with his buddy.

“I’m sorry, Batman, but Robin was more of an employee. He was an underling. Kato really ruled.”

Cut to a few years ago.

“My partner Evan [Goldberg] and I always wanted to write a movie about a hero and a sidekick and the relationship between them,” Rogen says. “We realized that ‘The Green Hornet’ was the perfect movie to do that with because of how famous Kato is in relation to Green Hornet.”

It was fitting to bring a comic book to the big screen because Rogen is a self-confessed comic book geek.

“Me and Evan go to the comic book store almost every single week,” he confesses. “We have thousands of comic books. We read very few books without pictures of men in tights, which is embarrassing to say but true.”

Now, Rogen is the one in tights. He plays debonair newspaper publisher Britt Reid, who also fights crime as a masked superhero called the Green Hornet. He works with martial arts expert Kato (Jay Chou) and has a love interest in secretary Lenore Case (Cameron Diaz). The film also stars Christoph Waltz, Tom Wilkinson and Edward James Olmos.

Rogen says bringing back the Green Hornet was a challenge.

“We were very aware that the Green Hornet is an old character, but a lot of things have derived from him,” he says. “The Green Hornet was the first superhero character to have a newspaper involved and have a car that shoots weapons and stuff like that. Since then, other comics like ‘Superman’ and ‘Spider-Man’ and ‘Batman’ have taken those ideas and made them much more popular.”

Now, it was the Hornet’s turn. Rogen believed it was key to turn “The Green Hornet” into an action comedy.

“We have the action play seriously and dangerously,” he says. “But it was very clear that there was no way to do this movie totally seriously. We needed to bring some lightness to it because the Green Hornet isn’t that dark a character. He has no deep secret. His parents weren’t murdered. He’s not avenging.”

Rogen also wanted to give his comedy audiences what they’ve come to expect from him.

“I think I was able to inject a lot of my own personality into it. And as the character evolves, he becomes more of what you would consider the traditional heroic type,” he says. “We really wanted to show the journey of a guy from being very unheroic to ultimately being a hero.”

Rogen was instrumental in finding the perfect Kato. Enter actor Jay Chou. The native of Taiwan is best known for the 2010 movie “True Legend.”

“Jay was amazing. We first read with him over Skype, which was very awkward due to the time delay. But it was clear that he was very cool,” Rogen says. “And it was very clear that if he and I were a crime-fighting team that he would not be the sidekick. He would be the leader.”

Rogen says that Chou didn’t disappoint on the set.

“When we got together, he was very cool and charismatic and physically very coordinated and capable. And the language barrier wasn’t that bad. We acknowledge in the movie that he doesn’t speak perfect English. We really tried to make it much like us interacting in real life.”

Rogen also had to deal with a tough Cameron Diaz.

“I think Cameron can kick the s--- out of me, personally,” he jokes. “She’s extremely fit. She has long legs. She has incredible leg reach. She surfs. She has great stamina. So, yeah, she can whip my ass good.”

Rogen had less to whip.

“I dieted a little and exercised,” he says. “That’s a boring answer. Afterward, I played a chef in a movie, so I went from dieting to giving myself a little free rein. I even added back in a few sides of bacon to any meal of the day. You know you can eat bacon during any meal of the day — not just breakfast.”

Rogen is the first one to admit that a movie stuntman is an actor’s best friend.

“I did as little as humanly possible,” he says of the stunts. “No, the truth is I did some. I feel like I move in a very specific and very goofy way, so as much as possible I tried to do the stunts.

“My only fear was I’d get hurt and that would ruin the movie,” he says. “But please write down that Seth Rogen does kick ass.”

He also loved his action scenes in the Green Hornet’s car.

“The Black Beauty is pretty rad,” Rogen says. “I’m very glad we wound up with this version of it. In real life, I drive a Lexus hybrid, which is quite nerdy. It’s a very conservative car, a sensible vehicle.”

He adds, “It took a lot to arrive back at the original car. A lot of car companies made bids to design the new, future-y version of it. And we kind of had to convince the studio to turn down tens of millions of dollars of marketing money to use a 1965 Chrysler Imperial. And I’m really glad we did, because I think it’s a really kick-ass car.”

He’s ready for a new comic book, superhero-loving audience to embrace him now — for life.

“The nerdy things that I love to talk about are now cool,” Rogen says. “My hobbies are part of pop culture. I don’t feel like a geek anymore.”