With Sony's first big push for director
Michel Gondry's
The Green Hornet taking place at this week's San Diego Comic-Con, a series of set interviews conducted by
Collider have recently been released. We've heard from
Gondry and title star and co-writer
Seth Rogen and
now we get to hear from Academy Award-winning actor
Christoph Waltz about his role as the movie's villain, Chudnofsky.
Waltz said that he's "not really all that familiar with comic book culture," which he hoped would help him to create a fresh take on a comic book movie villain:
" I don’t know whether or not I should disclose this little secrecy, but I just declared my ignorance to my advantage. I turned it around. I stick with my ignorance because that would make it, maybe, unusual. If I jumped into the cliché, everybody will have seen it before. If I stick to my ignorance a little bit, maybe, maybe it will turn out different. Or maybe a slightly new aspect to a comic book villain."
Waltz said that he didn't understand the character of Chudnofsky when he first read the script:
"I have never played a part like [Chudnofsky], and that was one of the reasons I was interested. And I first read it and I didn’t get it. And then I spoke to my agent...he said, 'Look, I’ll put you on the phone with Michel Gondry.' And I talked with Michel Gondry [in a 'Michel Gondry' voice] 'It became a totally different thing!' And really, that sound gave it a totally different spin for me. And I thought, oh that sounds good. And then I spoke to [producer] Neil Moritz, and he, actually, kind of shot out the catch phrase for me. He said, 'We're looking for...this is a villain in his mid-life crisis. And I loved that. Well, sure. Why not…coming back to talking about leaving the comfort zone, I thought well, OK. Let's leave the comfort zone and just risk it. Why not? Because...in a way, by taking that risk, I make up a little bit for my ignorance in the subject, or rather, the genre."
The Green Hornet opens January 14, 2011!
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