Showing posts with label Green Hornet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Green Hornet. Show all posts

So long, Van Williams - TV's Green Hornet

Actor Van Williams, who played the Green Hornet opposite Bruce Lee's Kato on the 1960s TV show has died at age 82.
"When I was a kid I had actually been a fan of The Green Hornet when it was on the radio and in those serials at the theater, but I didn’t know if I wanted to star in a TV series like that," Williams told interviewer Michael Barnum. "It was very similar to Adam West’s show … and seemed like something that would probably be the kiss of death to my career. You do that type of show and become so identified with it, like Superman’s George Reeves was, and you can never get away from it. But, my agency, William Morris, really wanted me to do The Green Hornet, so that is what I did."
... After the swift demise of The Green Hornet, Williams starred in Westwind, a 1975-76 NBC Saturday morning kids show, as an underwater photographer who sailed around the Pacific with his wife, a marine biologist, and their two kids.

Williams acted rarely after that, appearing on such shows The Streets of San Francisco, Barnaby Jones, The Rockford Files and Mrs. Columbo. He appeared as the man directing the first episode of The Green Hornet in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (1993), toplined by Jason Scott Lee.

TV Green Hornet unhappy with movie version

Van Williams is disappointed in Seth Rogen's take on the..., what's Green Hornet's nickname? Green Avenger? Buzzy Batman? Emerald Something or Other?

Anyway:

“I was pretty upset with the way they did it," Williams said. " They took their own license with it, they didn’t follow the character. I was very insistent, when I was offered that role [for the television series] that I was going to follow the characters as they had done it through all the radio shows…I wasn’t going to do camp, like they did in Batman.”

Williams revealed that he hasn't seen the film but seeing the trailer for it was enough to make him turn down an invitation to the premiere. “After all I’d heard, I was not that interested. I’ve got a lot of friends calling me and
saying, ‘they ruined it.’ I haven’t seen it, but after all this bad comment, I’m not sure I want to see it.”

Rogen talks Green Hornet

The writer/actor talks about what drew him to the project, and outs himself and co-writer Evan Goldberg as comic book fans:

“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.”

...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.”

Green Hornet

The way I see it, the Green Hornet was never really an original enough, or interesting enough character to get all purist about, so this flick, which obviously plays the hero at least somewhat for laughs, seems ok to me. Seth Rogen is always fun to watch, plus it looks like there will be a cool car, gas guns and lots of karate action on hand. So long as they find a spot to incorporate Al Hirt's cool, swinging version of "Flight of the Bumblebee" it seems like this flick will be pure, dumb fun.