INTERVIEW: ED NORTON TALKS ‘HULK’

What began as a sequel has become a complete do-over for The Incredible Hulk. Edward Norton plays Bruce Banner who is on the run from General Thunderbolt Ross as he desperately searches for an antidote to the gamma radiation that turns him into the Hulk anytime he gets angry. As if it’s not bad enough that his powers make him official military property, a new nemesis emerges! When Emil Blonsky toys with the power that has made Banner into the Hulk, it transforms him into the Abomination — a creature with similar strengths to the Hulk. As the Abomination grows out of control, the military that once sought to kill the Hulk calls upon him to eliminate the Abomination and save New York City. The Incredible Hulk costars Tim Roth, William Hurt, and Liv Tyler.

Hey there is is Jay Johnson, your host for this week’s edition of VulkonLIVE! Joining me via telephone is Ed Norton, let me start by saying thanks for joining us, I know our time is short so I’ll get right to it:

Did you do any sort of getting in shape for the role as Bruce Banner?

Obviously the worst of, I mean the creature battles the army but you get in shape with something like this just because the nature of movie making is so repetitive. Any 100 yard dash you see me doing in the movie was probably a thousand yards in fact.

Aside from the obvious comic book connection, what do you think made the 70’s show stand out as something worthy of being a full length motion picture?

If you think about the way people loved the show in the 70s, like if you go back and watch it now, as awesome as he is, its not Lou Ferrigno in the green putting a dent in the hood of an old Pontiac why you like it, you like it because Bill Bixby was really really incredible as Bruce banner and he kind of gave the show a surprising amount of pathos, you sympathized with him.

What was it like working with Liv Tyler?

I think Liv has this fantastic quality of empathy. In many, many films that I’ve seen her in I think the thing I’m always most drawn to about her is she just seems to have a very palpable connection to other peoples’ pain or emotions. If there was one thing I think you needed in Betty in our version of it, Betty has the totally unique quality of being able to look at Hulk and still see Bruce. Everybody else sees this horrific force of rage.

The studio sent us a clip of Liv talking about her memories of the original 1970’s show.

Every time he gets to a new place and he connects with someone and starts a life for himself, some situation arises where he becomes The Hulk and that shot of him walking down the road with the sort of backpack, the ultimate loner, I really like that.

Now, unlike the last film, this one doesn’t pit Hulk as the main villain but rather he turns out to be the hero, tell us about that and how it fits in with the character of ‘Blonsky’.

What Blonsky becomes is the embodiment of what Banner doesn’t want to happen, which is for this thing inside of him to be replicated and turned into a weapon in an a way and yet the only thing that they can put up against it is the equal and opposite force in a way, which is Hulk.

When you originally spoke to Louis Leterrier, how did he explain seeing the movie?

He talked about using hand-held cameras a lot. He talked about having the visual experience be dirty. And by that he meant not always perfectly composed but a sense that there’s a certain kind of, a sense of chaos and horror film aspect to it. And I liked that a lot.

With that we end this interview, but not before playing another cut that the studio sent us from an interview with Lou Ferrigno where he talks about his involvement in the new movie.

LOUR FERRIGNO: I met the director at comic-con a year ago and I explained to him, he was telling me about the movie and saying that I really wanted to be involved because this movie is more a different kind of a Hulk, like the TV series, and I think has more of an impact maybe in the film.

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